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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Martin Belam (now), Andrew Sparrow and Yohannes Lowe (earlier)

Labour’s Claire Ward elected first mayor of East Midlands as Sunak gets boost in Tees Valley after Tory losses – live

England ​​Rishi Sunak Conservatives Police
Rishi Sunak (right) congratulates Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen on his re-election on Friday.
Rishi Sunak (right) congratulates Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen on his re-election on Friday. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Summary of the day …

  • The Conservatives are facing some of their worst local election results in 40 years, with striking Labour gains across England and Wales in key battlegrounds they need to secure victory at the general election. The spread of the Conservative losses led one former minister to claim there was “no such thing really as a safe Tory seat any more”. Elections expert John Curtice put the Conservatives’ share of the vote at just 25%, matching the nadir hit in local elections in 1995 by the Conservative prime minister John Major, soon to be swept out of power by Tony Blair

  • Labour was celebrating a string of election successes, but Beneath the euphoria of wins in places such as Blackpool, Hartlepool and Thurrock, however, lay a nervousness about the party’s performance in urban areas, with campaigners warning it had lost ground in both London and Birmingham. Sources said much of the loss of urban support was being driven by anger among Muslim and progressive voters about Keir Starmer’s stance on Israel’s assault on Gaza following the 7 October attacks

  • The Conservatives held on to their high-profile Tees Valley mayoralty with a reduced majority for Ben Houchen in the mayoral elections, but Labour won three other contests, in the East Midlands, North East and Rishi Sunak’s own patch of North Yorkshire

  • Keir Starmer said Labour’s victory in the York and North Yorkshire mayoral election was “a very, very special moment”. He told voters “Thank you for putting your trust in Labour, we will not let you down.”

  • Liberal Democrat leader said their general election campaign started today after a series of gains in the south and south-west of England

  • The Green party is positioned to win Bristol city council despite failing to win outright control

You can find our full result tracker here …

Updated

The Liberal Democrats have gained overall control of Tunbridge Wells as the Conservatives lost four seat, leaving them on seven and the Liberal Democrats with 22 of the 39 seats. Labour and independents have five each.

A Liberal Democrat source said, and you may have to brace yourself, “the disgusted of Tunbridge Wells have spoken.”

The Conservatives have lost control of Dudley in the West Midlands after Labour gained eight seats, PA Media reports. The council is now split with Conservatives and Labour both holding 34 seats, and the Liberal Democrats with three and an independent making up the other four seats holding the balance of power.

Labour won the mayoralties declared today in East Midlands, North East and North Yorkshire, but the Conservatives are pointing to Ben Houchen bucking the trend with his victory in Tees Valley.

In our round-up of those results, it is noted that in his acceptance speech, Houchen made no reference to the Conservatives nor to prime minister Rishi Sunak. “To be re-elected for a third term in my home, in my community, is absolutely the greatest honour,” he said. He thanked voters for buying into his vision for the next four years, adding: “There is a still long way to go.”

Here is a video clip of Sunak earlier describing the results as disappointing, but pointing to a Labour failure to take control of Harlow as a reason for optimism for the Conservatives.

The Mirror’s Mikey Smith notes that Michael Gove’s election agent, Steve Dorsett, has lost his seat on Woking council. You can insert your own “woke” punchline there.

Labour’s Chris Bryant, meanwhile, is suggesting that the figures for Conservative losses are approaching “their worst expectation management”.

Caroline Henry, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Nottinghamshire who was banned from driving for six month after being caught speeding five times, has lost her role to Labour.

Labour’s Gary Godden received 119,355 votes, while Henry got 77,148.

Over in Dudley in the West Midlands, it is currently a dead heat between Labour and the Conservatives, with each holding 34 seats on the council.

A recount is underway for votes from one ward which looks like it could be the deciding vote between the two parties.

Labour launched their local election campaign in Dudley in March as it was a key area where they were hoping to reverse the Tory tide and win back seats they lost in 2019 and 2021. With all 72 seats up for grabs after a ward boundary review, Labour were hoping to win an outright majority here.

Voter turnout for the mayoral and assembly election in London is 40.5%, which is down 1.5% on 2021. We don’t get the results until tomorrow.

I just want to circle back to Kiran Stacey’s piece for a second, as there is a little bit swirling around that the turnout figures released in London are suggesting that possibly mayor Sadiq Khan may be in more trouble than polling leads suggested.

My colleague Kiran wrote:

Party campaigners in London said Gaza had driven voters in the inner city away from the party, while the controversy over the clean air ultra-low emissions zone had cost it in outer boroughs. A shock Conservative win in London would dominate the political agenda for days, renew questions over Labour’s environmental policies and provoke anger from the left of the party. One senior Labour source said: “Losing London would be devastating, but most of the country is fine and this won’t affect the general election.”

The raw turnout figures are here, and Stephen Bush of the FT has a thread on social media running through them here …

We’ve published a few round-ups of the day’s election news in the last few minutes. First up, Rowena Mason, our Whitehall editor, reports that under the leadership of Rishi Sunak, the Conservatives face their worst local election results in 40 years. She writes:

The spread of the Conservative losses led one former minister to claim there was “no such thing really as a safe Tory seat any more”, but the prime minister appeared committed to cling on until polling day, with rebels in his own party lacking the support to oust him.

Our political correspondent Kiran Stacey writes that Labour is celebrating victory but has lost ground in urban and heavily Muslim areas. He says:

Below the euphoria of wins in places like Blackpool, Hartlepool and Thurrock, however, lay a nervousness about the party’s performance in urban areas, with campaigners warning it had lost ground in both London and Birmingham.

Also, if you missed it earlier, John Crace has sketched the day …

Labour has gained Tamworth council, taking nine seats from the Conservatives (six) and independents (three). The party won the parliamentary seat in a byelection in October.

PA Media point out that as the Liberal Democrats held Cheltenham council, the Conservatives lost all of their five seats. It points out that the town’s MP is Conservative justice secretary Alex Chalk, who has a majority of 981 from the last general election.

Both Yvette Cooper and Wes Streeting, speaking separately to BBC outlets, have addressed the suggestion that Labour’s position on Israel’s response in Gaza to the 7 October Hamas attack inside southern Israel had cost them votes in Thursday’s elections.

Shadow health secretary Streeting told BBC Radio 5 Live that “We are obviously calling for a ceasefire now and even more importantly … urging Israel not to invade Rafah, which would be an absolute catastrophe. I don’t deny that there are people out there who are feeling let down and I want them to know that we’ve heard. We will take that on the chin, and we’ll work hard to win people’s trust back at future elections.”

PA Media reports shadow home secretary Cooper told BBC News:

We do strongly recognise there are areas where we have had independent candidates who have been particularly strongly campaigning on Gaza and where there is really strong feeling about this issue, because tens of thousands of people have been killed.

It is just devastating to see what is happening, which is why we need an immediate ceasefire and for hostages to be released and why we hope some progress will be made in the negotiations.

We do recognise the strength of feeling that there is and of course we will continue to work just as we do in every area across the country to earn votes back in future.

Eleni Courea and Kiran Stacey write that the Conservatives find reasons to be cheerful despite election bloodbath:

They were on track to lose up to 500 council seats and Labour made gains across traditional Tory territory in the south. But Downing Street insiders were keen to point to the fact that Labour failed to win control of Harlow council, a top target that Keir Starmer had visited on the eve of polling day. The Conservatives held it by one seat. Ben Houchen also won a third term as Conservative Tees Valley mayor, despite a 16.7 point swing to Labour, and Andy Street was predicted to hold on to the West Midlands mayoralty on Saturday.

Loyal Conservative MPs sent messages to the Tory MPs’ WhatsApp group on Friday claiming to celebrate the early results. “I’m genuinely reading into this that the Labour lead is soft and we need to work our seats,” one Tory MP told the Guardian. No 10 aides insisted they could see off any attempt to unseat Rishi Sunak. One said the “Armageddon narrative [is] not quite coming to fruition”.

“People said we were going to get absolutely spanked and we haven’t been absolutely spanked,” a senior Conservative source said. “The big positives are Labour not winning Harlow, which they really wanted to, and Reform not coming second in South Blackpool. The big one to watch is London. We won’t win there but I don’t think Labour are going to win by 20 points like the polls said they would.”

Read more from Eleni Courea and Kiran Stacey here: Tories find reasons to be cheerful despite election bloodbath

Labour have held Rotherham and Trafford councils, the Liberal Democrats have held Cheltenham, and Oxford stays at no overall control.

Jonathan Freedland’s column in reaction the results is up, and he argues that while Starmer already seems like the prime minister, his troubles may have just really begun:

Keir Starmer’s aim has been to turn Labour into the acceptable vessel of national discontent with the party that has governed Britain for 14 years. Voter fury, at first Boris Johnson and the partygate revelations and next Liz Truss’s sabotaging of the UK economy, saw trust in the Tories plunge – but it was never automatic that that would translate into support for Labour. Starmer’s central objective has been to remove every obstacle that could stand in the way of a disaffected Conservative contemplating a move towards the main party of opposition.

He has set about that goal methodically, even ruthlessly – seeking to reassure potential Tory switchers that Labour is just as patriotic, just as strong on defence and crime, just as prudent with the public finances and just as competent as they once believed the Conservatives to be. That approach has turned off, even repelled, some of the Labour core, but this latest round of results – and its large swings, direct from Tory to Labour – suggests it’s working.

