Two years ago, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a historic parliamentary majority, returning to government after fourteen years of austerity, Brexit, sleaze scandals, and a revolving door of prime ministers under Conservative rule. 

The scale of Labour’s victory in terms of seats won was undeniable. But shrewd analysts noted something that the size of the majority threatened to obscure: Labour’s overall vote share had actually dropped relative to past elections. More than that, Labour’s success in flipping Tory seats was not entirely its own doing. Rather, all across the country, Reform UK, a new far-right party led by Brexiteer Nigel Farage, had systematically chipped away at Conservative votes, allowing Labour to come through the middle. In the end, Reform received the third-largest share of the votes of any party in the election, even though, thanks to the distortions of the UK’s first-past-the-post system, this breakthrough only netted the party five seats in the House of Commons.The fact that more Reform candidates hadn’t won led some to declare that its forward march had been halted; one commentator concluded that “the British can also take comfort in the fact that their far right is nowhere [near] the levers of power.” But, as has now become all too clear, the party was just getting started.

Since then, Reform has surged in popularity and leaped over both Labour and the Conservatives in the opinion polls, which it has consistently led since the beginning of 2025. And this past week, the results from crucial elections across England, Scotland, and Wales proved that Reform is no longer a specter looming over the country’s future—it is the party of Britain’s present. 

Last week’s elections—in which voters chose the members of local councils in England and the national parliaments in Wales and Scotland—were widely understood to be a referendum on the two years of Starmer’s premiership, which have been an objective disaster. Accordingly, pundits predicted a catastrophic Labour collapse. They were right. 

Dragged down by the visceral loathing the entire country seems to have for Starmer, Labour suffered the worst local election defeat in its history. It lost nearly 1,500 local government seats in England and control of over 37 councils. It lost in the north, the Midlands, and the south. It lost councils and borough mayoralities in London. It lost control of the Welsh Parliament, or Senedd, for the first time in its 27-year history—a drubbing which also marked the first time Labour failed to win an election of any kind in Wales in over a century. To underscore the depth of the crisis, incumbent Welsh Labour First Minister Eluned Morgan became the very first leader of a national government to lose their seat while in office in British history. 

The vast majority of Labour’s losses were Reform’s gains. Reform increased its presence in local government by more than 1,400 seats, about 1,000 more than the next party. It took control of 14 councils, from Sunderland in England’s north to Suffolk and Essex (which it took from the Conservatives) in its east, to even the London borough of Havering.

Where it didn’t gain outright control of a council, Reform candidates still made substantial inroads into constituencies previously considered safe Labour territory. It is now the second largest party in Scotland’s parliament (tied with Labour) and in Wales’s Senedd, finishing behind the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, respectively.  

Reform, however, was not the only cause of Labour’s collapse. The left-wing Green Party continued its astonishing ascent less than a year into Zack Polanski’s leadership, capturing the second-highest national vote share behind Reform. With a left-populist message centered on the cost of living crisis, opposition to the genocide in Gaza, and anti-racism, the Greens won over 400 local seats, control of five councils throughout England, and its first ever mayoralities. The party also won its first seats in the Welsh parliament, and its sister party in Scotland made historic gains as well. In a twist on the 2024 election result, it appears that the Greens’ rising popularity across the country—not just in its assumed London base—ate into Labour’s totals, and in some cases, ultimately benefited Reform.At the time of writing, over 60 members of parliament have called on Starmer to resign or to set a timeline for his departure—a number that appears to grow by the minute. Several factions within the Labour Party want Andy Burnham, the current mayor of Manchester, to replace Starmer. To do that, though, Burnham needs to win a seat in the House of Commons, something which Starmer has previously blocked him from being able to do.

As a result, the parliamentary Labour Party is in a state of chaos. Nobody within Starmer’s cabinet, including those with well-documented desires to replace him, like Health Secretary Wes Streeting, seems willing to make the first move against him, and no MP representing a constituency in the northeast of England has resigned their seat—something which would trigger a by-election that could provide a path for Burnham to return to Parliament, challenge Starmer, and replace him as prime minister. 

For the inept MPs trying and failing to orchestrate a coup, the hope is that Starmer will simply feel the pressure and agree to an orderly transition out of office, giving Burnham enough time to return to parliament and take his job. Starmer, predictably, has shown no sign that he’s willing to leave, and has even suggested that he wants to be prime minister for another eight years.