UK PM says he won’t resign after local elections defeat
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Britain’s Labour Party has suffered a historic defeat in local elections, with the right-wing Reform UK making big gains. Despite the loss, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says he will not step down. We get reaction to the results from both a Labour MP and a Reform politician.
Also in the programme: why did Saudi Arabia prevent the US from using Saudi airspace and bases to launch operations to try to reopen the Strait of Hormuz? And on the 100th birthday of the naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, we hear about the impact Sir David has had on the world.
(Photo: Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a visit to south London, 7th May 2026. Credit: Ben Whitley/PA Wire)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:10.0 | Hello, welcome. It's the BBC World Service. The programme is Newsour. I'm Paul Henley. We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:17.3 | First up today, the British Prime Minister, Kirstama, has insisted he will lead |
| 0:22.5 | his Labour Party into the next general election, despite a damaging night in England's local |
| 0:28.5 | elections. Labour has so far lost hundreds of seats and lost control of several councils. |
| 0:34.6 | The big winner in England has been the right-wing populist reform UK. |
| 0:39.6 | There have been good results for the Green Party, too, especially in London. |
| 0:43.6 | The leader of reform, Nigel Farage, said his party had changed the political landscape of the country. |
| 0:49.5 | If you believe that Britain is broken, that it needs fundamental change in reform, then we're the guys out there saying it. |
| 0:57.3 | What I think is really interesting is the old idea that a party is on the right and it attracts votes in a certain area, |
| 1:03.3 | or it's on the left, and for socio-economic reasons, it attracts votes in that area. |
| 1:09.1 | We've just blown that apart overnight. In Wales and in Scotland, there were votes for that area. We've just blown that apart overnight. |
| 1:11.7 | In Wales and in Scotland there were votes for the national parliaments there. |
| 1:16.1 | Our political correspondent is Rob Watson. |
| 1:18.8 | How bad did he think this was for Labour? |
| 1:21.7 | Oh, it's catastrophic, really. |
| 1:23.6 | And there are some inside the governing Labour Party |
| 1:26.1 | who think this is an existential threat. |
| 1:28.7 | And the reason why they say that is that they look at the way it's been put is that Labour Party is losing to everyone, everywhere. |
| 1:36.2 | Let me break that down a bit. |
| 1:37.7 | It means that Labor has been losing in every part of the country and two different parties. |
| 1:44.0 | And essentially what worries those inside the Labour Party is that they're losing their |
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