But strategic caution carries risks. Playing safe, saying nothing that could frighten the floating voter, might bring victory – but it doesn’t deliver a mandate. Starmer is right to ensure he rides the anti-Tory wave, and if these local results were repeated it would carry him into Downing Street. But once there, it helps if you can claim the electorate’s backing for your planned programme in government. As things stand, Labour could not quite do that.

You can read more of Jonathan Freedland’s column here: Triumphant Starmer already seems like the prime minister. Now his troubles really begin

Labour has won the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) role in Lancashire.

Clive Grunshaw beat incumbent Andrew Snowdon (Conservative), to win back a role he had held between 2012 and 2021.

Labour has also held the councils in Bradford and Crawley. The party gained five council seats in the latter.

Cannock Chase has been a Labour gain. It was formerly no overall control.

All the results are being collated here …

In Wokingham, the picture remains unclear. The Liberal Democrats, who were expected to take control of the council, said a stronger than expected Labour showing in the district may stop them winning key target seats and deprive them of a majority.

The council, where veteran Tory MP John Redwood and former prime minister Theresa May hold their parliamentary seats, has long been a Conservative stronghold. The Tories lost control of the council in 2022 after strong Lib Dems victories, having held it for 20 years.

Pauline Jorgensen, the leader of the Wokingham Conservative group said the result “looks really close” so far. She said: “It’s not a landslide in any direction. It’s very difficult to call right now. A lot of these things are down to handful of votes.”

Reform UK did not field any candidates in the district. The feeling among the Liberal Democrats is that the centre-left vote may end up being split between themselves, Labour and the Greens, while the Conservatives were left as the only major right-wing option on the ballot.

54 seats are up election in Wokingham. So far, the Lib Dems have won six seats, the Conservatives are on three and Labour have won two. A full result is expected by 7pm.

Keir Starmer said Labour’s victory in the York and North Yorkshire mayoral election was “a very, very special moment”.

PA Media reports that appearing at Northallerton Town Football Club with the new mayor, David Skaith, Starmer said:

It’s an amazing moment in history, to have a Labour victory here. We have had really good results across the country all day long, but this is a very, very special moment, David, to become the mayor here.”

Through the villages and the towns of North Yorkshire, people are voting for change. They voted for Labour, a changed Labour party able to earn the trust and the respect of voters in York and North Yorkshire.

He told voters “Thank you for putting your trust in Labour, we will not let you down.”

Davey: Liberal Democrats general election campaign starts today

The Liberal Democrats have been holding a celebratory rally in Winchester, where the star turns appear to be leader Ed Davey and some people in dinosaur costumes meant to represent the Conservatives.

Davey told supporters:

These results show what we all know: we need a general election now. No matter how long Rishi Sunak stays squatting in Downing Street, the Liberal Democrat general election campaign starts today to make this Conservative Government history.

From Cheltenham to Hull and here in Hampshire – people are choosing the Liberal Democrats to make that change happen. To be their strong local champions, work tirelessly for their communities and deliver the fair deal people deserve.

Labour’s Claire Ward elected first mayor of East Midlands

Labour’s Claire Ward has been elected the first mayor of the East Midlands, beating the Conservative Ben Bradley.

A Labour source described the region as “the beating heart of the general election battleground”, suggesting the party’s win there is one of the biggest signs yet it could be on track for national victory.

The region encompasses a number of key bellwether areas, as well as many former “red wall” seats, including Bolsover and Bassetlaw.

Bradley had hoped his strong local connections and name recognition – as the MP for Mansfield and leader of Nottinghamshire county council – would help him buck the trend of declining Tory support.

Polls were predicting a Labour win, and as votes were being counted he could be seen looking glum outside the venue. When asked by one reporter how he was feeling, he replied: “Meh”.

What's the significance of the PNS figures?

This is what Rob Ford, the politics professor and elections specialist, said in a post on his Substack account, The Swingometer, a few days ago about how to measure what might be a good or bad projected national share (PNS) result for the parties.

The lowest PNS ever recorded by Conservatives is 25%, in 2013 and earlier in 1995. They narrowly avoided hitting this floor last year, when they posted 26%, but they go into this years contests in an even worse polling position, around 20 points behind in the polling averages. A PNS share below 25% would be the lowest ever recorded since the BBC started calculating these figures in 1982.

The first target for Labour is to go above 35% - this is the highest PNS recorded by both Keir Starmer (twice – in 2022 and 2023) and by Jeremy Corbyn (in 2018). This should be easily achievable given Labour’s bigger poll lead this year. The next target is 38% - the highest PNS recorded by Labour in this period of opposition, achieved by Ed Miliband in 2012. The ultimate target for Starmer and Labour would be 46%, Labour’s all time high PNS figure recorded under Tony Blair in 1995. However, with voting in local elections now much more fragmented, this mark is likely out of reach. Anything close to 40% will be a dominant performance.

The Liberal Democrats will be aiming for 24% - they never fell below this level of support on PNS between 1993 and 2010, and have never risen back to this level since. Getting back to around a quarter of projected national share would show they are returning to pre-Coalition levels of vitality in local government.

Here are the figures released by the BBC within the last few minutes, compared to the results from last year.

Labour: 34% (down 1 point)

Conservatives: 25% (down 1 point)

Lib Dems: 17% (down 3 points)

Others: 24% (up 5 points)

And this is what Prof Sir John Curtice, the BBC’s lead elections analyst, told viewers a few minutes ago about the significance of the projected national share (PNS) figure he and his team have calculated.

We were saying for much of the last 12, 18 hours that probably we were looking at an outcome, and a set of performances, pretty similar to last year, and it is pretty similar to last year.

The lead of Labour over the Conservatives matches the lead of last year. And to that extent it is consistent with the message of the polls, that the lead of Labour over the Conservatives hasn’t really changed. Although in both cases it looks as though, just about, both the Conservatives and the Labour Party are just a little bit doing less well than they were last time, not least essentially because of some of those strong performances by the Greens, by some of the independents, and also by Reform where they stood.

More disappointing, perhaps, for the Liberal Democrats, and perhaps rather more surprising, is that they’re down to 17%, which is three points down on last year. But it’s still pretty much in line with the kinds of figures they’ve been getting since the EU referendum.

So it really is for the most part a picture of stasis. No great dramatic change, with reasons for all parties to ask themselves couldn’t we have done better, but equally also leaving Labour still in pole position.

That’s all from me for today. Martin Belam is now taking over.

BBC says Labour on 34% projected national share, Tories 25% and Lib Dems 17%

The BBC has just published its projected national share figures.

This is the estimate of what the results would have been if everyone in Britain had voted in local elections, instead of just the people voting yesterday.

Labour: 34%

Conservatives: 25%

Lib Dems: 17%

Others: 24%

The Liberal Democrats say there are no more Conservative councils on Cheltenham council, where Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, is the MP. The final five Tories there have been defeated. The Lib Dems retain control of the council.

The Green party is currently averaging 11% in wards it is fighting, according to the BBC. That is up one point on last year and an increase on their best ever performance in local elections, in 2019, according to the BBC.

Carla Denyer, the co-leader of the Green party, told the BBC a few minutes ago that a lot of the councils where the party would be making gains have yet to declare.

Labour has gained control of Nuneaton and Bedworth from the Conservatives. Labour gained 15 seats, and the Tories lost 11.

Updated

Compass, the leftwing campaign group committed to pluralism, has issued a statement saying the results show the need for progressive parties to form electoral pacts. In a statement referring to the Tees Valley, Neal Lawson, the Compass director, said:

Taking Tees Valley was always going to be a difficult task given the size of the majority Ben Houchen was defending. But given the unpopularity of the national Tory brand, it need not have been an impossibility.

Instead of tearing chunks out of one another, progressives should have focussed on presenting a united front against the Conservatives to maximise the efficiency of the anti-Tory vote. Elsewhere in the country, we see that where progressive parties cooperate, they win.

The Green party candidate Sally Bunce did stand aside mid-way through the campaign, but in the end, it wasn’t enough to help Labour’s Chris McEwan over the line. Progressive parties should have presented a united front and backed a single progressive candidate from the outset.

As the BBC’s Vicki Young has pointed out, Leicestershire provides a better example of a place where centre-left parties lost out under first past the post (FPTP) because they did not form a pact. The Conservatives won the election for police and crime commissioner with a majority over Labour of less than 1,000. But the Greens and the Liberal Democrats both got very big voters there too.

The government recently changed the voting system for mayors and PCCs from the supplementary vote to FPTP. Under the supplementary vote, people get two choices, and if their first preference candidate does not make the final two, their second choice is taking into account. Under this system, Labour would almost certainly have won the Leicestershire PCC job.

Here are the results for the Leicestershire election.

Rupert Matthews (C) 62,280 (35.29%)
Rory Palmer (Lab) 61,420 (34.80%)
Aasiya Bora (Green) 23,649 (13.40%)
Ian Sharpe (LD) 22,041 (12.49%)
Fizza Askari (One Leics) 7,104 (4.03%)
C maj 860 (0.49%)
Electorate 806,812; Turnout 176,494 (21.88%)

Labour has won overall control of Milton Keynes for the first time since 2000 after gaining three seats, PA Media reports. PA says:

The party now has 30 seats on the Buckinghamshire council, with Lib Dems on 18, after gaining two, and Conservatives on nine, after losing five.

Labour was previously running the council in alliance with the Lib Dems, in a city with two marginal parliamentary constituencies

Within the last hour, the Conservatives, who held most of the police and crime commissioner posts up for election yesterday, have held PCC positions in Leicestershire, Humberside and Devon and Cornwall.

