Trump ally Nigel Farage deals major blow to Starmer in local UK elections as resignation calls mount
The United Kingdom’s ruling Labour Party is on track to suffer a major defeat in Thursday’s local elections as Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK surges in support, prompting calls for...
By Fox News · Fox News
The United Kingdom’s ruling Labour Party is on track to suffer a major defeat in Thursday’s local elections as Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK surges in support, prompting calls for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign. British local elections are widely viewed as a functional referendum on the popularity of the ruling party and its head. With Labour having already suffered a net loss of nearly 500 local council seats with just over half of the councils called, multiple Labour MPs are saying that Starmer must agree to a timeline for his exit from office. "Many, many Labour voters that I represent, I guess, in the north of England and elsewhere that the direction the government [has] taken has not delivered the change that they thought they voted for," Labour MP Jon Trickett said of the results. "They’re angry, they’re upset, they feel let down, they’ve sent us a clear message: The party, the leadership, must change with immediate effect if we want to recover." Starmer, for his part, has accepted responsibility for the losses but resisted calls to immediately resign in the wake of the local election results, stating that he was "not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos." He has not, however, explicitly ruled out a managed exit. AS EPSTEIN-LINKED APPOINTMENT SPARKS BACKLASH, UK PM STARMER FACES PARTY REVOLT AMID RESIGNATION CALLS Farage, an ally and friend of President Trump, told supporters: "Personally, I’ll be very sad to see the Prime Minister go. I will be very, very sad indeed. He’s the greatest asset we’ve got." English local elections span over 5,000 seats across 163 local councils and six mayorships. The semi-autonomous parliaments in Scotland and Wales also held elections on Thursday. Labour’s losses were driven by defections both to the right and the left. Reform UK, which has seen a net increase of about 650 seats as of writing, picked up considerable ground in post-industrial parts of northern and central England. Many of those seats…