Morning Star Editorial: Political fragmentation deepens as Britain goes to the polls
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/political-fragmentation-deepens-britain-goes-polls
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage being interviewed by the media after an eve of poll photocall at College Green, Westminster, on the last day of campaigning ahead of the local elections on Thursday, May 6, 2026MILLIONS of votes will be cast on Thursday in Scotland and Wales in the election of these two nations’ devolved governments and in England a cross-section of communities will vote — in six places for regional mayors — and in 5,000 seats where the composition of 136 different councils are up for grabs.
This is the biggest test of electoral opinion since Keir Starmer took office on millions of votes fewer than won by Jeremy Corbyn.
The calamitous fall in Labour’s popularity is the main feature of these elections but we should not discount the scale of the Tory collapse.
You might think that the defection of much of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet to Reform UK would have given Kemi Badenoch the opportunity to recover something of the traditional Tory vote, such as it exists. This, at least would be an innovation but, like Labour, the Tories are no longer a credible party of a future government.
Reform UK is faltering with a certain sense that the Establishment is setting limits on its ambitions. The monopoly media is not so tolerant; opinion polls are less encouraging and the more Nigel Farage’s privately owned electoral vehicle resembles the Tory Party the fewer workers are prepared to swallow its fetishisation of the market and its hostility to public services.
Today the Trump connection plays badly even on the deluded right.
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/political-fragmentation-deepens-britain-goes-polls
Morning Star Editorial: Attention turns to Wales: Labour’s long-term control under threat
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/attention-turns-wales-labours-long-term-control-under-threat
Wales Green Party Leader Anthony Slaughter, Reform UK’s Dan Thomas, Welsh Labour Leader and First Minister Eluned Morgan, Plaid Cymru of leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, Welsh Conservative leader Darren Millar and Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader Jane Dodds
RARELY has Wales featured so prominently in all-Britain election coverage as today in the run-up to polling day on May 7. Certainly, it is difficult recall such media interest in any of the six general elections to the National Assembly of Wales and its successor, the Senedd, over the past quarter of a century.
The London-based mass media usually show little interest in Wales unless a gruesome murder, a royal visit or a sporting spectacle has attracted journalistic attention beyond the M25 bubble.
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What’s so different this time around? The big story is that the Labour Party is set to be replaced as the biggest electoral force in Wales for the first time in 100 years. The old certainty of a Labour victory (and most often a Labour landslide) is dying.
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Welsh Labour is suffering from over-familiarity and its all-too-supine relationship with Keir Starmer’s government at Westminster. Many thousands of habitual Labour voters in the south Wales valleys are likely to switch to Plaid Cymru, despite not yet sharing that party’s aspiration for Welsh independence from the UK. A smaller number may go Green, and many more probably won’t vote at all.
They don’t feel the change promised by Starmer’s party. They dislike his lack of honesty and integrity. Many are repelled by his refusal to condemn US-Israeli massacres of the innocent in Palestine, Iran and Lebanon.
Neither do they remember — unless forcefully reminded — of the achievements of Welsh Labour and Labour-Plaid coalition governments despite the lack of powers and resources at the disposal of the Welsh parliament: free NHS prescriptions, free hospital parking, free bus travel for the elderly, the reintroduction of student maintenance grants, free museum entry, primary school breakfast clubs, financial penalties for holiday home ownership, aid for the Welsh steel industry, nationalisations to invest in Cardiff-Wales Airport and Transport for Wales rolling stock, etc.
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/attention-turns-wales-labours-long-term-control-under-threat
Labour facing its ‘worst local election ever’
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-facing-its-worst-local-election-ever
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer departs 10 Downing Street, London, to attend Prime Minister’s Questions at the Houses of Parliament, April 15, 2026Polls show Labour facing meltdown in May elections for devolved parliaments and local authorities
LABOUR is facing a May meltdown in elections for devolved parliaments and local authorities, latest polling confirms.
The party is on course for wipeout in Wales, a setback in Scotland and evisceration across England, particularly in “red wall” districts in the Midlands and north.
The Greens and hard-right Reform are set to be the beneficiaries in England, with nationalist parties winning in Scotland and Wales.
If the results on May 7 bear out these predictions it will revive pressure on Labour MPs to act to end Sir Keir Starmer’s disastrous leadership of their party and the government.
James Johnson, of JL Partners, which conducted the detailed survey for the Telegraph, said the research pointed to “a major political earthquake” across Britain.
“It could be the worst local election ever for Labour in England, a collapse for the Conservatives in their historic Blue Wall heartlands, and a brutal third place for Starmer’s party in Wales,” he said.
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-facing-its-worst-local-election-ever
More than a fifth of UK’s ‘austerity children’ scarred by poverty, study says
Researchers say hardship is a direct legacy of welfare benefit cuts imposed by Tory governments in recent years
More than a fifth of all “austerity generation” British children have been scarred by poverty for at least half their childhood, a direct legacy of the welfare benefit cuts imposed by Conservative governments in recent years, research reveals.
The proportion of children born after 2013 who spent at least six of their first 11 years of life in hardship surged after ministers froze working age benefits levels and imposed policies such as the two-child limit, it found.
Austerity policies, which drastically shrank annual welfare spending by tens of billions a year and took thousands of pounds a year out of low-income family budgets, effectively pitched hundreds of thousands more children into sustained poverty.
The University of Oxford study said the austerity-era growth in children exposed to poverty for most of their formative years was a “significant social problem” that would cause long-term harms to their health, education and life chances.
The study’s co-author, Selçuk Bedük, said the post-2013 austerity cuts to welfare increased both the numbers of children experiencing poverty and the time they spent in it. As a consequence, long-term poverty was now a defining factor in the childhood of about 23% of British youngsters.
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Austerity cuts masterminded by the former Tory chancellor George Osborne and the ex-welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith included the benefit cap, the bedroom tax, the two-child benefit limit, cuts to the generosity of universal credit, and years of benefit rate freezes. By 2021, they had stripped about £37bn a year from welfare spending.
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Original article at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/apr/13/uk-austerity-children-scarred-poverty-study-conservatives