4. A trickle of calls for Starmer to go … but the dam hasn’t broken (yet)
As of Friday evening, more than 10 Labour MPs had either called for Starmer to either outright go, or demand his departure unless there’s urgent overhaul of the government.
Louise Haigh, the influential co-chair of the soft-left Tribune caucus, was first to make the veiled call for Starmer to go.
That was couched in the language of being necessary unless there is “significant and urgent change,” a phrasing echoed by Anneliese Midgley to POLITICO.
So far no ministers have publicly called for a change of leadership and with numbers being as low as they are right now Downing Street will be hoping this doesn’t represent the breaking of the dam.
5. Reform triumphs — but the Tories aren’t dead
For all of Reform’s successes and Nigel Farage’s cries of a “truly historic shift in British politics,” this was no runaway victory for his party.
Sky News’ extrapolation from the results to estimate national share actually projected Reform’s support as being down on last year.
Farage has long threatened to replace the Conservatives. But that hasn’t quite happened yet. Kemi Badenoch’s party — still the official opposition in the U.K. — won Westminster council from Labour, nudged the party out of control in Wandsworth and managed to hold onto the Fareham area represented by one of Farage’s most high-profile defectors from the Tories, Suella Braverman.
There’s no doubt that Farage is the big winner of the day, but his opponents shouldn’t believe all is lost.