LONDON: British voters head to the polls Thursday for local elections set to pile more misery on unpopular Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and cement the rise of right- and left-wing parties.
Millions of people are eligible to cast ballots across Scotland, England and Wales, in Starmer’s biggest ballot-box test since winning the July 2024 general election by a landslide.
Surveys predict dire results for Labour, which is likely to accelerate talk of a leadership challenge, although no obvious successor exists.
The hard-right Reform UK party and the left-wing Greens are expected to make gains as voters turn away from establishment parties.
“It’s partly to do with the government making some unpopular decisions early on in its term and its leader, a hopeless communicator, failing to convey a sufficient sense of change,” said political scientist Tim Bale.
“And it’s partly to do with an electorate that simply has less patience and less party loyalty than ever,” the professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London said. Surveys suggest Labour will lose control of the devolved Welsh government in Cardiff for the first time since the country got its own parliament 27 years ago.
Britain’s ruling party is also fearful of a humiliating result in Scotland, where voters will elect members of the 129-seat devolved Scottish parliament.
In England, pollster Robert Hayward has predicted Labour could lose about 1,850 of the roughly 2,550 local authority seats it is defending.
Some 5,000 council seats are up for grabs across the country.
Hayward has tipped Reform to gain some 1,550 seats from Labour and Kemi Badenoch’s right-wing Conservatives — mostly in white, working-class areas.
The Greens are expected to gain hundreds of councillors at Labour’s expense, particularly in London, with a pro-Gaza message.
Starmer has failed to spur economic growth as British residents continue to feel the effects of a years-long cost-of-living pinch, but has been praised for resisting US President Donald Trump over Iran.
The media is awash with rumors that former Cabinet ministers might try to oust Starmer if the results are bad, but any challenger would need to be nominated by 20 percent of the party’s MPs.