Labour take control of Adur council in West Sussex for first time in 50 years

Labour gained Adur in West Sussex from the Conservatives after gaining eight seats – the first time the party has controlled the council, PA reports. The Conservatives lost seven seats, and independents one, leaving the new council as Labour 17, Conservatives eight, Green two and independents two.

In its 50-year history as a council, Adur has never been Labour, and the Conservatives have held it since 2002. And they have also held East Worthing and Shoreham, the parliamentary constituency covering the seat, since it was created in 1997.

Tim Loughton, the current Tory MP, is standing down at the election. He had a majority of 7,474 at the last election, and this is a key Labour target.

In a preliminary analysis of the election results for Prospect magazine, Peter Kellner, the political commentator and former head of the YouGov polling firm, points out that the Conservative share of the vote in the Blackpool South byelection, at 17.5%, “is its lowest for at least 100 years in a seat they were defending, replacing Dudley West (18.7% in 1994) as the occupant of this undesirable pedestal”.

He also points out that, where Reform UK has been standing in council elections, the Conservative vote has fallen much more dramatically than in wards where Reform UK has not been standing. The Labour vote, though does not seem to have been affected by Reform UK being on the ballot.

Kellner says:

This confirms polls that show Reform taking its support overwhelmingly from the Tories, unlike Ukip a decade ago, which attracted votes across the board.

This means that the Conservatives must squeeze Reform’s support if they are to avoid a catastrophic landslide defeat at the general election. In 2015, Ukip lost a large part of the votes it had won in byelections, and its poll rating slipped as the election approached. Without such a squeeze this time, Conservative prospects are truly dreadful.

On the BBC Nick Eardley has just highlighted figures showing that, in council seats where Reform UK is standing, the Conservative vote is down 19 percentage points compared to the result in 2021. But the Labour vote is up 6 percentage points.

The Workers Party of Britain (WPB) won its first two council seats in Rochdale, where George Galloway won a byelection in March, PA reports. Labour retained control of the council with 44 seats, after losing two to the WPB, with the Conservatives on nine, Lib Dems on three and two independents.

Summary of what's happened so far

Here is a summary of the main points from the election results so far.

Sunak celebrates Houchen's mayoral victory, saying he won despite Labour throwing 'lot of mud'

Rishi Sunak has attended a victory event at Teesside airport with Ben Houchen, who has been re-elected as the Tees Valley mayor and who currently stands out as the only significant success story of the elections so far. (Labour, of course, argues that on the swing measure it was a victory for them too – see 1pm.)

Sunak said:

The Labour party threw absolutely everything at this election. Keir Starmer came here twice, Rachel Reeves came here three times, but even they couldn’t dislodge Ben and the fantastic Conservative team.

And they also threw a lot of mud, it needs to be said, in this election because they were angry, angry that Ben has delivered more for this region in seven years than the Labour party managed in 30 years.

Look where we’re standing. When Ben came into the office, this airport was going to be closed down. And now? More flights are more places than ever before.

The steelworks, desolate. Now part of the one of most exciting regeneration projects anywhere in the world. We worked together on some great things, making sure that Treasury is in Darlington, putting this region at the heart of government. The freeport, the largest in Europe, attracting thousands of jobs and investment to the area. That is levelling up in action.

By mud, Sunak was referring to the Teesworks redevelopment scheme, and Labour claims about it. A report for the government said allegations that management of the project has been corrupt could not be justified, but it did raise concerns about the project’s value for money and transparency

Stacy Hart won a seat on Basingstoke and Deane council to give the Women’s Equality Party (WEP) their first borough councillor, PA Media reports. PA says:

She polled 1,659 votes in Hatch Warren & Beggarwood ward, 61.6% of the vote, gaining the seat from Conservatives.

The WEP had previously won seats on town and parish councils but this is their most important victory in the nine years since the party was founded by broadcaster Sandi Toksvig and journalist Catherine Mayer.

Here are the full results from the York and North Yorkshire mayoral contest.

David Skaith (Lab) 66,761 (35.06%)
Keane Duncan (C) 51,967 (27.29%)
Felicity Cunliffe-Lister (LD) 30,867 (16.21%)
Kevin Foster (Green) 15,188 (7.98%)
Keith Tordoff (Ind) 13,250 (6.96%)
Paul Haslam (Ind) 12,370 (6.50%)
Lab maj 14,794 (7.77%)
Electorate 640,006; Turnout 190,403 (29.75%)

Updated

Labour wins York and North Yorkshire mayoral contest, covering Rishi Sunak's constituency

And Labour has won the York and North Yorkshire mayoral contest. This is a new post which covers Rishi Sunak’s Richmond constituency. A Labour spokesperson said:

This is a truly historic result in York and North Yorkshire. Keir Starmer’s Labour party is now winning in Rishi Sunak’s backyard. The prime minister’s own constituents have taken a look at the two parties and chosen Labour.

Labour's Kim McGuiness elected North East mayor, seeing off challenge from former Labour mayor Jamie Driscoll

Labour’s Kim McGuinness has comfortable won the contest to be the first North East mayor. She had 41% of the vote, beating Jamie Driscoll, who was on 28%. Driscoll was Labour’s North of Tyne mayor but was blocked by the party from standing to be its candidate for the new post because he was perceived as too leftwing, or insufficiently loyal to the Labour leadership.

The new North East mayoralty is a larger version of the North of Tyne one, which is replaces.

Here are the results in full.

Kim McGuinness (Lab) 185,051 (41.27%)
+Jamie Driscoll (Ind) 126,652 (28.24%)
Guy Renner-Thompson (C) 52,446 (11.70%)
Paul Donaghy (Reform) 41,147 (9.18%)
Aidan King (LD) 25,485 (5.68%)
Andrew Gray (Green) 17,631 (3.93%)
Lab maj 58,399 (13.02%)
Electorate 1,459,195; Turnout 448,412 (30.73%)

Labour's Emma Wools in south Wales become UK's first black female police and crime commissioner

Emma Wools has been elected first ever black female police and crime commissioner in the UK.

Labour’s Wools takes over from the party’s PCC for south Wales, Alun Michael.

She said:

During the campaign, I said I believed that the people of South Wales need a police and crime commissioner who knows firsthand the challenges faced by communities in south Wales. I’m delighted they have backed my vision to deliver for them.

This comes just weeks after Vaughan Gething became Welsh first minister, the first ever black leader in Europe.

Wools said:

It is both an enormous privilege and an enormous responsibility to be the first Black female PCC in the UK. It is a powerful opportunity to create change, promote diversity and inclusion, and advocate for underrepresented communities, but it also comes with added pressure and higher expectations.

I hope having someone like me in a role like this can work towards bridging the gap between policing and some of our marginalized communities here in south Wales.

The Conservatives lost all eight of their seats on Castle Point in Essex as independents won all 39, PA Media reports. PA says 13 Conservative candidates failed to appear on ballot papers because of problems with nominations.

Adrian Ramsay, co-leader of the Green party, told Sky News that his party was making “significant gains” in the local elections. He explained:

Whether it’s breaking through on to new councils like Newcastle, like Redditch, like Sefton, like Bolton, or whether it’s adding to our numbers of existing councilors in places in all corners of England, people are voting Green in ever greater numbers and voting Green positively because they want a strong community champions and Green councillors who will make a real difference for a fairer community and a greener future.

Asked if Gaza was one reason why the Greens were picking up votes from Labour, he said it was. The Greens had called for a ceasefire from the start, he said, “and clearly that message has resonated with communities around the country”. But he said other factors were relevant too.

Welwyn Hatfield remained under no overall control, but the Conservatives lost 10 seats, as Labour gained eight and the Liberal Democrats two, PA Media reports. PA says the new council is Labour 20, Liberal Democrat 16 and Conservative 12.

David Cameron claims he showed as PM how Tories can recover from bad local elections to win general election

When the Tory commentator Tim Montgomerie told the BBC early this morning that he thought Rishi Sunak should resign (see 6.25am), he was asked who would do a better job. He said that, if David Cameron were not in the Lords, he thought he would be suitable.

Cameron, the foreign secretary, is in Ukraine, but he had a chance to show what he would say if he were in Rishi Sunak’s position when he gave broadcasters a response to the local election results. He said:

With local elections, when you’re in government, you often find they’re tought results.

But what matters is, have a plan, stick to the plan, deliver the plan.

And, as I showed in 2015, you can have bad local election results and go on and win a general election.

Ultimately, a general election is a choice and we’re putting the clearest possible choice in front of the British people – a man with a plan that’s growing the economy and protecting our country versus a bunch of people who have no plan whatsoever.

It is not entirely clear what Cameron meant when he said that in 2015 he showed that you can have bad local election results but win a general election. In 2015 the local elections were held on the same day as the general election, and the Conservatives won both.

Maybe he was referring to the 2014 local elections. Labour did better than the Conservatives in those elections, but not by much. According to the BBC, Labour’s projected national share (PNS) of the vote in 2014 was 31%, and the Conservatives’ was 29%.

Cameron’s worst set of local election results as PM came in 2012, when Labour’s PNS was 38% and the Tories’ was 31%.

But this year the Tories seem on course to be doing a lot worse than that. The BBC has not released its PNS calculation yet, but earlier it said preliminary results suggested the Tories were down 14 percentage points on their result in 2021 (see 10.46am), which points to a PNS in the low 20s.

