Alarm spreads among Labour MPs over future of Starmer leadership as party suffers string of high-profile defeats across England in local elections
- Elections 2021 live – latest news and reaction
The tension in Birmingham’s Utilita arena was palpable on Saturday as the results of the West Midlands mayoral election went down to the wire. There was a brief moment of shock at the count when first preference votes showed a win for Labour’s Liam Byrne. Some initially mistook it as the result for the whole West Midlands combined authority and declared Byrne the winner.
But the confusion was soon corrected. There would be no surprise triumph here for Labour. As the polls had predicted, it turned out to be a comfortable victory for the incumbent, the Tory former boss of John Lewis, Andy Street. Off the back of a hugely successful few days for the Tories, Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield, was in a buoyant mood at the count, rubbing salt into Labour wounds. “Andy has done very well indeed in the red wall seats,” he said. “He is a very attractive candidate.”
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