What next for Labour as Reform wins big in local elections? – The Latest

0:10This is obviously terrible news for Keir Starmer's Labour Party because they'll be losing votes both to the right and to the left. No, I'm not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos. I think what was clear was he was quite bullish. There's no sense at the moment that he's going to roll over. I think you can't underestimate the reform machine. So it's a big, big day. The Greens, but it's really symbolic victory. Two-party politics is not just dying. It is dead and it is buried. Nigel Farage has hailed a historic shift in British politics as his Reform UK party wins big in the local elections.

0:44And despite huge losses for Labour, the Prime Minister insists he's not going anywhere. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hough. Well, I'm joined by Alexandra Tuffing, our political correspondent. Thanks for being with us, Lexi. I hope you got some sleep last night. I managed about a 2am and then I forced myself to go to sleep. Yeah, I got some. Some, yeah. Some is enough. But what we've woken up to, and we're speaking at about lunchtime at one o 'clock on Friday, so lots still to emerge. We're about a third of the way through. But this broad picture of major losses for Labour, but perhaps not catastrophic and a huge surge for reform.

1:24So let's look at the sort of overall picture as it stands. I mean, like you said, I think it's a really complex picture and we only know a tiny little bit of that jigsaw at the moment. So we will see as it goes forward. I mean, we've certainly had very bullish words from Nigel Farage and reformers. A historic victory. A historic shift is what he's saying, saying that they're taking seats from both Labour and the Conservatives. true you know they are up by far the strongest performing party so far and likely to be by the end of the day but Labour I think have very much set the tone for weeks about how bad they expected it to be you know we're talking about losses of 2 ,000 seats being really cataclysmic so anything less than that now seems maybe not quite as bad you know the Tories have lost seats but you've still got kemi badenock saying that this is the moment of the turnaround for them you've got ed davie saying that the lib dems are showing now that they are the only yeah the only party who can stand up to reform not quite sure what he's basing that on on on the figures so far and you've got zach polanski saying you know this is truly the end of two-party politics and of all of the statements that have been made today i think actually that is the only one that we can say for sure that that is 100 % true.

2:45Yeah, this total shift away from the Tory Labour era of two-party politics. And we're talking about places at the moment that have been Labour forever. You know, like you've got Wigan. If Wigan isn't a Labour stronghold, if it's not where people will just, a goat turns up on the ballot paper and everybody votes Labour, you know, then the political landscape really has shifted. But I just think we don't know quite yet where that shift is going to land. So in terms of the numbers, where we are at one o 'clock on Friday, Labour down over 320 seats and gains for reform of an astronomical 470. That's expected to rise.

3:29And we are speaking about just England at the moment. We haven't got counts yet for Scotland and Wales. So you mentioned Wigan, where reform have won every seat possible. it was possible to win there. That is the seat of Lisa Nandy, who is in the cabinet as Culture Secretary. There's been, you know, real changes around the seats of Angela Rayner, Jonathan Reynolds, these kind of, as you say, real Labour, former Labour strongholds, which is really worrying for the next general election. But where else has been interesting? What can we look at? I mean, we've also seen reform clear up in Hartlepool, which is interesting.

4:06Redditch, Dudley, places like that. In the West Midlands, they've been having a very strong showing. The North East has proved rich ground as well. In Manchester, Labour have retained control of the council, but there's been lots of losses across there as well. I don't think there's anywhere in the country, really, that doesn't really feel like it is turning more reform than it has been in the past. But it's really interesting, actually, because Peter Kalner, you know, very well-informed commentator on this, formerly of YouGov. he's been writing a really interesting substat this morning saying that even though this looks disastrous and for Labour and in many many counts it already is but he says that actually if he was reformed then he'd be a bit worried at the moment because even though they're gaining like about a thousand seats so far or something something along those lines last year in any local elections that were happening they were gaining about 41 percent of any seats that they were contesting and that has leveled off at the moment at about 33 percent so there might be this sense that something that we've been talking about on a kind of national level over the rather than the local picture that this kind of is reform hitting its ceiling yeah even though labor have had you know really quite catastrophic results.

5:32There is this sense that it might not bottom out quite as catastrophically as they'd laid the ground for. And they have been working very hard to lay the ground, not least in Wales, where they're expected to have this historic loss. Welsh Labour has been in charge in the Senate since devolution in 1999. Labour has been clear that they are expected to lose there. I mean, they're not even counting in Wales and Welsh Labour have already said, we're not going to be forming the next Senate. So yeah, I think there is a real sense of resignation and overwhelming defeat in Welsh Labour at the moment that they are not going to be carrying the Labour flag over there.

6:13Yeah, and also Scotland where John Swinney and the SNP are expected to hold on. But Labour, again, on this issue of expectation management, they've been sort of rolling this figure of 1 ,500 seats would be the kind of expectation. this morning when I was listening to pollsters they were saying actually it could look something like 1800 but the way things are now playing out it looks more like 1200 which is you know still bad for Labour. Completely disastrous. Not quite as disastrous as it could. But perhaps buys Keir Starmer a little bit more time and he has been speaking this morning saying he insists he's gonna press on.

6:51Yes he looked a bit sad this morning didn't he? He looked a bit sad but But privately and perhaps in number 10, this is. Well, I think what was clear was he was quite bullish that these calls that we've been hearing in the background that he must set a timetable for leaving. There was absolutely no sign that he was doing that this morning. He was bullish. He's very much giving the message that he's going to be there for the long term. Obviously, it's not necessarily his choice, but there's no sense at the moment that he's going to roll over. And I think in number 10, they won't be in pure panic mode just yet.

