RISHI SUNAK’S rocky premiership looked like it would survive disastrous local election results for the Tories across the country.

Victories in high-profile mayoral elections masked a haemorrhaging of up to 500 local councillors as the Conservative vote dropped by nearly 20 per cent.

Ben Houchen’s re-election as Tees Valley mayor and an anticipated win for Andy Street in the West Midlands may prove to be just enough good news for Mr Sunak to see off his Tory critics — for now.

But with Tory defeats including the new mayoralty for York and North Yorkshire, which covers the Prime Minister’s own Commons seat, and local authorities in true-blue West Sussex and Hampshire, the outlook remains dire for the party.

Labour also faced a crisis of its own, with evidence across the country of a serious loss of votes over its backing for Israel’s Gaza genocide, among Muslim voters in particular.

Likely defeat in the West Midlands, with the result expected over the weekend, was attributed to the loss of support in Muslim communities and led to an Islamophobia row.

Labour lost control of Oldham Council and was defeated in other seats in the north-west and Yorkshire, as well as losing ground to the Greens in Newcastle.

Overall, Labour’s gains, while impressive, accounted for only a part of Tory losses, which also included mass voter defections to the hard-right Reform Party.

And in the Blackpool South by-election, won by Labour on a 26 per cent swing, Reform very nearly pushed the Tories into third place.

Polling expert John Curtice said the Conservatives were on course “for one of the worst, if not the worst performance in local government elections for 40 years.”

Mr Sunak’s internal critics were on the warpath today. 

The leader of the pro-Boris Johnson Conservative Democratic Organisation, ex-MEP David Campbell-Bannerman, called on the PM to quit.

He said: “Enough of this disastrous, visionless, vacuous leadership. Rishi must go, and go now.

“If you don’t dump Sunak now the party is finished for at least a decade or more and the country is in danger under hard-left woke Labour.”

And hard-right MP Andrea Jenkyns claimed: “Rishi has now been told by the electorate: wake up, be Conservative or you lose.”

Chaotic former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng warned that there was no longer any such thing as a safe Tory seat.

Labour’s first-time gains included Rushmoor in Hampshire — home of the British Army in Aldershot — Milton Keynes and Adur in West Sussex.

It also won new East Midlands and North East mayoralties and councils in Norwich, Hartlepool and Thurrock.

These advances were offset by difficulties caused by Keir Starmer’s pro-Israel positioning, including his prolonged refusal to call for a Gaza ceasefire.

Independent councillors who quit the party over the issue in Blackburn were all re-elected.

And Labour lost seats in nearby Bolton, where council leader Nick Peel said “as a direct result of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine, many south Asian voters haven’t supported Labour or the Conservatives.”

The loss of overall control in Oldham was also attributed to the Gaza crisis, with councillors conceding that Palestine came up a lot on the doorstep.

MP George Galloway’s Workers Party won two seats in Rochdale, the town he represents in Parliament, as well as a seat in Halifax.

More sensationally, the Workers Party defeated the deputy leader of Manchester Council in Longsight ward, a result attributed both to Gaza and to local neglect.

Mr Galloway commented: “I said Keir Starmer would pay a high price for his betrayal on Palestine. Today is the start of that.”

Left MP Diane Abbott writes in the Star this weekend that Labour needs “an honest accounting of the loss of Oldham, and other seats over the issue of Gaza.”

Instead, the party was rocked by a row over an unnamed source that said Labour’s likely loss in the West Midlands was due to Hamas. 

This Islamophobic remark — unfortunately not untypical — was later disowned by Labour nationally.

A BBC survey suggested that Labour’s vote was down by 16 per cent in areas with a Muslim population, while support for the Greens was up 19 per cent.

Predicted national vote share by the BBC put Labour on 34 per cent, with the Tories on 25 per cent and the Lib Dems on 17 per cent — narrower margins than predicted by recent opinion polls.