Three police and crime commissioner results have come in within the last half an hour or so. The Conservatives have held the PCC posts in Suffolk and in Cambridgeshire, and Labour have retained the job in Gwent.

Labour claims it has 'comfortably' won new East Midlands mayoralty

Labour says it believes Claire Ward, its candidate for East Midlands mayor, has “comfortably” beaten the Conservative, Ben Bradley. Bradley is the Tory MP for Mansfield and leader of Nottinghamshire council. Ward is a former Labour MP and minister.

Labour says that, because this is a new position, where no candidate has the incumbency factor, this contest is a better guide to general election performance than some other mayoral contests.

Updated

Ben Houchen, who has been re-elected as Conservative Tees Valley mayor, claimed he was not wearing a blue Conservative rosette at the count because he forgot to bring one.

Asked whether this was a sign that he was trying to distance himself from the national Conservative party, Houchen said:

I have [worn a rosette] at previous elections and the honest answer is I didn’t have one and I forgot it. But I’ve got my blue socks on and my blue tie on …

The idea that we are trying to pretend I’m not Conservative, I mean people know round here that I’m a Conservative, but thankfully what we’ve seen today is they also know that I’m a Teessider, and I’ll put Teesside first, I’ll put local people first and I’ll do what’s best for the local area.

Asked whether he would be able to work with Keir Starmer if he became PM, Houchen replied:

Absolutely. Keir Starmer’s come out and said he’s going to double down on devolution, which is a huge change, a 180 from what Labour did in 2019 when they were talking about abolishing mayors. Now Keir Starmer’s saying he’s going to give us more money and more powers. Which gives me more autonomy to get on and do what I do best which is deliver for local people.

Momentum, the leftwing Labour group, has said Keir Starmer should commit to suspending arms sales to Israel in response to evidence that his stance on Gaza is costing the party votes in places like Oldham. A Momentum spokesperson said:

These losses should set alarm bells ringing in Labour HQ. Any party which takes its core vote for granted risks disaster sooner or later. When the going gets tough, Labour will need to rally its base - but from climate to Gaza, Keir Starmer couldn’t seem less interested.

Starmer should respond by getting off the fence and calling for a suspension of arms sales to Israel, as other parties have done, and unreservedly condemning Israel’s ongoing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.

Labour says swing in Tees Valley mayoral contest shows it's 'on track to win every seat in area'

Labour says the Conservatives should be extremely worried by the result in the Tees Valley. (See 12.38pm.) A Labour spokesperson said:

This swing towards Labour in Tees Valley puts Labour on track to win every single seat in the area in a general election.

The Conservatives should be extremely worried that their candidate had to run as an independent to win.

If Rishi Sunak doesn’t take this result as a major wake-up call he is in denial.

Winning every seat in the area would mean Labour gaining: Darlington, Hartlepool, Redcar, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland and Stockton West.

Updated

Labour have retained control of Blackburn with Darwen, but lost four seats, while the Conservatives lost two and independents were up four, PA reports. The new council is Labour 29, independents 13 and Conservatives nine.

Several Labour councillors resigned in Blackburn over Keir Starmer’s response to the war in Gaza, and in this election independents were actively seeking support from Muslim voters.

Left Unity, a fringe leftwing party, has welcomed the Blackburn results.

This is from Keiran Pedley, a pollster from Ipsos, on the significance of the Tories winning Tees Valley (which they have) and the West Midlands (which they will, if the Labour briefing is accurate).

Perhaps Houchen and Street do hold on but unclear what comfort Rishi Sunak takes from individual Mayor’s personal votes defying the wider political weather. It’s that weather that determines the General Election result.

Prof Sir John Curtice, the BBC’s lead psephologist, made the same point on the BBC a few minutes ago. He said:

The truth is that mayoral contests are probably the least reliable guide to the question .. what do these results tell us for a general election.

It is the results that happen to anonymous councillors across the country that will tell us much, much more about the ups and downs of as parties as parties, as opposed to the impact or otherwise of particular high-profile personalities that might be able to buck the trend in a particular type of contest.

Labour retained Swindon in the first council result of the afternoon, gaining nine seats as the Conservatives lost eight and an independent one, PA Media reports. The new council is Labour Labour 41, Conservative 15, Liberal Democrat one.

Houchen wins Tees Valley, but with 16.5 percentage point swing from Tories to Labour

Here are the full results from the Tees Valley mayoral contest, from PA Media.

Ben Houchen (C) 81,930 (53.64%)
Chris McEwan (Lab) 63,141 (41.34%)
Simon Thorley (LD) 7,679 (5.03%)
C maj 18,789 (12.30%)
Electorate 498,625; Turnout 152,750 (30.63%)

In 2021 Houchen won with 73% of the vote, and Labour were on 27%. Labour may not have won, but it has secured a 16.5 percentage point swing.

Updated

Houchen re-elected as Tory Tees Valley mayor

Ben Houchen has been re-elected as the Conservative Tees Valley mayor.

Sunak says Tory losses have been 'disappointing', but insists he is 'focused completely' on delivering for voters

Rishi Sunak has responded to the poor election results for his party by accepting they are “disappointing”, but arguing there are “lots of results” yet to come and insisting that he is focused on delivering for voters.

Asked for his reaction, he said:

Obviously it’s disappointing to lose good, hard-working Conservative councillors and I’m grateful to them for all their service in local government, keeping council tax low and delivering services for local people.

But we have still got lots of results to come as well, and there are also things that I would point to, Harlow for example where Keir Starmer held a rally just on Wednesday saying that was a place that he had to win to be on track to win a general election.

That hasn’t happened, and indeed we are still waiting for the results in the Tees Valley mayoralty just near to here which is obviously a very important test as well.

When asked if he would be able to convince his party he could do better at the general election, Sunak repeated the points he had already made about Harlow and Tees Valley. And he went on:

Look, I am focused completely on the job at hand, that’s delivering for people across the country.

If you just look at what we’re doing in the last week or so alone, a £900 pound tax cut hitting people’s pay slips, the first failed asylum seeker off to Rwanda.

At the same time, what have Labour said? They have said that they are are going to scrap the Rwanda scheme and offer an amnesty to illegal migrants. That is no way to solve that problem which is important to people right up and down the country.

Sunak was referring to the Labour party briefing this week that asylum seekers who have recently arrived in the UK, who under the Illegal Migration Act should not be allowed to claim asylum, will have asylum claims processed. As Sunder Katwala from the British Future thinktank points out, in practice the government is doing the same thing.

Govt line is Labour will have an “amnesty” by putting people into the asylum system.

Govt will do the same in 99% of cases!

77,304 people considered inadmissable for asylum over last 3 years.

This govt refused 84, removed 25, and admitted 47,993 *so far* to the asylum system!

Ben Houchen won the fourth of five local authority areas voting in the Tees Valley Mayoral election, PA Media reports. PA says:

In Darlington, he polled 14,233 ahead of 10,014 for Labour’s Chris McEwan and 1,849 for Simon Thorley of the Liberal Democrats.

Houchen has already won more votes in Hartlepool, Redcar and Middlesbrough, with just Stockton still to be announced.

Andy Street expected to be re-elected as Tory West Midlands mayor, Labour source claims

Labour sources in Birmingham are saying they believe the Conservative West Midlands mayor Andy Street is going to hold on to his post as Muslim voters turn away from the party over its stance on Gaza.

West Midlands is not counting until tomorrow, but one Labour source in the city said:

Street will win due to the Middle East, not because of his success in the West Midlands.

It’s thought many Muslim voters may have voted for independent candidate, Akhmed Yakoob, who some are saying could come third in some areas of the city.

Last week Yakoob, a lawyer, was joined by George Galloway on the campaign trail targeting disillusioned Muslim voters with a strong focus on Gaza.

Ben Houchen says he backs Rishi Sunak, but will work with any PM, including a Labour one, to help Tees Valley

Sky News has just broadcast an interview with Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, who looked and sounded like someone confident of winning – although he stressed that the full results weren’t yet in.

CCHQ will portray a win in Tees Valley as one of the rare good results for Rishi Sunak on a day when finding anything to be positive about is a challenge.

But Houchen, who made very little mention of Sunak, and the national party, in his campaigning, was not over-supportive of Sunak in his interview. He rejected the claim that Sunak’s support was a hindrance, and he said Sunak had been “a huge champion” of the area.

But he also stressed that having a positive relationship with the PM, even a Labour PM, was just part of his job. He said:

Ultimately my job as mayor is to do what I can for local people. And if that means I’ve got to work with the prime minister, to be frank it doesn’t matter to me who the prime minister is. I’m going to do all I can to make sure I get the best deal for the local area.

So, absolutely I was a supporter of Boris Johnson. I’m a supporter of Rishi Sunak’s as well.

And even if there is a change of government later this year, or Rishi is still prime minister, or it’s somebody else, to me, I’ll work with anybody if it means getting things done for local people.

Asked if he thought the overall results were damaging for the Conservatives, Houchen ducked the question, claiming he had “not really paid attention to the national results”.

When it was put to him that having his majority slashed substantially showed that the Tories were not doing well nationally, Houchen said that was “for commentators and others to decide”, not him.

We’re expecting the results of the East Midlands mayoral election at around 2pm, with polls suggesting it could be a comfortable win for Labour’s Claire Ward.

It is the first time a mayor for the region - encompassing Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire - has been elected.

Conservative Ben Bradley, who is already an MP for Mansfield and leader of Nottinghamshire county council, had hoped his strong local connections would help him clinch the win.

