Parachuting Burnham into London seat may be Labour's last chance after Starmer election crushing by Reform and Greens

Labour was down more than 1,050, losing control of all three former Tory “crown jewel” boroughs of Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet, which it won in 2022.

The extent of Reform’s victories was striking, including in Wigan, Hartlepool, Tameside, Dudley, Southampton, Plymouth and Redditch.

At the same time, the Greens stormed into the capital, winning in Hackney, Lewisham and Waltham Forest.

As disastrous result after disastrous result was declared for Labour, the calls for Sir Keir Starmer to go grew.

The roll-call of Labour defeats was in fact so bad that Andy Burnham’s hopes of finding a safe seat in the North West for another by-election bid to return to Parliament appeared to be going up in smoke.

Only in London was Reform not rampaging through previous Labour strongholds.

It gained its first council in the capital, Havering, from the local residents’ group, but failed to win Bexley or Bromley when up against the Tories, or Barking and Dagenham from Labour.

So Operation "King of the North”, if it happens, might have to see a London MP stepping aside, and most probably going to the Lords, to allow the Greater Manchester Mayor a safe shot at a Commons comeback.

How Mr Burnham would square this with Manchester voters is yet to be seen.

But Left-leaning voters in the capital who voted for the Greens may well return to Labour to stop Nigel Farage gaining the keys to No10.

Mr Burnham, unlike former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting, could find it easier to appeal to both Labour wings and unite the party as it seeks to claw its way out of the electoral abyss.

Veteran Left-wing MP John McDonnell, who represents Hayes and Harlington, was urging the party to avoid a civil war, in the hope that Sir Keir may decide to step down in a bloodless transition.

But the Prime Minister was vowing to fight on, saying he took “responsibility” for Labour’s election pummeling.

In London, Labour nearly won Wandsworth which could have offered the embattled party a crumb of comfort but it lost a key ward by just 15 votes.

Labour gained 28 councillors to the Tories 29, with one independent.

A short distance from Clapham Junction, in the St Mary’s ward, Conservative Zarah Wiles was elected with 1,681 votes, beating Labour’s Simon Grayson, on 1,666.

Just like in professional sport, the margins between jubilant victory or crushing defeat can be extremely small under the winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post electoral system.

There are simply no prizes for coming second.

Holding Westminster or Wandsworth would have meant Sir Keir could have pointed to a rare beacon of success in a sea of disastrous results as Mr Farage’s Reform UK stormed to victories across England’s regions.

Mr Farage said the results showed a “truly historic shift in British politics”, away from the old era of Labour and Conservative domination, and suggested Reform was on course for a general election victory.

The success of the Greens was a slower burn as the councils where they hoped to make the biggest gains declared on Friday afternoon.

Their London breakthrough came first by Zoe Garbett being elected Mayor of Hackney, then Liam Shrivastava winning the mayoral contest in Lewisham, followed by the party gaining its first council ever in the capital, Waltham Forest.

The Greens won more councillors in a string of London boroughs and were up 374 nationwide.

Explaining the results, leading polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice, pointed back a decade to the 2016 Brexit referendum, when London voted by 60% to Remain in the EU.

“Places where more than 60% of people voted for Brexit, Reform on average are running at 40%,” he told BBC radio.

“In places where fewer than 40% voted for Brexit, Reform were averaging just 10%.

“In the case of the Greens, the pattern is exactly the opposite.”

The Tories held onto the Croydon mayoralty but lost Essex County Council to Reform and were down 472 councillors across England.

The Liberal Democrats were up 91 seats across the country but failed to win their target borough of Merton, south-west London, from Labour.

Away from London, Sir Keir was hit by further heavy losses in the contests for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd.

Cabinet ministers rallied around him, with Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, urging his party not to play “pass the parcel” with the leadership.

But after such dire results for Labour the Prime Minister’s future was hanging in the balance.