A comprehensive new MRP poll of 15,000 people suggests that a host of Labour cabinet ministers would lose their seats if a general election were held today – while Labour MPs are privately describing the May 7 elections as a “fucking bloodbath” and the party is urgently mobilising MPs to campaign in London to stop a Green surge that threatens to cost it major councils in the capital.
The More in Common study suggests Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting and Yvette Cooper are among those who could be kicked out by voters at the next election. Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner would also lose her seat, as would John Healey, Ed Miliband, Hilary Benn, Lisa Nandy, Pat McFadden, Jonathan Reynolds and Darren Jones.
Although Keir Starmer would be re-elected in the traditionally safe Labour seat of Holborn and St Pancras, his majority would be slashed. Reform would win a staggering 324 seats – just short of an overall Commons majority – while the Greens would see their number of MPs quadruple to 21. Labour would plummet from 411 seats to just 102, with the Tories also falling to 81, the Lib Dems on 62 and the SNP on 26.
The scale of what May 7 could bring
The MRP findings – described as the most accurate form of polling because they model individual constituency results based on local demographic data – arrive less than a month before voters in England, Scotland and Wales go to the polls on May 7 for elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd and a host of English councils.
The mood inside the Labour Party about what is coming is bleak. One Labour MP told HuffPost UK: “It’s going to be a fucking bloodbath. I don’t see a world where you can broadcast those results before the watershed.”
“The focus is on rallying the troops over the next few weeks, there’s not a lot of thought about parliamentary business,” another backbencher said. “Loads of colleagues in Scotland, Wales and across England just want to get through to May 8.”
The opinion polls are consistent and clear. Labour – and, to a lesser extent, the Tories – are going to have a horrific night. One MP with elections in his patch said “it feels terminal on the doorstep,” with voters making clear their unhappiness with Labour’s performance in government so far.
In England, Labour is expected to lose between 1,500 and 2,000 council seats, with previously solid councils falling to both Reform UK and the Greens. In Scotland, the SNP is forecast to win again – potentially with an outright majority – while Plaid Cymru is set to form the government in Wales for the first time since devolution began.
The Green threat Labour didn’t see coming
In particular, Labour MPs have admitted that the party leadership has failed to appreciate the scale of the challenge posed by Zack Polanski’s Green Party.
One MP said: “The trouble with Keir and his goons is they are analogue minded in a digital world. It’s like we’ve ordered Tony Blair’s 1997 operation on Temu. If you’re in the middle of the road you get run over, and the Greens have forced us into the middle of the road by playing our favourite tunes, but better.”
He added: “Our attack lines about them wanting to legalise drugs and pull us out of Nato just don’t work, not least because Trump wants to leave Nato as well. That type of attack might have worked in the 90s, but it doesn’t work now.”
The Green threat to Labour is most acute in London. Labour chair Anna Turley has written to the party’s 2024 intake of MPs urging them to campaign in London in the final weeks before the elections. Her message, seen by HuffPost UK, reads: “Back to London next week! Let’s make our time there really count in the last few weeks of the campaign! Every London council seat is up for election in May. I know you’re all doing great work across the country but let’s use our time in the big smoke to help our Labour family there.”
One Labour MP told HuffPost UK that the message showed “things must be bad” for the party in the capital. Among the Labour-run authorities thought to be vulnerable to a Green takeover are Islington, Lambeth, Southwark and Hackney.
A Green Party spokesman responded: “It’s not the 2024 intake of Labour MPs people in London want to see on their doorsteps, it’s help with the affordability crisis and real affordable housing. People are turning to the Greens because they see a real alternative to failing Labour councils.”
Why Starmer is safe – for now
Nigel Farage unveiled his party’s local election slogan on Thursday: “Vote Reform. Get Starmer Out.” He is likely to be disappointed, however, with the PM’s position more secure than it has been in months despite the scale of what is coming on May 7.
There is little indication that Starmer faces an imminent leadership challenge, and the reasons for that are somewhat counterintuitive. The Iran war – which has damaged the UK’s relationship with Washington and contributed to rising energy bills – has simultaneously strengthened Starmer’s personal standing. Unlike Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, he did not rush to support the US and Israel’s decision to start bombing. He resisted Trump’s demands to commit British forces to offensive operations. He kept a clear head while being publicly compared to Neville Chamberlain and mocked in an SNL skit shared by the US president.
One Starmer ally said: “He’s in a good place, I think. Events in Iran and Trump’s outrageous social media posts have shown that he’s the statesman we need at this time and that cool heads need to prevail. He made the right call at the beginning of the war, and that is feeding into the domestic political debate. Voters are proactively mentioning Farage’s closeness to Trump on the doorsteps.”
Even those who have long since made up their minds that Starmer cannot lead Labour into the next election acknowledge that now is not the time for a change. “We’re all keen that nothing rocks the boat over the next three weeks,” one MP said. “We’re all just retreating into our own little foxholes and fighting our local battles.”
One MP said leadership hopefuls like Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting should keep their heads down until the full extent of Labour’s losses are known. He said: “Doing something unhelpful now decreases your chances of becoming PM. Whatever your view on a change of leadership, if a contender starts surfacing and causes you to lose votes in your area, then you’re not going to back that contender in a ballot.”
The calm before the storm
One backbencher described Labour as currently being in “the calm before the storm.” May 7 will lead to “recriminations and backbiting,” the MP said, if not an immediate challenge to Starmer’s position.
He said: “A lot of people will be asking why are Reform doing so well, why are we only polling at 18%, and what is the ceiling for Green support nationally. MPs who lose councillors in their patch will also be very worried about their own election chances.”
More in Common’s latest MRP modelling shows Labour could lose 246 seats at a general election, including 153 to Reform UK and 64 to the Conservatives. Progressive defections could cost Labour a further 68 seats, as swings to the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party enable Reform, Conservatives and the SNP to pick up seats the party might otherwise hold.
The local elections on May 7 will not change that trajectory overnight. But they will clarify it considerably – and may accelerate the conversation about what Labour needs to do, and who Labour needs to lead it, if it wants to avoid making the MRP projections a reality at the next general election.
For now, the message from almost every corner of the parliamentary party is the same: hold the line, get through May 8, then reckon with what the results mean.
The reckoning, when it comes, is likely to be significant.
You may also like: The media won’t tell you this – but the Green Party is now a serious force in British politics
Leave a Reply