But the mood at the count in Nottingham is that Labour is on track for victory.

Tory Ben Houchen on course for re-election as Tees Valley mayor after winning first 3 of 5 council areas to count

Ben Houchen is looking a near certainty to win the Tees Valley mayoral race with three of the five local authority areas that elect the mayor voting in his favour.

As well as winning in Hartlepool (see 11.28am) and Redcar and Clevelend (see 11.35am), Houchen won in Middlesbrough, where he had 13,285, Labour’s Chris McEwan had 12,749 and Simon Thorley for the Lib Dems had 1,390.

Votes from Darlington and Stockton-on-Tees are to come but Houchen is looking very relaxed and confident as he poses for pictures with his wife and young baby daughter at the count in Thornaby.

The final result is expected between 12.30 and -1pm.

Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, also won more votes than his Labour rival in Redcar, PA reports. He polled 15,987 against 12,015 for Chris McEwan and 1,639 for Liberal Democrat Simon Thorley.

Of the five authorities covered by the Tees Valley mayoralty, Redcar and Cleveland was the one where Houchen did best in the last contest, in 2021. He got 75% of the vote then.

A Labour source told PA Media that Tees Valley always seemed out of reach for the party. Houchen won with 73% of the vote three years ago. The source said Houchen, had been effectively running as an independent rather than a Conservative, and a swing of 12.5% would be enough for Labour to win every parliamentary seat in the region.

Conservative Ben Houchen could be on course to narrowly win the Tees Valley mayoral contest for a third time, giving prime minister Rishi Sunak a glimmer of hope for his immediate political future.

Counting started at 9.30am and the final result is expected at between 12.30 and 1pm.

There are votes from five local authority areas being counted. The results from Hartlepool are in: Houchen - 10,074; Chris McEwan for Labour - 8,732; Simon Thorley for the Lib Dems – 972.

Votes from Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, Darlington and Stockton-on-Tees to come.

Tory chair Richard Holden claims election results 'typical for government in midterm

In an interview with Sky News this morning Richard Holden, the Conservative party chair, described these election results as “typical for a government in midterm”.

This is a traditional line for a govenrment party to take when it does badly in local elections. But it only works when the government really is “in midterm” – in its second, third, or even fourth year in office.

This one isn’t – not by any plausible definition. It has been in office for nearly four and a half year. The next general election has to be held by January, and it is widely expected to take place in October or November.

Almost two thirds of Tory party members don't think Sunak should resign, regardless of how bad results are, survey suggests

Almost two thirds of Conservative party members do not think Rishi Sunak should resign, regardless of how bad the local election results are, according to a survey.

The ConservativeHome website regularly surveys Tory members and this morning it has published the findings of the responses to its latest question.

As Henry Hill reports in his ConHome write-up:

Almost two thirds, 63 per cent, say that the prime minister should not resign, whatever plays out over the next couple of days. Of the rest the majority, 20 per cent, think he should step down whatever happens. That leaves just 13 per cent who think his future ought to rest on the results of these elections.

ConservativeHome surveys of Tory members are generally seen as fairly reliable guides to what the membership think; they track the results of internal party elections reasonably closely.

And the members who participate in them are not Sunak enthusiasts. In another recent survey they said Sunak was performing worse than any other full member of the cabinet.

On BBC News Nick Eardley has just presented some figures from the BBC’s analysis of council results so far suggesting the Labour vote is down 16 points in areas with a Muslim population. He said that, compared to the results in 2021 (when most of the seats being contested yesterday were last fought), Labour support is down 16 percentage points and Green support is up 19 percentage points.

Eardley stressed that these figures were based on results from just a small number of wards.

He also said that, across the country overall, the Labour vote is up 5 percentage points and the Tories are down 14 percentage points compared to 2021.

These are early, provisional figures, because most of the council results have not come in yet.

A reader has sent me this, prompted by the report at 9.47am about the Electoral Commission and photo ID.

I was presiding officer at a station in a large village … yesterday. We were only running a police and crime commissioner poll. I issued ballot papers to 177 electors, three electors had to return after initially failing to bring ID. A fourth elector did not return.

The Electoral Commission voter ID evaluation requires staff to record voter’s details if they are turned away due to lack of ID. However, if stations choose to start by asking for voters’ ID they will generally have no details when the elector departs.

The commission also suggests that stations deploy a “welcomer” to remind electors of the need for ID before they approach the desk for a ballot paper. Combined with possible reluctance by staff to complete yet more paperwork, I fear there may be significant underreporting of the effect of the government’s voter ID scheme.

Updated

Prof Michael Thrasher, the lead psephologist for Sky News (their version of John Curtice), said the overnight results were “very bad news” for the Conservative and showed that they were at risk of near-annhilation at the general election.

As Sky News reports, Thrasher said that in 2019 the Tories won a big election victory on the basis of support from leave voters. But he said that, overnight, the Conservative vote was down almost 18 points in the areas that voted most strongly for leave. He went on:

If the Conservative fall as low as these council elections so far appear to be telling us, then we’re in a situation that we were in (back) in 1997, where the Conservative vote fell so far down that they were almost annihilated.

The same fate awaits the Conservatives at the next general election if their vote slides this far below, say, 30% in a general election.

Lewis Baston, an elections specialist, has written an analysis of the results so far for the Guardian. He thinks the outlook looks better for Labour than some of the council seat change figures imply.

Here is an extract.

The Blackpool South byelection was not a routine mid-term setback for the party of government. For a start, it comes well into the fifth year of the parliament and is therefore late-term; the swing is also much higher than normal for mid-terms. We have become used to swings of more than 20 percentage points and Blackpool South is the fifth Conservative seat to fall to Labour on such a large movement in the last year.

No previous parliament since 1945 has had more than two such wins for the main opposition. Blackpool’s verdict looks like an electoral death sentence for the Conservative government. While it is true that the turnout was very low (32.5%) this makes the disappearance of the Conservative vote all the more remarkable. Fewer people voted Tory in 2024 (3,218) than comprised Scott Benton’s marginal majority in 2019 (3,690). Labour polled well over half the vote; its victory owed nothing to the rise of Reform UK to threaten the Tories’ hold on second place …

The results demonstrate how we no longer have the same party system for different levels of election. In Blackpool South, Labour dominated the centre-left vote, the Lib Dems and Greens both losing their deposit. The rightwing vote was divided almost evenly between the Conservatives and Reform UK, giving Labour a massive margin of victory. In the local elections. the pattern is different, with Lib Dems and Greens having local strongholds and dividing the centre-left, while Reform’s limited participation in the local elections meant the Conservatives did not have to worry about vote splits outside a few localities like Hartlepool and Sunderland.

The toll of local government seat losses for the Conservatives, daunting though it may be as the day’s counting proceeds, is understating the potential for a general election drubbing.

And here is the full article.

As Ben Riley-Smith from the Telegraph reports, David Campbell Bannerman, chair of the Conservative Democratic Organisation and a former MEP (for both Ukip and the Tories) has said Rishi Sunak should quit.

David Campbell Bannerman, the ex-Tory MEP and chairman of the Conservative Democratic Organisation, calls on Rishi Sunak to resign.

He tells @Telegraph: “Once again local elections under Sunak have been absolutely disastrous. A year ago we should have won seats…” 1/3

…under him; we lost 1,000 councillors. This time is the worst performance in 40 years, so far.

“Sunak is not a natural campaigner and wasn’t even seen campaigning. The lesson is clear: enough of this disastrous, visionless, vacuous leadership. Rishi must go and go now….” 2/3

…This is a reality check for Conservative MPs: enough avoidance of the problem. 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 a hard Left woke Labour. Do the necessary and do it quickly!” 3/3

The Conservative Democratic Organistion is a fringe outfit run by diehard Boris Johnson loyalists. As further results come in today and over the weekend, the situation may well change, but if the anti-Sunak backlash does not spread much beyond Tim Montgomerie (see 6.25am) and David Campbell Bannerman, Sunak will be safe.

Electoral Commission chief claims photo ID requirement for voting didn't cause 'any major problems'

A reader asks:

We know that Tom Hunt didn’t have ID, Johnson was turned away for not having ID and veterans learned their ID doesn’t count. Is there, please, ANY info on the rest of us? Outside these famous cases there must be thousands and thousands who were denied the right to vote. Come on this is an important stat. Why the silence on it?

“Silence” is a bit unfair. In the 6.50am slot the Today programme interviewed Vijay Rangarajan, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, to ask him about the impact of the photo ID requirement for voters and he claimed that the new rule did not create “any major problems”.

Asked how many people there were like Boris Johnson, who forgot his photo ID when he turned up to vote, Rangarajan replied:

It does not seem like there were very many.

This was the first test for large parts of the country of the Elections Act provision on voter ID. We had people around the country, I was out looking and observing in polling stations. A few people turned up without it. They went home and got it, much like Mr Johnson did. An awful lot of people had brought it. We think the campaigns that we and many others have done to raise awareness had worked.

Asked if some people would have been discouraged from voting in the first place by the photo ID requirement, Rangarajan said that the commission had “not seen any major problems so far” but that it would be doing further analysis.

A report by the commission last year, after the local elections where people were required to produce photo ID for the first time, said at least 0.25% of people who tried to vote were unable to do so because they lacked photo ID. And it said, of those people who did not vote, 4% of them said it was because of the photo ID rule.

My colleague Helen Pidd points out that a Karl Marx has been elected as a Labour councillor in Stockport.

