Category Archives: Welsh elections 2026

Plaid Cymru leader says he hopes to be made first minister as early as Tuesday

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Rhun ap Iowerth says he hopes his party’s programme for government will get backing from across the Senedd

The leader of Plaid Cymru is hoping to become Welsh first minister as early as Tuesday after his party won a historic victory in the Senedd elections, soundly beating Labour and holding off Reform UK.

Plaid fell short of winning a majority in the Welsh parliament but Rhun ap Iorwerth said on Sunday he hoped other parties would work with him and told UK Labour not to punish Wales over the result.

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Most Labour members think Starmer cannot revive party fortunes, poll finds

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Exclusive: Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham is preferred choice of new leader for 42% of those surveyed

The majority of Labour members say they do not believe Keir Starmer can turn around the party’s fortunes, while 45% say the prime minister should step down.

The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, was the first preference for 42% of members, who were asked to rank their preferred successor.

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Nigel Farage hails ‘historic shift in politics’ after Reform UK election gains

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Party has success in Labour and Tory heartland areas but one pollster says results suggest Reform may have peaked

Nigel Farage hailed sweeping election wins for Reform UK as a “historic shift in British politics” on a day when the populist party made gains at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives.

Reform made advances in heartland areas of both parties, clocking up substantial early results in the English local elections by taking control of Essex county council, Havering – its first London local authority – and Sunderland city council.

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Labour’s better than expected thrashing may allow Starmer to cling on in No 10

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Results are undoubtedly bad but expectations had been set even lower, and any potential challengers are quiet for now

As the local elections results rolled in, a trickle of voices were calling for Keir Starmer to quit – a couple of MPs, a trade union leader, and a Labour peer.

The numbers are undoubtedly bad for Labour, with Reform making sweeping gains across pro-Brexit heartlands in the north and Midlands. These could even be the party’s worst losses for 50 years, with more than 1,000 councillors gone and the potential loss of control of the Welsh parliament.

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Elections 2026 live: ‘I’m not going to walk away,’ says Starmer as Farage hails ‘historic shift in British politics’

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The Reform UK leader said Labour is being ‘wiped out by Reform in many of their traditional areas’ as results paint a bleak picture for the prime minister

We’re getting statements from some of the political parties now as we wait for results.

For the Conservatives, party chairman Kevin Hollinrake said:

We have run an energetic and positive campaign, showcasing that we have a clear plan to get Britain working again and that we have the team to deliver it... We know that so soon after a historic general election defeat and contesting wards won during the Party’s polling highs, that this will be a difficult set of elections for us. But we will continue to rebuild and to show the public that we have changed, to demonstrate that only this new Conservative party is a credible alternative.

People are deeply disappointed with a Labour government that has been too timid to fix the country, but they are also appalled by the rise of Reform and Nigel Farage’s Trump-style politics. While those on the extremes of the right and the left want to burn everything down, Liberal Democrats want to fix what’s broken. Every Liberal Democrat local champion elected today will fight tirelessly for the communities they serve.

I’ve travelled across England and Wales and I’m hearing the same everywhere I go – confidence that we will win more councillors than ever before. The news from the doorstep is that we will be taking seats from not just Labour but the Tories and Lib Dems too, from all across the country. Voters are responding to the fact that Greens are the only party taking the cost-of-living crisis seriously, with real plans to cut bills, reduce rents and provide genuinely affordable homes, as well as tackling the climate and nature crisis.

Throughout this election, we have heard a clear appetite for change. People want a government that will stand up for Wales and focus relentlessly on the key issues affecting their lives. People have told us they have been inspired by Rhun ap Iorwerth’s leadership and driven by a desire for a positive alternative to Reform UK’s chaos and division.

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Keir Starmer makes late pitch to voters turning to Greens and Reform

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As Labour faces record-breaking losses in Thursday’s local elections, prime minister says rivals are unfit to lead

Labour is braced for record-breaking losses in Thursday’s local elections in England, which could be decisive for Keir Starmer’s future as prime minister.

In a message to voters on Thursday, Starmer said Reform’s Nigel Farage and the Greens’ Zack Polanski were “not fit to meet this moment of great global instability” and that only Labour was putting the national interest first.

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Polanski says he is not ready to be PM, but might be in two years’ time – UK politics live

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Green leader also apologised for misrepresenting his work with the Red Cross, and defended party policy on drugs

Labour has criticised Zack Polanski for saying he was concerned about how the suspect in the Golders Green stabbings was treated when he was arrested by the police.

Referring to what Polanski said about this in his Today interview this morning (see 9.33am), a Labour party spokesperson said:

Our brave police ran towards a suspected terrorist and tackled him while he was still carrying a knife and before they could handcuff him.

The fact that Zack Polanski is still sympathising with this individual is utterly astounding. For the Green party leader to be litigating the case for the defence against the police shows whose side he is truly on.

The latest unemployment figures for February showed a fall, interest rates were expected to come down, the markets were pricing in a couple of cuts during the course of the year.

The truth is, with the effect of the Iran war, we can’t count on any of that at the moment. There is likely to be an effect on prices, which feeds through from energy costs, and there may well be labour market implications.

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Reform UK plan to set up migrant detention centres in Green-voting areas condemned by other parties – as it happened

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Nigel Farage’s party proposed to place detention centres in places that vote for Green council leaders or MPs

Keir Starmer has said that Europe has to face up to the fact that its alliance with the US is under strain.

He made the remark in public comments during the plenary session at the European Political Community summit in Yerevan in Armenia.

And both of those are impacting all of us in a very material way.

In the United Kingdom, if you look at the economic forecast now and compare it to the economic forecast just three or four months ago, they are in materially different places, and this is going to play out with our electorates in all of our countries.

Reform are now openly threatening voters and not only that they’re threatening them with a power they don’t actually have. This is absolutely pathetic. People across Scotland are proud of the fact that this is a welcoming country that shows solidarity to people who need it.

Reform are essentially saying ‘If you don’t vote the way we want you to, we will punish you’. I think the people of Scotland and voters across the UK are not going to take kindly to that kind of Donald Trumpesque threat.

Reform know that absolutely bombed last week. The only thing they’ve got to move on to are open threats, not against the Greens but against voters across the country. It’s really quite sinister. This is exactly the kind of politics you see in Donald Trump’s America. People across Scotland are going to reject that on Thursday.

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Labour MP calls for Starmer’s resignation to end ‘psychodrama’ – UK politics live

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Jonathan Brash says ‘own goals’ are distracting from Labour’s achievements

UK inflation accelerated to 3.3% in March after the Iran war triggered the biggest jump in fuel prices for more than three years, Richard Partington reports.

Today the Liberal Democrats staged a photocall to publicise their line about this being “Trumpflation”. Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson, said:

People across our country have been struggling for years with a devastating cost-of-living crisis and Donald Trump’s idiotic war in Iran has added to it. The cost of fuel is soaring, mortgage rates are rising and fixed energy deals are already going up by hundreds of pounds.

But what is utterly inexcusable is that there are politicians in this country - Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch - who are happy to cheerlead Donald Trump as he hikes people’s bills. All the while this Labour government promised to fix the country but instead we’ve got political Groundhog Day: yet more sleaze and scandal.

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