Britain's two main parties suffer heavy local election losses
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Britain's governing Labour party and main opposition Conservatives have suffered heavy losses as the populist right wing Reform surges ahead in early results from English local elections.
We look at what this means for the country's traditional party system and how long the current prime minister can last in light of these results.
Also in the programme: President Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is still in place despite a series of clashes in the Strait of Hormuz; we mark the 100th birthday of the documentary maker David Attenborough; and we'll look at how the war in Iran is causing a shortage of saffron in Italy.
(Photo shows the UK's prime minister Keir Starmer speaking at a meeting with Labour Party members in Ealing, West London on 8 May 2026. Credit: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsAff. |
| 0:11.1 | The BBC World Service, we're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:14.0 | I'm James Menendez. |
| 0:15.3 | And coming up, Russia prepares for its annual Victory Day parade |
| 0:18.8 | with no tanks, no ballistic missiles, |
| 0:21.4 | and no military hardware trundling through the center of Moscow. |
| 0:25.1 | Our tanks are busy right now. |
| 0:27.3 | We need them more on the battlefield than on the Red Square right now. |
| 0:33.6 | We'll have a report from our Russia editor, Steve Rosenberg. |
| 0:36.7 | That's in 15 minutes. |
| 0:38.5 | Also, the effects of the Iran War on the trade in saffron. We'll be hearing from an Italian chef |
| 0:43.6 | where many local dishes rely on Iranian saffron for their colour and their flavour. |
| 0:48.7 | In Italy, the problem is that in Italy we have limited production of saffron. |
| 0:57.3 | And we buy saffron from Iran, which is the world's largest production of saffron. I think about the 90% of the world saffron is produced |
| 1:05.4 | in Iran. More on that, coming up in about 20 minutes in this half hour. But we are going to |
| 1:10.3 | start today here in the UK, because people have been taking part in some potentially very significant local council elections in England and also elections to the national governments of Scotland and Wales. We'll explain what all those are in just a minute. But the big picture right now as the results start to come in is that Britain's governing |
| 1:27.8 | Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Kier Stama, is facing heavy losses. And the populist right-wing |
| 1:33.7 | reform party led by Nigel Farage, is making some big gains. And these are significant, because |
| 1:39.5 | in many people's eyes, it's the Prime Minister's job that's on the line, after months of pressure |
| 1:44.1 | over his performance. However, speaking a little earlier today, Kirstama insisted he wasn't going |
| 1:50.1 | anywhere. Let me be clear, these are really tough results. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. |
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