I want to know more about the Karl Marx of Stockport, who just won a seat for Labour in Stockport’s most deprived ward, Brinnington.

She is referring to this post on X from Stockport council.

Brinnington & Stockport Central results are in🗳️

Karl Peter Marx Wardlaw (Labour) has been elected to represent Brinnington & Stockport Central at the Stockport local elections 2024

In an interview with the BBC, Keir Starmer was asked if he was concerned that his position on Gaza was costing him vote. (It has been cited as the reason, or part of the reason, for Labour losing control of Oldham council.) In response, Starmer did not really engage with the question. He said that he was concerned wherever the party was losing votes. But he went on:

But there’s no denying that across the country, whether is Hartlepool in the north, or Rushmoor in the south [in Hampshire], or Redditch, bellwether seats, we are winning votes across the country. And that, I think, reflects a changed the Labour party with a positive case to take to the country.

Starmer says 'incredible' Blackpool South byelection result show people 'fed up with decline' and want change

Keir Starmer is in Blackpool South where he told Labour activists a few minutes ago that the byelection result was a clear message to the PM that people want change. He said:

It is incredible to have won by such a swing, a 26% swing. That’s the fifth swing of over 20% to the Labour party in byelections in recent months and years. It is a fantastic result, a really first class result.

And here in Blackpool, a message has been sent directly to the prime minister, because this was a parliamentary vote, to say we’re fed up with your decline, your chaos of your division and we want change. We want to go forward with Labour.

That wasn’t just a little message. That wasn’t just a murmur. That was a shout from Blackpool. We want to change. And Blackpool speaks forthe whole country in saying we’ve had enough now, after 14 years of failure, 14 years of decline.

Updated

Here is the latest summary of councils that have changed control as a result of results counted so far.

Labour gains from Tories: Redditch and Rushmoor

Labour gains from no overall control: Hartlepool and Thurrock

Conservative loss to no overall control: North East Lincolnshire

Labour losss to no overall control: Oldham

Reform UK's Lee Anderson says he thinks his new party will overtake Tories in vote share

And in an interview with Sky News Lee Anderson, the Reform UK MP, said he thought his new party would overtake his old one, the Tories.

He said the 17% Reform UK got in Blackpool South (see 6.10am) was higher than the 15% he was expecting. He went on:

We’re going up and the Conservative Party is coming down.

We’re going to meet at some point. We’ve already met it in places in the north and in the Midlands.

I think with a general election probably four or five months away, then we’re going to surpass them.

Lee Anderson, the former deputy chair of the Conservative party who is now a Reform UK MP, told the Today programme this morning that the result in Blackpool South showed that his party was “here to stay” and “making in-roads”.

And he said the election results were very bad for his old party.

It was a good night for Labour, let’s be honest. It was a very, very poor night for the Conservative party.

Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who in past called for Sunak to quit, says it's 'unlikely' he will face no confidence vote

Only two Conservative MPs are so far on the record as saying that Rishi Sunak should be replaced before the general election. They are Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who said in November she was calling for a no confidence vote, and Sir Simon Clarke, the former levelling up secretary, who wrote a Telegraph article in January saying Sunak should go.

But Jenkins now accepts that a no confidence vote is “unlikely”. She told the Today programe a few minutes ago:

I’m not sure that colleagues are going to be putting the letters in, so we’re working with what we’ve got.

I think we shouldn’t have got rid of Boris [Johnson] in the first place. But we are where we are. And it’s looking unlikely that the MPs are going to put the letters in. So we’ve got to pull together.

Jenkyns was referring to the 52 letters that need to be sent to the chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee for a no confidence vote to be held. Letters are submitted in secret, and so only the chair, Sir Graham Brady, knows how many have already gone in. But it is thought the rebels are not remotely close to getting the 52 letters they need.

In an interview with Sky News this morning Richard Holden, the Conservative party chair, played down the results of the Blackpool South byelection, pointing out that it was held “in particular circumstances of not only the previous MP [Scott Benton] having been forced to stand down but also during the campaign in the neighbouring seat a former Conservative MP [Mark Menzies] had to have the whip withdrawn.”

Prof Sir John Curtice, the elections expert, gave a rather different assessment on the Today programme this morning. Speaking about the byelection result, he said:

The honest truth is the result in Blackpool South was spectacular. It was the third biggest swing from Conservative to Labour in post-war in postwar byelection history. And it’s the third biggest drop in the Conservative vote in postwar byelection history.

The trouble is, we’ve rather used to the spectacular in parliamentary byelections in this parliament. This is now the fifth by election in which the swing has been over 20%. There have haven’t been much more than a dozen of those in the whole of the post war period.

When was the last time that such swings occurred as more than a rare event? Well, it was the parliament of 1992 to 1997 which ended with Tony Blair winnning a landslide victory.

Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, told BBC Breakfast this morning that he did think Gaza might be costing the party votes in some places. “I don’t think there’s any point in denying that,” he said. But he said he did not think it was the only reason for Labour losing control of Oldham council. (See 7.19am.) He said:

In addition to the Middle East issue which you mentioned there are specific very local factors in Oldham which have knocked it out of line with the Labour gains we’ve been seeing in local elections.

Labour gain two police and crime commissioner posts as first 3 PCC results declared

Yesterday, as well as voting for councillors and metro mayors, everyone in England and Wales had the chance to vote for a police and crime commissioner. These posts are some of the more obscure in local government – turnout in these elections has historically been very low, and most PCCs are not well known – but they have been a Conservative stronghold. Some 30 of the 37 PCC posts being contested have been held by the Tories.

But that could change. Three results are in already, and Labour has gained two of them.

In Avon and Somerset Labour’s Clare Moody won with 32% over the Conservative incumbent Mark Shelford (31%). In 2021 the Tories won with 35% of the vote over Labour’s 24%.

And in Cumbria Labour’s David Allen beat the Tory incumbent by 47% to 30%. In 2021 the Conservatives won with 54% of the vote, more than double Labour’s share.

But the Conservative did retain the PCC post in Lincolnshire.

UPDATE: Some readers have been in touch to say they did not get a PCC vote. But they will have had a metro mayor vote, and metro mayors generally perform the role of a PCC.

Updated

Tory chair Richard Holden says results 'not great', but 'there's no doubt' Sunak will lead party into general election

Richard Holden, the Conservative party chair, has said that although these results have not been great for the Tories, there is no chance of Rishi Sunak being replaced.

Asked if Sunak could survive the election losses, Holden told Times Radio:

The prime minister is going to go on and lead the Conservative party into the general election, there’s no doubt about that.

Asked for his response to the results so far, Holden said:

Not a great set of results but coming off I think it would be fair to say a very high watermark in 2021.

The Conservative party has not got much to be positive about this morning, but it is reminding journalists this morning that Labour failed to take control of Harlow council in Essex, even though it was a Labour target. (See 5.32am.) Keir Starmer told Sky News Labour needed to win “in places like Harlow”, the Tories say. “Whilst this is tough night for the Conservative party, it’s clear there is absolutely no love for Keir Starmer,” a Tory source said.

The Tories went into the local elections with 21 of the seats on the council, and Labour holding the other 12. All seats were up for election. The Tories now have 17 seats, and Labour 16.

Starmer and Angela Rayner visited the town on Wednesday.

The Liberal Democrats have retained control of Winchester, after winning eight of the first 10 seats to be declared, PA reports.

Arooj Shah, the Labour leader of Oldham council, has rejected suggestions that Keir Starmer’s response to the Israel-Gaza war was to blame for the party losing control of the council. (See 6.44am.) When this was put to in an interview on the Today programme, she replied:

I don’t think that’s a fair statement to make, given that the issue of Gaza has been over the last year but what we’ve seen in Oldham is a lot longer than that … what we have had is 13 years of austerity and that’s been really, really difficult.

Shah said that there had been “divisive, toxic politics” in Oldham for the last five years and that problems in the town were ultimately linked to Tory austerity.

The Liberal Democrats are restating their call for an early general election. Commenting on the results so far, Daisy Cooper, the party’s deputy leader, said:

Rishi Sunak must listen to the country and immediately call a general election. Britain’s crumbling health services cannot wait any longer. Each day of dithering and delay by this Conservative government plunges our NHS further into crisis.

The Liberal Democrats are on the up with gaining councillors across the country, from Hampshire to Stockport.

The Liberal Democrats’ winning streak continues and we are ready to beat Conservative MPs and finally get this chaotic government out of office.

Here is the state of play for anyone just catching up with the overnight results.

  • The Conservatives are already suffering heavy losses in the council elections. According to the BBC’s tally, they have already lost more than 100 seats. Within the last hour Prof Sir John Curtice, the BBC’s election specialist, told the Today programme that the Conservatives were “basically losing half the seats they’re trying to defend”. He said if that continued, they could end up losing around 500 seats. He said the party seemed to be on course for “one of the worst, if not the worst Conservative performance in local government elections for the last 40 years”.

  • Labour has gained control of four councils: Rushmoor and Redditch, both from the Conservatives; and Hartlepool and Thurrock, both from no overall control. The Conservatives have lost control of three councils. The full results are available here.

  • The Liberal Democrats and the Greens have been celebrating gaining seats.

But most councils are yet to declare. Only 34 of the 107 councils were elections are taking place have declared. And none of the metro mayoral election results are in yet.

Here is a guide to when further results will be coming.

Updated

Stockport town hall will have no Conservative councillors for the second year running, which cannot bode well for the party’s reelection hopes in the general election.

