Have election results decided Starmer’s fate?
5/8/202623 min
As early results are declared in England and counting begins across Scotland and Wales has the narrative of these elections already been set?
With Labour losing seats and council across England, Reform are already making significant gains.
The pressure on the Prime Minister is ramping up…and we don’t have a full picture yet.
Sam and Anne assess the early results and what they mean for the parties so far.
They’ll return for second special debrief episode taking in all the results on Sunday afternoon.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAnne McElvoy· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hello, good morning, and welcome. It's election morning, Friday, May the 8th. And looking across England, where the first results are now in, no overall control pretty much sums up the entire British political scene right now. My name is Anne McElvoy from Politico.
Sam Coates· Host0:19
And I'm Sam Coates, Sky News. A remarkable night. There's a winner, really. Uh, Reform UK managed a clean sweep across a swathe of councils, particularly in the north of England. A drubbing for Labour. It's still settling on exactly how bad it is for Keir Starmer's party, but MPs seem to think it's worse than they expected. And a poor night for the Tories. Some improvement on last year, with the Greens' surge not yet evident. Those seats they do well in largely come after we record this podcast.
Anne McElvoy· Host0:50
And all of that before we get the results from Holyrood in Scotland, where Labour seemed on course for almost certain victory two years ago, but the rot set in when Keir Starmer became prime minister, and the Welsh Senedd, where Labour sources are already conceding defeat.
Sam Coates· Host1:06
Right. We'll give you the nuts and bolts this morning of the results. We're recording this just after 8:00 AM, where about something in the region of about a third, quarter to a third of the English council results are already in, um, and about a fifth of the seats. Right, so it's multi-party politics, so we're not looking at many outright council gains right now. So of the 42 councils that have declared, eight went