The mood remained upbeat as the party faithful gathered in Leicester. But with defeated councillors counting the cost of voter anger, is the leader serving his last few weeks?

‘If Trump can get in, if Brexit can happen, then why can’t Labour win?’

A defiant Jeremy Corbyn told a rally of cheering activists on Saturday that he was still “fighting to win” the 8 June general election – despite admitting that Thursday’s mauling for Labour in local council elections had left the party with a mountain to climb.

As the faithful gathered in a function room inside the Leicester Tigers’ rugby stadium, most seemed upbeat, even before he arrived with a mission to revive morale. Many dismissed the local election losses as a poor guide to next month’s general election while others said Corbyn’s emphasis on policy would cut through to voters in the end. By 12.30pm it was standing room only, with the capacity of 800 reached 30 minutes before the leader was due on stage.

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At 1.34pm Corbyn finally entered, introduced as the “future prime minister of the UK”. The crowd stood, the applause grew louder, and chants of “Corbyn! Corbyn!” rang out. Corbyn opened by hailing successes for Labour in Manchester, Liverpool, Wales and Doncaster but recognised that “too many fantastic councillors who work tirelessly for their communities lost their seats”.

The next five weeks, he said, would be tough. “The local election results yesterday leave us in no doubt about the scale of our challenge. We know this is no small task – it is a challenge on a historic scale. But we, the whole Labour movement and the British people, can’t afford not to seize our moment.”

Defeated Labour council leaders had identified Corbyn as one of the reasons why the party lost around 400 council seats and failed to win mayoral elections in its West Midlands and Tees Valley heartlands. Labour also ceded control of a string of councils including Derbyshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Northumberland and Glasgow.

But in this Leicester hall, no one doubted the leader. Corbyn said he was fighting to win “not because I yearn for the trappings of Downing Street office but because I want a better Britain”.

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Describing Theresa May as a leader happy to run a “country for the rich”, he added: “Don’t wake up to celebrations from the tax cheats, the press barons, the greedy bankers, Philip Green, Southern Rail directors and crooked bankers. We have five weeks to ruin their party.”

The audience loved it. “If Trump can get in, if Brexit can happen, then why can’t Corbyn get in? Why can’t it be a landslide?” said Saran Cadwaladr, 34, a secondary school English teacher.

Jonny Dawson, 26, also an English teacher, added: “I believe Corbyn can win, totally. There is absolutely no reason why he can’t. If people recognise that he is, in fact, for the many, then there is no reason why it can’t happen.”

Juliet Monk-Steel, 37, a local nurse, said Corbyn’s policies on the NHS had brought her to Leicester Tigers’ Welford Road stadium. “Yes he can win the election. Why not? On Brexit, he’s been a safe pair of hands so far,” she said.

Away from the rally, however, recriminations over Labour’s results have grown. The deposed leader of the local Labour group on Leicestershire council, Robert Sharp, who represented Loughborough, took aim at the party leader.

Sharp told the Leicester Mercury: “I am personally disappointed but we saw it coming. I have said before that it has been tough on the doorstep. We have struggled to get local issues noticed.

“All we have had back at us is Brexit and ‘bloody Corbyn’. I don’t want to sound like a bitter candidate who has just lost his seat and is trying to blame someone else, but Jeremy Corbyn has had a negative impact on this campaign.”

A leading figure involved in running the Tees Valley metro mayor contest, which Labour narrowly lost to the Tories, despite having won a 43.3% share of the vote across the region at the 2015 general election, said many voters said they wanted to vote Labour but felt they could not because of the leader.

“Once the general election was announced it became increasingly difficult to separate this election from the national election. Many people raised Jeremy Corbyn on the doorstep and said they did not think they could vote for us. Before the election was called we were able to convince people but then the Corbyn factor became a major one.”

There were victories for Labour’s Andy Burnham in the Greater Manchester mayoral contest and for Steve Rotheram in Liverpool. But the defeat for their mayoral candidates in Tees Valley and the West Midlands were major disappointments. The party lost around 400 seats across England, Wales and Scotland while the Tories gained 550, benefiting from the virtual wipeout of Ukip, which took just one seat and lost all of the 114 it had been defending.

One senior Labour MP said the most alarming aspect of the result was that Labour had fared worst in many areas where it had traditionally been strong, suggesting that its core was being eroded.

It was the Tories who mopped up Ukip votes. In Lincolnshire in particular, there was a 16.8 point drop in Ukip’s vote share to 7.5%. But while the Conservative vote rose by 17.4 points to 53%, Labour’s share increased only by 0.7 of a point to 19.3%. The trend confirms Boris Johnson’s claim that Ukip supporters were “a lost tribe of Tories” rather than disaffected Labour voters who might return to the party. The Lincolnshire results will be a blow to Paul Nuttall’s hopes in Boston.

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Nothing seemed to dent confidence levels among the audience in Leicester, however, which remained defiantly high. The Trych family from Leicester were among those impressed. Karolina Trych, who turned 18 a fortnight ago, could not wait to cast her vote in favour of Labour. She said: “He was very charismatic, very passionate, I really feel he can win after that speech.”

Her two brothers Shey, 18, and Adam, 16 – who had managed to get Corbyn to sign his Labour party membership document – agreed. “He’s ready to fight and he’s got the support, why not?” said Shey. Their mother Dorota, 40, said: He’s the only one who’s fighting for the younger generation, my children’s future.”

Jonathon Lees, 21, a student, handing out copies of the Socialist Appeal – the International Marxist Tendency newsletter – also shrugged off the local election meltdown. “It’s not the end of the world; it means there’s room to grow. A lot of his policies are bringing people back.” Like many filing into the stadium, he blamed “the old Blairites” for spinning against the leader and sowing discord among the party.

Pete Groschl, 61, from Leicester, who works in film and music, echoed a familiar sentiment: “Course he can win, he’s the only person talking about policies.”