LABOUR faced a chorus of calls for a complete change in direction from its affiliated unions today — while one called on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to resign.

Unions said the party’s third-place defeat to the Greens and Reform in Gorton and Denton should be a wake-up call.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “If Labour needed any further wake up calls — this is clearly one. 

“Labour need to now ditch the gimmicks and get back to being Labour — not new, not one that plays games, but real Labour.

“Stop listening to your rich mates and start listening to everyday people.”

“Labour’s entire strategy of framing politics as ‘it’s us v Reform’… has now been exposed as a fundamentally flawed and unserious strategy,” Fire Brigades Union general secretary Steve Wright warned.

“If the government does not change course immediately, it will face heavy losses in the May elections, and at that point, the political consequences for Keir Starmer will become unavoidable.

“The Labour Party needs to listen to the people, not Parliament.”

Andrea Egan, leader of Britain’s biggest union Unison, said that the Greens won because traditional Labour voters “want to see progressive values robustly defended against the far-right, not gleefully abandoned.

“A Labour government should be standing up for workers, defending migrants and refugees, and taking the fight to Nigel Farage rather than letting him set the agenda.

“Under Keir Starmer the party is failing on every count, leaving the Greens to fill the vacuum.

“Cosying up to the rich and powerful, and protecting their interests whilst attacking ordinary working people and the left has singularly failed.”

Transport union TSSA general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust called for the PM to resign.

“It’s clear that the disastrous lurch to the right under Keir Starmer is haemorrhaging Labour votes to the Greens,” she said.

“There’s an urgent need for a change in leadership, and Keir must announce his departure immediately.”

Daniel Kebede, leader of the unaffiliated National Education Union, said the Greens had offered voters “clear alternatives to a broken system” and their leader Zack Polanski had shown he was serious.

“If Labour fails to deliver real change, it will lose further ground and create more space for the politics of division advanced by Reform UK and Nigel Farage,” he added.