Voters punish Starmer as Labour LOSE 20 council seats since General Election - but who won them?

The Conservatives have been the main beneficiaries winning 16 seats, whilst Reform UK and the Green Party have won three each.

Those three beneficiaries have all seen bumps in their vote share, with Reform enjoying the biggest at 5.8 per cent, followed by the Liberal Democrats (up 3.1 per cent) and the Tories (up 1.2 per cent).

This comes after a damning poll by respected pollsters MoreInCommon found the Conservatives were polling at 29 per cent nationally, two points ahead of Labour on 27 per cent.

It also recorded Reform polling 19 per cent, eight percentage points ahead of the Liberal Democrats, despite the fact Ed Davey’s party has 72 MPs compared to Reform’s five.

The picture was particularly bleak for Sir Keir Starmer in Wales where the Conservatives polled 45 per cent of the vote, compared to Labour’s 26.

This despite the fact five months have not even passed since the Conservatives were wiped out at the General Election in Wales, losing all of their MPs to Labour or Plaid Cymru.

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Labour’s woes at the ballot box are a result of several unpopular decisions by Labour’s Westminster government including cutting winter fuel payments, capping farmers’ inheritance tax reliefs and rows over extensive donations and politicisation of the civil service.

This goes without mentioning the Sue Gray fiasco, surrendering the Chagos Islands, Reeves’ biggest tax raising budget in history and Ed Miliband's eco-energy crusade.

All these moves have seen Keir Starmer’s popularity rating fall in record speed, from +11 before the election to -38 this week.

Commentators have been highlighting how despite winning a thumping majority at the General Election, Labour’s support is shallow in many places.

The party won one of the biggest majorities in UK political history but with the lowest share of the vote for a winning party in modern times.

Political analyst David Cowling said: “You would expect a governing party to take a bit of a hit after a general election, but certainly not as immediate nor as drastic as this.

“This is extraordinary to me — we’d expect Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Greens to be pecking at the corpse of the Conservative party and stripping it bare.”

Another 12 council elections are being held today, with Labour defending nine.

The Tories are challenging in all of them, while Reform and the Greens are fielding candidates in all but one.