7:28Because while there has been voices calling for him to leave this morning, they're kind of the same voices we always hear. So those on the Labour left got the MP for Hartlepool saying that he should leave Jonathan Brash. But he just saw his wife lose her council seat and lose the local election. So he was probably feeling a bit sore. but the voices at the moment seem to be the same voices that we have already heard calling for Starmer to step down there was a report in the Times that Ed Miliband has called for Starmer to set a timetable to leave that's not necessarily what we're hearing in our office so you know there's lots of rumours swirling around Westminster as you can imagine at this moment and but you know we there are other members of the cabinet like David Lammy this morning who who've come out fighting for the Prime Minister.

8:15With this slightly strange metaphor of you don't change the pilot while the flight is in motion, which is number one, I don't think really stacks up as a metaphor, and B is absolutely terrifying for anyone who has a fear of flying. I was making the toast this morning. I was like, this is a really bad analogy. I mean, what if the pilot's having a heart attack? What if the pilot's taken really ill or just can't fly the plane anymore? Please change the pilot. So yeah, I'm not sure that one worked. But, you know, his message was at least clear that continuity is important. But it wasn't rousing, was it?

8:50It wasn't a rousing endorsement of this is the right person for the job. It is. There isn't anybody else at the moment. So let's talk about the Greens, because they have had this really symbolic victory. There will be a huge victory for them in Hackney. Zach Bansby has been speaking this morning, obviously very, very excited. And there's much more to come in terms of the target seats that they're hoping to win this afternoon. But Zach Palancey has had a bruising couple of weeks. There's been some really negative stories about whether he misspoke when he said he was spokesperson for the Red Cross.

9:27He's since admitted he was wrong to say that he was. There's also been the same sort of issues of anti-Semitism that dogged Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party that have now dogged Polanski's Green Party in the wake of the Golders Green attack. Has that had any impact, do you think, on the way people have voted? I think there's two things going on here. The Greens have been polling really high for them on a national level. But we have a first-past-the-post system, and that does not favour minor parties. Now, what we're seeing at the moment so far is that Labour are losing seats to reform, but they're losing votes to the Green Party.

10:06But that Green vote is spread a little bit too evenly across the country for them to be making major gains. I think so far Green Party strategists will be disappointed in their showing, even though they have, like you said, have this big victory in Hackney and we may see more in those mayoral contests as we go forward. But they really do feel like unless they can be more canny about where they target their votes, then you might just see them gaining a lot more votes, not gaining a lot more seats. But this is obviously terrible news for Keir Starmer's Labour Party because they'll be losing votes both to the right and to the left.

10:46So if you think about that, in the 2004 general election, you had the Labour Party on a relatively low vote share, gaining a lot of seats in this huge majority because it went through the middle of a split right. You know, went through the middle of reform and the Conservatives. And what Starmer is now facing is a kind of splitting of that progressive vote. So people who may have voted Labour because they wanted to keep out the right are now thinking, I'm not sure the best place to put my vote. And a very, very strong Reform UK vote where a lot of Tories, a lot of Labour voters seem to have made their decision about supporting.

11:26And I think you can't underestimate the reform machine, because what insurgent parties tend to lack is the mechanics. You know, and that's why local government is so important. That's why it matters so much, because that is where you build your scaffolding for your national party. And that is exactly what reform are doing at the moment. So it feels like, Lexi, from what we've been discussing, that Stam has bought himself a little bit of time. But we know that many in his party feel that his days are numbered and it's a question of when, not if. The name that keeps coming up is Andy Burnham, who was blocked from standing as an MP earlier this year, but has made his ambitions clear that he does intend to find a seat somewhere.

12:10What do you think is likely to happen? I mean, the people I've talked to about it think that they're pretty confident that there will be a seat somewhere for him if he wants it. But it's not uncomplicated. I mean, if you look at the MPs who have seats around the Manchester area, you're not 100 percent sure to win a by-election if you're Labour at the moment. So, you know, there's a real risk if someone for Labour, if someone steps aside that you actually, you know, you lose the by-election. And that's a huge blow for Burnham as a candidate, not just because it obviously stops a path to Westminster, but also it's just severely weakens him as a political figure.

12:52Really, it's difficult to know what's going to happen there. My sense is there will be a seat found somewhere, particularly if Labour can't turn its fortune around in polling. And it feels like Starmer would have to do something really dramatic now in order to do that. doesn't feel like that's on the cards. But there are other people lining up to take that spot. It's just that nobody seems right now ready to jump. Well, Lexi, a fascinating and historic day. It seems a real shifting in our political landscape. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Alexandra Topping, Guardian political correspondent.

13:35You can keep up with her reporting as well as rolling coverage of the local election results over at theguardian.com. And do listen to this evening's episode of our sister podcast, Politics Weekly. Our political editor, Pippa Creera, and our policy editor, Kieran Stacey, will have more analysis on what we know from the local election results. Before we go, I just wanted to tell you about a new video podcast that our New York office is launching. It's called Stateside with Kai and Carter, and it's hosted by our colleagues, Kai Wright and Carter Sherman. Each week, they're going to be making sense of some of the biggest stories happening right now.

14:07The show will feature conversations with some of the smartest thinkers and reporters, not just from The Guardian, but across the world. It's launching on the 13th of May with episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can find it in full video on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back in your feeds as usual on Monday morning. The Latest will be back on Monday night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. It was produced by Annie Levespa and Sam Gruet. The lead producer was Zoe Hitch.

14:40This is The Guardian.