Keir Starmer has spent most of the past week in his happy place, being a global statesman and rubbing shoulders with fellow leaders.

The prime minister flew to the Middle East just hours after America and Iran agreed what has so far proven to be an uneasy ceasefire.

With Labour expected to suffer major losses in the elections on May 7, Starmer might have been tempted to remain in the world’s most dangerous hotspot until it’s all over.

The elections for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Senedd and a host of councils across England will uppermost in MPs’ minds as they return to Westminster on Monday after the Easter recess.

They will only be back for two weeks, however, before parliament is prorogued until the King’s Speech on May 13, by which time the full extent of Labour’s nightmare will be apparent.

“It’s going to be a fucking bloodbath,” one gloomy MP told HuffPost UK. ”I don’t see a world where you can broadcast those results before the watershed.”

“The focus is on rallying the troops over the next few weeks, there’s not a lot of thought about parliamentary business,” another backbencher said.

“Loads of colleagues in Scotland, Wales and across England just want to get through to May 8.”

The opinion polls are consistent and clear. Labour – and, to a lesser extent, the Tories – are going to have a horrific night.

The SNP will win again in Scotland, while Plaid Cymru are set to be the government in Wales for the first time since devolution.

In England, Labour are expected to lose between 1,500 and 2,000 seats as previously-solid councils fall to both Reform UK and the Greens.

One MP with elections in his patch said “it feels terminal on the doorstep”, with voters making clear their unhappiness with Labour’s performance in government so far.

In particular, the MP said, the party leadership have failed to appreciate the scale of the challenge posed to Labour by Zack Polanski’s Green Party.

“The trouble with Keir and his goons is they are analogue minded in a digital world,” they said. “It’s like we’ve ordered Tony Blair’s 1997 operation on Temu.

“If you’re in the middle of the road you get run over, and the Greens have forced us into the middle of the road by playing our favourite tunes, but better.

“Our attack lines about them wanting to legalise drugs and pull us out of Nato just don’t work, not least because Trump wants to leave Nato as well.

“That type of attack might have worked in the 90s, but it doesn’t work now.”

Nigel Farage unveiled his party’s local election slogan on Thursday: “Vote Reform. Get Starmer Out.”

He’s likely to be disappointed, however, with the PM’s position more secure than it has been in months. There is little indication that he faces an imminent leadership challenge, no matter how bad May 7 is for his party.

This is largely down to the war in Iran, with the PM widely seen to have got the big calls right.

Unlike Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, he did not rush to support the US and Israel’s decision to start bombing, even though it has shattered the previously-good relationship he had with Trump.

The president rarely misses an opportunity now to have a pop at the prime minister, who responded on Thursday by comparing the president to Vladimir Putin – an unthinkable situation just a few short weeks ago.

One Starmer ally said: “He’s in a good place, I think. Events in Iran and Trump’s outrageous social media posts have shown that he’s the statesman we need at this time and that cool heads need to prevail.

“He made the right call at the beginning of the war, and that is feeding into the domestic political debate. Voters are proactively mentioning Farage’s closeness to Trump on the doorsteps.”

The MP added: “I think Keir’s secure to the end of the year. How can you challenge the PM in the middle of an energy crisis, a war in the Middle East and a US administration coming out with bonkers statement on a daily basis?”

That analysis is not only confined to Starmer’s supporters. Even those who have long since made up their minds that the PM cannot lead Labour into the next election acknowledge that now is not the time for him to be removed.

“We’re all keen that nothing rocks the boat over the next three weeks,” an MP said. “We’re all just retreating into our own little foxholes and fighting our local battles.”

One MP said leadership hopefuls like Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting should keep their heads down until the full extent of Labour’s losses are known.

He said: “Doing something unhelpful now decreases your chances of becoming PM. There is nothing to be gained from causing trouble now ahead of the locals.

“Whatever your view on a change of leadership, if a contender starts surfacing and causes you to lose votes in your area, then you’re not going to back that contender in a ballot.”

One backbencher said Labour was currently in “the calm before the storm”.

May 7 will lead to “recriminations and backbiting”, the MP said, if not a challenge to Starmer’s position.

He said: “A lot of people will be asking why are Reform doing so well, why are we only polling at 18%, and what is the ceiling for Green support nationally.

“MPs who lose councillors in their patch will also be very worried about their own election chances. But the message needs to be that now is the time for cool heads.”

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