Prime Minister Keir Starmer has rejected resignation calls and scheduled a major speech after his party's sweeping defeats to Reform UK and the Greens in local council elections.

The result

Labour suffered major losses in local elections held across Britain, with Reform UK making sweeping gains that extended into traditional Labour heartlands. The Greens also recorded advances, compounding the government's difficulties on two flanks simultaneously.

Nigel Farage's Reform UK secured wins in areas where Labour had long held dominance, a result that analysts had flagged before polling day as a likely outcome of discontent with the ruling party.

Starmer's response

Starmer has rejected calls for his resignation. On Monday he was scheduled to deliver a speech aimed at convincing the public of his leadership, with the prime minister signalling he intends to confront what he described as big challenges head-on.

The address came under pressure not only from Reform UK on the right but from the Greens on the left, leaving Labour squeezed from both directions at the local government level.

What the results expose

Thursday's polls were widely described before they were held as a test of whether Starmer could hold together a fractured electorate. The results confirmed the scale of that fracture. Reform UK's performance was characterised as humiliating for Labour, with the hard-right party consolidating its position as the dominant force outside the two traditional parties in English local government.

The Greens' parallel gains suggest that voters deserting Labour are not moving in a single ideological direction, presenting the party with a strategic problem that a single policy shift cannot resolve.

Leadership questions

Starmer faces the prospect of a formal internal challenge following the scale of the defeat. His Monday speech represented his most direct attempt yet to restate the case for his continued leadership and to set out a direction that could stabilise the government ahead of the next general election.