Keir Starmer Faces Resign Pressure as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Wins Hundreds of Seats

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faced fresh pressure after local and regional elections delivered sweeping gains for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and heavy losses for Labour, with the BBC reporting that Reform won hundreds of seats and took control of more councils in England.

The BBC said Reform’s gains included winning control of its first London borough in Havering, surging to victory over the Tories in Essex and Suffolk, and picking up seats at the expense of Labour in the Midlands and the north of England.

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CBS News said the governing Labour Party and the opposition Conservative Party, which together had dominated British politics and seated every prime minister for more than 100 years, both took a gut punch as Labour lost more than half of its seats on local councils.

CBS News also said the elections put pressure on Starmer as renewed calls for him to resign as leader of both his party and the country followed the losses.

In response, Starmer rejected calls to step down, telling CBS News, "I'm not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos."

Nigel Farage framed the results as a political realignment, telling the BBC, "What's happened is a truly historic shift in British politics."

The BBC reported that Farage said Reform was proving it could win in areas that had been Conservative and Labour-dominated since the end of World War I, while also saying voters were not treating the party as a one-off.

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CBS News described Farage as an ideological ally of President Trump who has appeared on stage multiple times with the American leader, and it said he called the outcome "a truly historic shift in British politics" while saying Labour was being "wiped out" in many of its traditional strongholds.

CBS News also reported that Starmer acknowledged the scale of the setback, calling the results a "tough" warning to his government from voters, while rejecting calls to step down.

The BBC added that polling expert Sir John Curtice said Reform has done best in places that "voted heavily for Brexit" in 2016, and it outlined a projected national share of the vote for Britain based on results in more than 1,000 wards.

The elections were described by CBS News as both a barometer of the national mood and a practical test for local governance, with winners set to determine local matters such as trash collection, road maintenance, social care and public housing.

CBS News said there were "5,000 seats on 136 city and county councils" up for grabs in England, along with "six mayoral races," and it said votes for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly were also starting to trickle in.

The BBC reported that Reform came second in the Welsh Parliament elections behind Plaid Cymru while party figures said they would be "competitive" in Scotland, and it said Reform was in its infancy the last time these councils in England were up for election.

The BBC also said Reform had shifted councils including Barnsley, Wakefield, Sunderland and Gateshead, and it reported that control of Newcastle-under-Lyme passed to Reform from the Tories.

With Labour’s losses fueling renewed calls for leadership change, CBS News said the heavy losses on city councils across England, even with votes still being counted in Scotland and Wales, fueled renewed calls for Starmer to resign as leader of both his party and the country.