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Labour landslide victory in council elections; Sir Keir, “we're on track to win next general election”

Sir Keir claimed the “fantastic” results showed his party was well placed to oust the Tories from government in a general election, expected next year.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer says his party is on track to win the next general election after the Tories were hammered in local polls across England, reports BBC. The Tories have lost 48 councils and more than 1,000 councilors, exceeding their worst predictions.

Many Conservatives were furious at the scale of the losses, with some blaming PM Rishi Sunak.

Labour says it is now the largest party in local government, surpassing the Tories for the first time since 2002.

“The British public has sent a clear rejection of a prime minister who never had a mandate to begin with,” a Labour spokesperson said.

The elections of 230 councils in England were the first big test of PM Sunak's electoral popularity since he won the Tory leadership contest and became prime minister last October.

The Liberal Democrats had what their leader Sir Ed Davey said was their “best result in decades”, taking control of twelve counties, mostly in Tory heartlands.

While the Green Party gained 241 seats, their best-ever result in local elections - and gained its first majority on an English council, in Mid-Suffolk, although they were overtaken as the biggest party by Labour in Brighton and Hove.

PM Sunak admitted the results were “disappointing”, but said he did not detect “a massive groundswell of movement towards the Labour Party”.

Sir Keir claimed the “fantastic” results showed his party was well placed to oust the Tories from government in a general election, expected next year.

“Make no mistake, we are on course for a Labour majority at the next general election,” he told cheering activists in Medway in Kent, one of the councils his party has wrested from the Tories.

Labour won control of councils in areas that will be crucial battlegrounds in the general election, including Medway, Swindon, Plymouth, Stoke-on-Trent, and East Staffordshire.

The BBC's projected national vote share put Labour on 35%, the Tories on 26% and the Lib Dems on 20%.

Labour's projected nine-point lead represents its largest over the Conservatives on this measure since the party lost power in 2010.

Sir John Curtice, the polling expert, said this year's results were “only a little short of calamitous for the Conservatives”.

But the BBC's political editor, Chris Mason, said the results suggested it would be hard for either the Conservatives or Labour to be confident of winning a majority at the next general election.

He said there appears to be no appetite to move against Mr Sunak, after the Tories forced two prime ministers - Boris Johnson then Liz Truss - out of office last year.

Still, some Conservatives are reeling from the results, with ousted councilors and critics of Mr Sunak venting their anger at the prime minister.

As the big picture became clearer, there was disagreement among Tories over who was to blame for the loss of so many councilors.

The elections came amid a dire economic backdrop in the UK, with high inflation contributing to the worst cost-of-living crisis in decades.

A figure loyal to Mr Johnson and Ms Truss told the BBC that Mr Sunak had “no option but to own these results”.

In a seething statement, the person said: “He has been chancellor or prime minister for virtually all of the last three years and it was he and his supporters who forced Boris and then Liz out of office in order to install him in Downing Street.

”The old saying goes that 'it is the economy, stupid' that defines the choice voters have at the ballot box.“

In Swindon, where Labour took control of the borough council for the first time in 20 years, ousted Tory council leader David Renard blamed ”the cost of living and the performance of the government in the last 12 months“ for his party's woes locally.

Mr Renard said although the prime minister had ”started to stabilize things“, for voters in Swindon, ”what had gone on before that was something that they didn't like“.

David Renard, Swindon's former council leader, who lost his own seat said the poor Tory performance was a partly a result of ”the turmoil and upheaval of the last 12 months“.

He said Labour had been ”successful in making this a referendum on the government“, adding ”people don't feel like they can vote for us“.

Nigel Churchill, a former Tory councilor who lost his seat on Plymouth Council - another Labour target - said ”I think we can safely say“ the Conservatives will lose the next general election.

”The general public do not trust them at the moment,” he said.