United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to stay in office and take action on "the big challenges facing the country" after his Labour Party suffered huge losses in last week's local elections, with voter unhappiness at his leadership being identified as a vital factor.

Local elections have no effect on the makeup of the national Parliament, but the results, coming after nearly two years of Labour rule, are a clear expression of nationwide sentiment toward the central government.

Across England, hundreds of Labour councilors lost their seats. In elections for the Welsh Parliament, known as the Senedd, the party suffered its worst-ever results. In Scotland too, it performed poorly, prompting Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar to repeat his call, first made in February, for Starmer to step down.

In a speech to Labour members of Parliament on Monday, Starmer said: "We lost some brilliant Labour representatives. That hurts. And it should hurt. I get it. I feel it. And I take responsibility."

Starmer also acknowledged that he had "doubters" and "some people are frustrated with me … I know I need to prove them wrong and I will".

The government would "face up to the big challenges" and "make the big arguments" to try and persuade voters that theirs was the best way forward, he said.

He also picked out the populist policies of the Green Party and Reform UK, which enjoyed significant success in the local elections, saying: "We're battling the despair on which they play, despair that they exploit and amplify. And so analysis matters, argument matters, but so too does emotion ... people need hope."

One Labour member, Paula Barker, had told the BBC she would make a symbolic challenge to Starmer's leadership, adding that the country "had stopped listening (to him) … it's becoming increasingly clear that our Labour government can no longer succeed if we have Keir at the helm", but has since moderated her stance.

Now she says she will sound out support for encouraging him to step aside and for a successor to be picked in the fall, although she declined to say who that should be.

The person regarded as Starmer's most serious rival, Andy Burnham, who stood as a candidate to be Labour leader in 2015, is currently not a member of Parliament, having quit Westminster in 2017 to seek election as mayor of Greater Manchester, a post in which he is serving his third term.