Two out of three Stockport parliamentary constituencies are currently Tory (if we count Hazel Grove, which is officially independent after William Wragg got himself tangled up in that sextortion scandal).

The Liberal Democrats will feel very hopeful of winning back both Hazel Grove and Cheadle when the big day comes, though they will have been gutted to fail to take full council control, remaining one seat short of a majority. They’ll likely carry on running a minority administration with help from various independents and hyper local parties. Not a great night for Labour in one of Greater Manchester’s most affluent boroughs.

Labour loses control of Oldham council

Labour has lost control of Oldham after losing seats to independents, PA reports. With two seats still to declare, the party was unable to reach the threshold of 31 for a majority on the council.

Labour did have a small majority on Oldham councils (31 seats out of 60). But it has been losing seats on the council in recent elections and this is an area with a large Muslim population, where Labour may have lost support because of its stance on Gaza.

Updated

These are from Rob Ford, a politics professor and elections expert, on the significance of Labour’s byelection win in Blackpool South.

26 point Con to Lab swing in Blackpool South - third biggest swing ever. Reform UK’s 16.9% is the best they’ve achieved in a by-election *but* it is less than UKIP managed in the general election in 2015 in the same seat - and miles below what UKIP was getting regularly in by-elex in 2013-15

Tony Blair achieved four 20 point plus swings from Cons when he was opposition leader - Starmer has now achieved five - including four of the top 5 largest ever, all achieved in the last year

20 point plus Con to Lab swings:

Starmer 5

Blair 4

Kinnock 1

Key event

Labour retained control of Lincoln after gaining three seats, leaving the party with 23 of the 33 seats on the council, PA Media reports. The Conservatives lost four seats, with the Liberal Democrats gaining one, and both parties now have five councillors.

The Green party is celebrating gains overnight. It has gained council seats in Newcastle (2), South Tyneside (2), Colchester (1), Exeter (1), Sefton (1), Peterborough (1). Adrian Ramsay, the party’s co-leader, said: “We are winning because our message of hope is being heard by new groups of voters.”

Portsmouth remains under no overall control, with the Liberal Democrats still the biggest party, PA Media is reporting.

For months Rishi Sunak and No 10 have been worried about this moment, the morning after the local elections, because they feared that bad results would lead to Tories calling for Sunak to be replaced.

And this morning there has been a Conservative on the BBC saying Sunak should go. But the good news for Sunak is that it is only Tim Montgomerie, the founder of the ConservativeHome website and a respected commentator, but not an MP or someone with more clout in the parliamentary party.

This is what Montgomerie told the BBC’s election programme:

I think we do need to resolve the question of Rishi Sunak’s leadership. He’s a nice and decent man, but he just can’t do politics.

He hasn’t defined Labour in a significant way. He’s not able to campaign. He makes announcements, waits for reaction in the opinion polls, doesn’t get one and then moves on. There isn’t the sort of sustained campaign you would expect from an effective politician …

Personally I think the results are so bad, and althought it’s a big roll of the dice, and it would be a gamble, I just don’t think he is connected with the voters at all. I think he should go.

Sunak only really needs to worry when a former Tory minister starts turning up on the BBC saying the same thing.

Updated

How Labour won Blackpool South with 26% swing from Tories - results in full

Good morning. I’m Andrew Sparrow, taking over from Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be here for the day.

And as people take stock of the election results so far, the most striking is the outcome of the Blackpool South byelection, where there was a 26-point swing from the Conservatives to Labour, and the Tories only beat Reform UK by a whisker (defined as 117 votes, for these purposes).

Chris Webb (Lab) 10,825 (58.91%, +20.57%)

David Jones (C) 3,218 (17.51%, -32.09%)

Mark Butcher (Reform) 3,101 (16.88%)

Andrew Cregan (LD) 387 (2.11%, -0.97%)

Ben Thomas (Green) 368 (2.00%, +0.28%)

Stephen Black (Ind) 163 (0.89%, -0.24%)

Kim Knight (ADF) 147 (0.80%)

Howling Laud Hope (Loony) 121 (0.66%)

Damon Sharp (NonPol) 45 (0.24%)

Lab maj 7,607 (41.40%)

26.33% swing C to Lab

Electorate 56,704; Turnout 18,375 (32.41%, -24.37%)

2019: C maj 3,690 (11.27%) – Turnout 32,752 (56.77%) Benton (C) 16,247 (49.61%); Marsden (Lab) 12,557 (38.34%); Brown (Brexit) 2,009 (6.13%); Greene (LD) 1,008 (3.08%); Daniels (Green) 563 (1.72%); Coleman (Ind) 368 (1.12%)

The Lib Dems have also held on to Gosport Borough council and Winchester city council, while the party remain in minority control of Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, the BBC has reported.

Portsmouth remains under no overall control, with the Liberal Democrats still the biggest party.

A Lib Dem source said:

We are buoyed by our gains overnight that set us up to take seats off the Conservatives at the next election.

We have made new inroads in true blue councils in Hampshire including in Suella Braverman’s back yard, gained ground in Stockport and topped the popular vote in battleground constituencies across the country.

This is just a taster of what is to come throughout Friday in the Blue Wall.

Why the mayoral elections in West Midlands and Tees Valley are so significant

The Blackpool South byelection was the big early test for Rishi Sunak but there are other key election results that will be announced over the next couple of days that could destabilise his increasingly fragile premiership.

Conservative mayors Andy Street, in the West Midlands, and Ben Houchen in Tees Valley are among those facing pivotal re-election battles, with polls suggesting narrow contests with their Labour opponents.

The mayor has devolved powers and funding to make local decisions on things like skills, tourism, economic development and transport.

Both contests could prove totemic because if Street and Houchen lose, Tory rebels could mount another attempt to remove Sunak as prime minister.

YouGov polling this week had Houchen on 51% of the vote, with his Labour rival, Chris McEwan, on 44%, but the contest looks like it is on a knife-edge.

Houchen has been in the job for seven years and is defending a whopping majority – taking 73% of the vote against Labour’s 28% in 2020. Potentially losing such a huge majority could spell danger for the Tory MPs in other so-called red wall seats fighting in the general election.

Street, a former managing director of John Lewis who was elected as the first mayor of the West Midlands in 2017, is also hugely popular in his constituency.

He is going up against Labour’s Richard Parker and is working against a backdrop of polls showing tanking support for his party and a potential Labour landslide victory at the next general election. A YouGov poll this week found that the result was too close to call.

Prof John Curtice told an Institute for Government event on Wednesday the Conservative party was emphasising the two contests “because they think they might manage to win the contest and therefore they’ll be able to cover whatever disasters happen elsewhere”.

“Because of the personal votes of these two, (these contests are) going to be the least reliable indicator,” he said.

You can read about how Street and Houchen have run their mayoral re-election campaigns almost entirely separate from the Conservative party in this story written by my colleagues, Kiran Stacey and Jessica Murray, here:

  • Tees Valley result expected: 12.30pm (Friday lunchtime)

  • West Midlands result expected: 3pm (Saturday afternoon)

Updated

The Conservatives have managed to retain Harlow Council by one seat, after a tightly fought race.

This is from Ian Jones, a data /graphics journalist who works for PA Media:

Commenting on Labour’s decisive win in Blackpool South, Tory deputy chair Angela Richardson told the BBC: “The result was not unexpected. I think, given the circumstances that caused the byelection in the first place, it was always going to be difficult for the Conservatives.”

Elections expert Prof John Curtice said:

The only thing that’s stopped this result from being basically an unmitigated disaster for the Conservatives was the fact they just narrowly squeaked ahead of Reform.

Basically the project that Rishi Sunak is meant to be there to achieve, which is to narrow the gap on Labour, that project still has yet to provide any visible benefit.

Main takeaways from election results so far

  • Labour has regained the seat of Blackpool South in Thursday’s parliamentary byelection, in a fresh blow to Rishi Sunak’s leadership. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, called it a “seismic win”. The local and firm favourite Chris Webb won with 10,825 votes, followed by David Jones, the Conservative candidate, with a distant 3,218 votes. He finished narrowly ahead of the Reform candidate, Mark Butcher, on 3,101 votes.

  • Labour won control of Thurrock (which had been under no overall control) after starting the night as the second biggest party, prompting members of the shadow cabinet to say that the result showed the party was on course to win the general election.

  • Labour officially gained Hartlepool council, which is of symbolic importance to the party’s leader Keir Starmer after Labour lost the parliamentary byelection there in 2021. This council had also been under no overall control. Labour won nine of the 12 seats up for grabs, with independents winning two and the Conservatives one.

  • A Liberal Democrat source said the party has already been “hearing of Lib Dem gains in former Conservative heartlands”. “Lib Dems expecting to move forward overnight in Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Hertfordshire,” the source added.

  • The Conservatives won the first police and crime commissioner election to be declared, in Lincolnshire.

  • Prof John Curtice, the polling expert, has said that, according to the early results, Labour are not making the sort of “dramatic” gains the party did under Tony Blair before its landslide 1997 general election victory. They are doing more or less the same as they did in last year’s elections, Curtice said, while noting that early local election results “don’t look as though they’re going to provide that much solace to 10 Downing Street”. “It is not looking very good for the Conservatives, I think one has to say,” he told BBC Politics.

  • The Green party has had some impressive gains in some councils in England, with the party winning its first ever council seats on Newcastle city council.

