Keir Starmer on the brink after elections hammering: Live updates

Gordon Brown is meeting with Sir Keir Starmer at Number 10 as part of the Prime Minister’s next steps plan.

The ex-Labour leader was seen exiting Downing Street this morning. Brown shook hands with the PM before walking away.

Starmer is also believed to have met with Harriet Harman, who he has appointed as his adviser on women and girls.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who has continued to attract speculation about his ambitions despite publicly denying plans for a leadership tilt, said the Prime Minister will ‘have my support’ in setting out how the Government will move forward on Monday.

But facing questions from reporters on Friday night as he attended the count for Redbridge Council, where Labour clung on to power, he declined to say whether he believed Sir Keir was the right person to lead the party into the next general election.

‘I’ll continue putting my shoulder to the wheel as the Health and Social Care Secretary, who’s getting the NHS back on its feet and making sure it’s fit for the future,’ he said.

Sir Keir Starmer has appointed former deputy leader Baroness Harriet Harman as his adviser on women and girls.

The move comes as he attempts to shore up his position following a bruising set of election results in England, Wales and Scotland.

Lady Harman will work with ministers on work to tackle violence against women and girls, improving job prospects and increasing representation in parliament and public life.

She will work with the head of the civil service to ‘drive a shift in culture’ across the civil service and ministerial offices, No 10 said.

Lady Harman will report directly to the Prime Minister in the unpaid part-time role.

By Elizabeth Ivens, Mail on Sunday reporter

Labour backbencher Debbie Abrahams said she believes the Prime Minister should ‘put the country first’ and if he could not get it right, she forecasted he would be ‘gone within months’.

The left wing MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, a former supporter of ex Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, said today: ‘I think it is a matter of months.

‘I think there needs to be a step change not just in our communications but in our culture and within the party and how that then ensures there is delivery in local areas and people can see that.’

The Labour Party suffered a catastrophic result in her region in north west England where it lost nine out of 12 seats in Oldham borough.

Ms Abraham told the BBC that when she was out in her constituency ‘the usual refrain is that ‘we like you Debbie but we have concerns about your leader’ and warned that the party’s failure to get it right as soon as they were elected was to blame.

The Conservatives and Reform must now form a pact to ‘unite the Right’ ahead of the next election to prevent a hard-Left government, a senior Tory has warned.

Analysis shows that if the local election results were transferred to a general election, Reform UK would fall well short of an overall majority in the Commons.

Tory grandee Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘What this shows is the need to reunite the Right.

‘Reform are doing extremely well in places that voted Leave. The Conservatives are showing they can still do well in less Brexity areas. If you combine the two you have an unstoppable force.

‘The alternative is that you have a general election where Reform are in the mid-20s, the Conservatives are in the low-20s and you end up with a governing coalition of the Left.’

An open-collared, stony-eyed Keir Starmer got in his self-denials early. As demolition day began, the PM insisted he was ‘not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos’.

Four times he did that telephone-tree thing of repeating a message, no matter what had just been said. He kept saying the results were ‘tough’, as if they were some slice of undercooked pork. That another person had cooked.

Responding to election losses is miserable for any politician. Such moments do give us voters fleeting vengeance on the boobies who govern us but the catharsis is better when the politicians show emotion.

Sir Keir just kept mechanically blurping, ‘I am not going to walk away’.

While the nasal knight was indoors at a Methodist hall in Ealing, surrounded by droopy bunting, Nigel Farage was on the far side of London in the sunshine, flanked by gurning Reformers. Behind them stood Havering town hall, built in 1937 in the international moderne style. It was, cried Mr Farage in his pint-of-gin voice, ‘under new management!’

A suntanned, blue-suited Farage clutched the signet ring on his left hand’s pinkie. There was much gassy laughter as he eyed his succulent prospects. Should Sir Keir quit? Farage hoped not. ‘He’s our best asset!’

Read the full sketch below:

Donald Trump has congratulated John Swinney on his election victory in Scotland.

The US president described him as a ‘good man’ who had worked ‘very hard’ with respect to tariff relief for ‘great Scottish whiskey’.

The SNP won 58 seats in Holyrood and are the largest party – but failed to gain a majority.

Mr Swinney was re-elected as First Minister of Scotland.

‘For most of my political career, I’ve been using a shotgun – blasting away just to raise awareness of an issue; to get people to vote on it. Winning seats was irrelevant,’ shouts Nigel Farage above the rising judder of rotor blades preparing for take-off. ‘Now, though, it’s time for rifles.’

And with that it’s lift-off as we head for Merseyside, where his Reform troops are in the process of overrunning several Labour citadels.

Reform and its leader have been absorbing an astonishing set of local election results since dawn – and these keep on coming as the day progresses.

Read Robert Hardman’s full column in the Daily Mail below:

Deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell said Andy Burnham had a ‘huge amount to offer’ the party.

But the Manchester Central MP insisted she did not want to see a challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.

Asked if Mr Burnham should be allowed to run for a Westminster seat she told BBC Radio 4’s Today:

I really respect and rate Andy. He’s a friend of mine.

He’s obviously, I work very closely with him here in Greater Manchester. I think he’s got a huge amount to offer. He’s very popular and he’s a great asset to the Labour Party.

And I want to see us using all of the talents that we have in the Labour Party, because this is a big, big, big challenge we’ve got on for the future of the country, let alone the future of the Labour Party.”

But she added:

I don’t want to see a leadership challenge that’s not how we operate in the Labour Party… We don’t do hostile takeovers in the Labour Party, it’s not what we’re about, it’s not what people want to see, it’s not what our members want to see.

The Green Party fell below its own expectations at its first real electoral test in a set of mixed results for Zack Polanski’s troupe of radical Leftists.

The party made gains in inner-city strongholds at local elections yet struggled to deliver the ‘Green wave’ of councillors ‘sweeping England and Wales’ Mr Polanski had predicted in March.

Where recent polls had the Greens winning 555 local council seats nationally from a base of 141, last night it looked like they might fall around 100 short of such a tally.

But they still tore chunks from the Labour vote to contribute to a nightmare for Sir Keir Starmer.

The Greens landed their first two mayoralties, took control of Norwich City Council and ousted the Labour leader of Camden Council in Sir Keir’s own Holborn and St Pancras constituency.

They also scooped up 31 seats directly from Labour in Waltham Forest, east London, landing their first council in the capital.

But, as an insurgent party with a sudden surge in support, they found translating momentum into seats difficult.

Deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell has said Sir Keir Starmer should stay in his position as Prime Minister.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today:

Thinking that setting out some kind of timetable would put to bed the issues of leadership, I think is actually the wrong conclusion here.

Because all that would do is fire the starting gun of a, quite honestly, very distracting and ongoing debate about leadership.