To think Starmer will be gone by the end of Friday? Or will it be Monday evening?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

Whoever you are voting for today, it's probably not Labour - they might loose 2,000 seats.

How long exactly will it be before he resigns?

Labour are stuck between appealing to the electorate or the markets.

Mn still has a higher amount particularly loyal to Starmer.

Plus Starmer claimed he alone could fight off Reform, clearly that’s been squashed.

Probably because its not clear that removing Starmer will solve all the problems and not really sure that there is anyone better out there to replace Starmer.

The country is difficult to govern at the moment. OK to be fair Starmer hasn't made it any easier on himself by getting wrapped up in scandals and making poor decisions.

But to me even if Starmer goes then the issues will remain and it is not clear anyone taking over would be able to deal with them, and would probably make them unpopular before the next election.

Agreed, but Egan's call for Starmer to step down is hardly a surprise. When she was elected late last year she promised to end support for the right wing of the Labour party and to review the relationship between the union and the party.

As one of Labour's biggest donors, Unison has influence but they are not in a position to force Starmer out.

The biggest worry for Labour supporters seems to be that that all those other Labour stars who might make a play for the premiership are completely shit and will ruin the country and that we will all regret it. Which, honestly, makes me wonder why they thought the party was ever fit for office in the first place.

That's your opinion.

I dislike reform and bit dismayed they've done well in my area - but they are not Trump - they are not the Republican party.

The US presidental system using executive orders has been an issue for decades - we have a very different system with it's owns strengths and weakens. It's like the argumnet we can't reform the NHS due to US lack of health care ignoring rest of the world - the big boogeyman argument.

We are very different from US - we are not a two party system as was clearly demonstrated in these elections and not a presidential system. It's not different cultural flavours it's whole different cultural dish.

Not directly no. But all the unions could apply pressure.

Unison member here - she's absolutely not speaking for me

She was elected gen secretary by a whole 4% of the membership, the vast majority of whom didn’t vote at all.

Yeah, that would be it (NOT)

Unions have demanded that Sir Keir Starmer resign in the wake of Labour’s disastrous local election results.

The bosses of Unison and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA) called on the Prime Minister to quit after his party lost hundreds of councillors and control of several councils.

Andrea Egan, the general secretary of Unison, Britain’s largest union, warned that Labour faced “oblivion” unless Sir Keir steps down.

“What must change is not just the leader but the entire approach: only a Labour Government which always puts the interests of workers before the wealthy can succeed,” she said.

Maryam Eslamdoust, general secretary of the TSSA, added: “Unions like the TSSA will not stand by in the wake of this electoral disaster and let Keir Starmer pave the way for a hard-Right government led by Nigel Farage.”

Another Corbynite this time elected with approx 6% of the membership’s votes. She has been calling for Starmer to resign since 2023.

I suspect Egan and Eslamdoust‘s positions are in greater peril than Starmer’s.

I was talking about the devolved government. Not Westminster seats.
Because that is what is being voted on today.

My point is more that we are underestimating how vulnerable we are to populism. It's not just us, it's all across the West.

I’m dismayed to hear a LP member on the news just now saying that they hadn’t explained achievements well enough. That is far from the only problem, and patronising to focus on it.

The crux of the matter is this: no Labour PM, whether Starmer, Rayner, Burnham or any other, will be able to get any material reform to the welfare budget past the back benches, or the unions - even if they wanted to

Accurately put, @Hallowedturf, and the same goes for responsible measures on law and order and immigration of the sort that moderates are calling for (I'm not talking about the headbangers of the far right)

The leadership know this perfectly well, so all that's left is pretence in the hope of grabbing a headline which sufficient people will be fooled by

Just maybe politicians could start listening to the electorate rather than looking down on them?

I'm all in favour of welfare reform. We should start with the triple lock.

and what about welfare payments to working age population?

Labour have now lost 685 Councillors with 50 councils still to declare (so we are 60% through the announcements)

Going to top 1,000

Biggest story will be the Greens and even bigger - Reform who could get 1500 seats.

And those who never paid in...

In your view, if they were to really listen to the electorate and then act on what they had heard, what policies do you think they would implement which they are not currently implementing?

And given that most political parties run focus groups ad nauseum to find out what the electorate think about things, why do you think it is that they aren't implementing those policies already?

Do you think perhaps it might sometimes be the case that what the electorate wants is simply not deliverable? E.g. very low taxes but fabulous public services etc.

Popularisim is always a threat - but you are not the only one who sees that.

Frankly it's not a reason to vote for a party that in my part of the UK has had 27 years of goverance and has left the place lagging behind other parts of UK in areas they control.

I refused to vote reform leaving me voting to my shock for a nationlist party and it was bloody hard to work out which party was the least worse - it's a shocking poltical state to find TBH but I'm not alone in that this set of elections or last ones.

If Labour wants to win stop blaming the electorate for not voting for them and do things that make the electorate keen to voting for them.

Here we've clearly decided after 27 years to see if change might be better for us and cries before we even seen what that actually means that the sky is falling down are just fucking irritating.

Reform getting in at council level may not be a bad thing - gives the areas electorate a chance to see if they can actually do anything or even stick around. Dmum council went Reform last lot of local elections- they've struggled to keep councillors in office and nothings really changed for better or worse and at some point such a poor record should catch up to them.

But an optimistic estimate was a minimum of 1200 Labour losses yesterday while you were predicting 75% so it’s not quite the bloodbath you anticipated, is it?

I repeat "Every problem the UK has now can be laid directly at the feet of Conservative governments and the numpties who voted for them". You ignored it because you can't refute it:

Failing privatised industries
Polluted waterways
The highest energy bills in Europe
The housing crisis
The NHS crisis
Failed social care
Failed mental health treatment
Spiralling national debt.

All right wingers do is bleat about tax and wish misfortune on their fellow citizens. Every damn time and every time the hard of thinking fall for it.

This is all bollocks. Sorry but it is.