The PM's defeat comes down to just 5,000 seats. He cannot even go out with a bang

Ann Widdecombe
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:25:48 +0000
Membership

Boris Johnson had a huge majority, but that did not save him from being referred to the Committee on Standards and Privileges for allegedly misleading the House.

Keir Starmer has an even larger majority and has avoided the same fate, but that does not mean he is off the hook. Far from it. Next Thursday, an exasperated Britain goes to the polls in local elections and is likely to give Labour an almighty thumping.

I know from long and sometimes bitter experience that nothing upsets loyal party members more than the troops standing at action stations in the country while the officers brawl in the mess.

And that is exactly what has been happening with the Parliamentary Labour Party, as it did for years with an increasingly dysfunctional Tory Party.

All over the country, hard-working Labour councillors have been doing their duty and are now about to lose their seats because their high command is at sixes and sevens and their PM is among the worst in living memory.

They will be furious, and they will want a reckoning. The only tug on the reins in the opposite direction is the gaping hole where an obvious successor should be.

It is all good news for Reform and also for the Greens, whose policies as yet have failed to frighten the horses because most people have yet to focus on them.

Historically, if the nation was fed up with the mess being created by Labour, it reasoned that it was time to hand over to the Opposition, but it is only two years since the Tories were making their own mess and producing five leaders in fourteen years.

That is why there is a genuine yearning for something new. It happens about every hundred years in this country ( a century ago, in 1924, we had our first ever Labour Government).

Last weekend, Reform put on a big event in Torquay. 186 people turned up, paying for their dinner, contributing to the raffle and auction and buying Matt Goodwin’s book.

Everybody I talked to had been out canvassing, and it reminded me of the Tories in their Thatcher heyday. Determination and optimism were in the very air.

The opposite is now true of Labour. Dejection abounds, and the question is not whether there will be a rout on May 7th but only how sizeable that rout will be.

The speculation around Starmer’s leadership will not go away, and until the King landed in the USA, it was the only story in town.

That visit will not help Starmer either because every time there is a comment that the King is healing the special relationship, the natural inference will be that it was Starmer who broke it or who, at least, did not know how to limit the damage.

I do not suppose anybody blames Starmer for our having only one measly ship to respond to an attack on our base in Cyprus, but the lack of a clear policy now to rebuild our defences is firmly on his doorstep.

The media love a scandal, and Mandelson has certainly obliged. Nearly 30 years ago, Mandelson was an eager architect of New Labour and a resounding victory. Today, he is the reluctant architect of what could be Labour’s terminal defeat.

The opposite is now true of Labour. Dejection abounds, and the question is not whether there will be a rout on May 7th but only how sizeable that rout will be.

The speculation around Starmer’s leadership will not go away, and until the King landed in the USA, it was the only story in town.