Winners, losers and a PM on the brink - what to expect in next week's elections

I promise this will not be a piece about whether or not the election results will give the Prime Minister his metaphorical P45. Not a huge amount has changed since I wrote about the level of doom last month.

Unless you've been living on another planet, you'll have heard or read plenty of talk, and it's serious, about whether or not Labour MPs are going to move against the prime minister.

It's grave enough for Starmer's allies to be getting their lines out early - striking a defiant tone, telling me this morning he'll "accept no deals, no pacts, no timetables, and will get on with being PM".

"Keir is on the international stage focusing on ensuring that Trump doesn't wipe out the hard-fought progress the government has made on the cost of living crisis," they told me. "He isn't going to spend months talking to the membership when the country needs him to lead it."

The message is clear to his MPs and restless ministers - try if you like, but I'll fight you to stay.

Starmer's camp is overtly rejecting any notion that he might, as Theresa May was forced to do, put a sell-by date on his time in No 10. They gave this warning, specifically targeted at Angela Rayner: "Everyone knows that a leader with a public exit date has no power. It would be very surprising if a politician as accomplished as Angela didn't also realise that. Any deal would do more chaos in the country and the party plunged into eternal debate."

In seven days' time, will we be in the middle of a coup against Starmer? There's a six-word answer that suffices until this time next week - we might, but we don't know - although I might indulge you in some of the wildest suggestions a bit later on.

Instead, let's look at what the benchmarks might be for all of the UK political parties who are being judged on Thursday, with a little nudge on where that could leave them in the aftermath - because, perish the thought, these elections are not all about No 10.

Reform has been leading the UK-wide polls for more than a year now, consistently. Their popularity seems to have steadied since 2025 rather than zoomed up - but given their number-one position, they ought to, and should, do extremely well.

One party insider tells me they should end up with seat gains of at least four figures in local councils, comfortably winning at least a thousand council seats in England. Some projections put them well over that, scooping up at least 1,500 out of the 5,000 or so that are being contested. But geography also matters.

Reform is highly likely to win the most seats in England, as they did in last year's elections. But the party has been piling into Scotland and Wales too, and they want to make sure they are in either first or second place in both of those national elections.

If they are, expect them to make the case loudly that they are not just the most popular party in England, but that they have replaced the Conservatives as the natural party of the right, and become Labour's main opposition around Britain. Nigel Farage may have been around for a long time, but if voters put his party in that position next week, that's a major political moment.

This time last year, the established parties had hoped that once Reform actually had the responsibility for running the local councils, they'd be somehow found out, and their appeal might fade. It doesn't look like voters will make that happen in this election.

For the Greens, it's the first national test of whether Zack Polanski's exuberance and knack for grabbing headlines translates into actual power. He can be confident they'll add seats. There is a particular opportunity to eat into Labour's vote in London, which would spook the more than 50 Labour MPs there.

As with all the parties, even the most expert political pundits are guessing at the numbers of seats the Greens are likely to win, but given their surge in the polls, gaining at least 500 would be a decent ball park. To truly expand their place on the map, though, the Greens would love not just to pile up the number of seats but to take control of individual councils in London. Number crunchers suggest they have a chance of taking a council or two, and voters could put some Green mayors into office, perhaps in east London's Hackney.

But there are nerves in Green circles, jangled in the last couple of days since the attack in Golders Green, that Polanski's blunter politics might alienate some traditional Green voters just as they attract other new ones.