Labour Party
UK governing party since 2024; now led by PM Andy Burnham after Starmer's June resignation.
Labour, now led by PM Andy Burnham after Starmer's June resignation, took its first national poll lead over Reform UK since March 2025 on 27 July and won Greater Manchester's mayoralty on 30 July under the restored Supplementary Vote.
Last refreshed: 3 August 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Can Andy Burnham reverse Labour's slide before council losses turn into a general election rout?
Timeline for Labour Party
Mentioned in: Reform up 3.1 points, out of St Neots
UK Local Elections 2026Gained the Penistone East ward from Reform UK
UK Local Elections 2026: Labour takes Penistone East from ReformLost Harraby South, a ward it had held since at least 2022
UK Local Elections 2026: Reform gains Harraby South from LabourMentioned in: Lennon is off the Scottish Labour ballot
UK Local Elections 2026Mentioned in: Farage wins Clacton back by 12,784 votes
UK Local Elections 2026Background
The Labour Party was founded in 1900 as the political voice of the British trade union movement, going on to establish the NHS in 1948 and the welfare state. Under Sir Keir Starmer it won a substantial Commons majority in July 2024 with 411 seats.
By May 2026 the party faced an incumbency crisis without modern precedent, its national polling and local election performance both deteriorating sharply, a slide covered in detail in the storylines below. Starmer resigned as leader and prime minister on 22 June 2026, and Andy Burnham took office as his successor on 20 July, becoming the first Labour prime minister installed without a members' ballot since Gordon Brown in 2007.
The change in leadership has begun to show in the party's electoral fortunes but has not yet resolved the underlying question: national polling remains split on whether a genuine recovery is under way, and a Scottish leadership succession is running alongside it after Anas Sarwar's July resignation.
Its post-Burnham bounce starts to firm
The first polls taken after Andy Burnham became prime minister disagreed sharply on Labour's recovery. Deltapoll's 17-20 July survey put the party up eight points to 28%, level with Reform UK, while YouGov's poll two days later showed barely any shift, with Labour on 20% against Reform's 23%.
A week later More in Common's 24-27 July poll gave Labour its first outright lead over Reform since March 2025, 28% to 24%, though YouGov's own tracker still had the two tied at 22% each, so pollsters remain split on how real the shift is. Bev Craig's Labour win in Greater Manchester's 30 July mayoral contest, its first ever to need a second round, is the first ballot-box evidence for the party since Burnham took office.
The party changed leader without a vote
Labour's leadership crisis ran from Wes Streeting's Cabinet resignation on 14 May 2026 through Keir Starmer's own resignation on 22 June, four days after Andy Burnham narrowly held the Makerfield by-election, to Burnham's confirmation as leader at a 17 July special conference without a single member casting a vote.
Burnham completed his cabinet by 23 July, installing John Healey as Chancellor, Ed Miliband as Foreign Secretary and Angela Rayner as Housing Secretary, while Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and Peter Kyle Left government entirely, a sharper break with the Starmer era than a routine reshuffle. The party's Scottish wing has since had its own succession forced on it: Anas Sarwar quit as Scottish Labour leader on 22 July for a peerage and a UK trade minister post, with Monica Lennon declaring for a contest due to report on 19 September.
Its own local vote keeps falling
Labour's local base kept eroding even as national leadership changed hands: the party collapsed to 5.2% in the 16 July Old Catton by-election in Norfolk and lost Dereham Toftwood and Fletton and Woodston outright on the same day, with Reform UK holding second place in both.
Three council losses in a single day, on top of Reform's own reversal at Old Catton, point to weakness that runs well beyond what the national polls alone had been showing.