It's a deadly standoff between Starmer and the pretenders to his battered throne

After Labour's evisceration in the polls, the party needs to back its leader or sack him - but it will probably do neither

- Andrew Rawnsley

'Smashed, pulverised, crushed... other descriptions of Labour's performance are available.'

(Anthony Devlin/Getty)

A new dusk has broken, has it not? We began 2026 with Sir Keir Starmer reassuring his party that things were going to change. What he didn't tell them was that it would get even darker.

Smashed, pulverised, crushed. If you don't like these as descriptions of Labour's performance in the May elections, many others are available. Labour's leader in Wales plumped for “catastrophic” after she was evicted from her seat while her party was eviscerated in the most psychologically searing of the blows administered by the voters.

The heartland of heartlands - the Wales that sent Keir Hardie, Nye Bevan, Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock to parliament - has not only fallen to the nationalists. Labour has been rammed into a distant third by Reform. Labour is yet again sipping from the bitter cup of defeat in Scotland, setting up the SNP for a third decade of rule in Edinburgh. While the losses of council seats in England were not quite as apocalyptic as some forecasters had predicted, shedding well over half the number being defended is still brutal.