  • Before even the first result was declared, transport secretary Mark Harper said the evening could be very “difficult” for the Conservatives. His fears were later echoed by Tory councillors who warned that some voters were likely to vote in protest against the government, even if they supported the actions and policies of their local Conservative councillors.

You can continue to read all the council results live on our tracker here.

Updated

The Guardian’s North of England correspondent, Robyn Vinter, explores the significance of the Blackpool South byelection win for Labour here:

Updated

Keir Starmer hails 'seismic' Blackpool South byelection win, pointing to 'historic swing'

Keir Starmer has said the Blackpool South byelection win was “seismic” with a “truly historic swing” showing that people in the constituency are voting “overwhelmingly” for change. He called it the most “important result” declared today.

The 26.33% swing was the third biggest from the Conservatives to Labour at a byelection since the second world war.

Starmer said:

This seismic win in Blackpool South is the most important result today.

This is the one contest where voters had the chance to send a message to Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives directly, and that message is an overwhelming vote for change.

The swing towards the Labour party in Blackpool South is truly historic and shows that we are firmly back in the service of working people.

I am so proud of the positive campaign we ran. To those who have put their trust in us in Blackpool, and those considering giving Labour their vote, we are ready to serve your interests.

Our new Labour MP Chris Webb has shown that after years of neglect with the Tories, there is a better alternative. The message to Rishi Sunak is clear. It’s time for change, it’s time for a general election.

The local and firm favourite Chris Webb won with 10,825 votes, followed by David Jones, the Conservative candidate, with a distant 3,218 votes, who finished narrowly ahead of the Reform candidate, Mark Butcher, on 3,101 votes.

Updated

New Blackpool South MP says Sunak has 'failed' and demands a general election

In his victory speech, the new Blackpool South MP, Chris Webb, said the message to Rishi Sunak is that people no longer “trust the Conservatives”, as he urged the embattled prime minister to admit he has “failed” and to call a general election.

He blamed the Conservatives for the high rate of child poverty in parts of the constituency and said not enough is being done to help people through the cost-of-living crisis. He said the Tories have “crashed” the economy, put up taxes and “destroyed” public services.

Webb, who has promised to try to bring regeneration to his constituency, said he is humbled that every ward in the town voted for him.

“People are fed up because nothing seems to work any more. Hard up because of the Conservative cost-of-living crisis. But instead of giving up they got up and voted for change with Labour,” he said.

Webb added:

The message to the prime minister is that we need a general election – sooner the better. People no longer trust the Conservatives. Prime minister, do the decent thing: admit you failed and call a general election.

Give the people of Britain the same opportunity people in Blackpool South have – a Labour MP and Keir Starmer in Downing Street. And let Labour get on with delivering the change the people of Britain want and deserve.

Updated

Here is the Blackpool South byelection results in full (Tory to Labour swing was 26%):

  • Chris Webb – Labour: 10,825

  • David Jones – Conservative: 3,218

  • Mark Butcher – Reform: 3,101

  • Andrew Cregan – Lib Dems: 387

  • Ben Thomas – Green Party: 368

  • Stephen Black – Independent: 163

  • Kim Knight – Alliance for Freedom and Democracy: 147

  • Howling Laud Hope – Official Monster Raving Loony party: 121

  • Damon Sharp – New Open Non-Political Organised Leadership: 45

Updated

Labour regains Blackpool South in significant byelection blow to Rishi Sunak

Labour has regained the key seat of Blackpool South in Thursday’s byelection, with local and firm favourite Chris Webb securing 10,825 votes to cruise to victory.

The Conservative candidate, David Jones, got 3,218 and the Reform candidate Mark Butcher got 3,101 votes.

It means that Rishi Sunak’s leadership is in fresh peril after the defection of the former Conservative health minister Dr Dan Poulter to Labour last week and the potential loss of huge swaths of the party’s councillors could ignite rebellious Tories to defy the prime minister’s authority and go over the line with letters of no confidence.

The “red wall” Blackpool South constituency had been held by the Tories since 2019. Before then, it had been considered a safe Labour seat since 1997 and was held by Gordon Marsden, whom Webb had previously worked for as an adviser.

The Conservative candidate for Blackpool South faced competition from Reform’s Mark Butcher, a local businessman who runs a soup kitchen being probed by the Charity Commission over claims it was used to promote his campaign.

Cabinet minister Chris Heaton-Harris accepted earlier that Blackpool South was likely to be lost by the Conservatives.

The Northern Ireland Secretary said it was “going to be a tough seat for us to hold” given the scandal which led to it.

Updated

The candidates for the Blackpool South byelection are gathering. We are expected to get the results imminently.

Labour gained the Cumbria police and crime commissioner from the Conservatives, with David Allen gaining a majority of 13,845, and the Liberal Democrat candidate on 18,100.

The turnout was just under 21%, slightly up on Lincolnshire PCC, where it was just under 19%.

This just in from the BBC about the Blackpool South byelection results, which we are expecting to be declared within the next half an hour.

This is from their live blog:

As the candidates and their campaign nervously await the declaration in the Blackpool South byelection, Reform UK’s candidate Mark Butcher – battling it out for second place with the Tories – tells me “it’s close, really close – there’s about 50 votes in it”.

Labour is expected to win back the seat, which fell vacant after the former Tory MP Scott Benton resigned after breaching standards rules in a lobbying scandal.

Benton won the once solidly Labour-voting constituency in the 2019 election with a 3,690 majority.

Tories win first police and crime commissioner election to be declared

The Conservatives won the first police and crime commissioner (PCC) election to be declared, in Lincolnshire.

The party retained the PCC, with Marc Jones winning with 39,639 votes, a majority of 7,708 over Labour, with Reform UK third on 15,518, ahead of the Liberal Democrats on 13,380 and the English Democrats on 7,739.

These are the first PCC elections to use the first-past-the-post system.

Introduced in 2012 to replace police authorities, PCCs were intended to make police forces more accountable and responsive to their local community.

John Curtice analysis: Early results won't provide 'solace to No 10' but Labour wins are not comparable to 'dramatic' gains Blair made before 1997 general election landslide

Prof John Curtice, the polling expert, has said that, according to the early results, Labour are not making the sort of “dramatic” gains the party did under Tony Blair before its landslide 1997 general election victory.

They are doing more or less the same as they did in last year’s elections, Curtice said, while noting that early local election results “don’t look as though they’re going to provide that much solace to 10 Downing Street”.

“It is not looking very good for the Conservatives, I think one has to say,” he told BBC Politics.

“Put it like this: there are two things that perhaps the Conservatives would prefer to avoid …

“One that the Conservatives end up losing 500 seats, which as it were that the worst scenario that was painted for them and two that their performance of these local elections when we kind of add up the votes is probably going to end up being a little bit worse than it was last year.”

Some psephologists have predicted the Conservatives could lose 500 council seats – about half of those the party is defending this time around.

This set of local council seats was last contested in May 2021, when the Conservatives under Johnson were at a high point after the UK’s Covid vaccine rollout, and the party enjoyed its strongest performance since 2008.

“Put those two things together the broad message from the local ballot boxes will be that Rishi Sunak’s principal political project, which is to try to narrow the lead on Labour, has not really made much progress, is what the polls have been telling us. It’s now increasingly looking that is what the local ballot boxes are going to tell us too,” Curtice continued.

“And there is plenty for Labour to be happy about but in effect it looks as though we’re talking about Labour doing more or less as well as they did last year, which is not bad and it’s roughly what the opinion polls were saying.

“But it’s still the case that Labour are not heading for the kind of really dramatic local election performances that they managed to achieve under Tony Blair before the 1997 general election.

“We’re still in a very different world from that, not least because of the success of the Greens, which is also notable in these elections and which has for some time been hurting Labour – though nothing like to the same extent to which Reform have been hurting the Conservatives.”

Curtice has said that the Conservatives have not managed to close the gap with Labour since last year and that the smaller parties are chipping away at the support of the two main parties in Westminster (Greens to Labour and Reform to the Conservatives).

Updated

The Conservatives have retained control of Fareham after winning 17 of the first 22 seats to be declared on the council, which has 31 seats.

The party went into polling day with 24 seats.

Here are some of the latest images coming from the newswires of the Blackpool South count, which the Labour candidate, Chris Webb, is the firm favourite to win. It looks like it is a battle between the Tories and Reform for second place. We should be getting the results in shortly.

Updated

More of that PA interview with Richard Tice, the Reform party leader.

Asked what his party was aiming to achieve at a general election, he said:

As many votes as possible. To secure some seats. Frankly, it would be a really good time for us to get more votes cast than the Conservative party.

You have to be optimistic. It’s ambitious but it’s well doable given the trend of our polling, the progress.

Bear in mind there is probably a third of the country who have still never heard of us. So, if you think what we are polling and what we are achieving when people have not heard of us, in a sense it just shows there is a huge amount of extra growth and votes to go for.

Speaking in Blackpool ahead of the declaration for the Blackpool South seat, Reform UK party leader Richard Tice has had an interview with the PA news agency.

Tice has said that his Reform party – which is hoping to draw in Tory voters (along with anyone else fed up with the mainstream parties) – is now “the real opposition” to Labour in the so-called red wall (typically defined as former Labour seats in northern England and the Midlands).

Tice said:

From what we have seen from some of the local elections in the north-east and from this byelection in Blackpool South is that Reform UK is rapidly become the real opposition to Labour, whether it’s in the North, the Midlands, we know it’s the case in Wales. So, yes, we are very excited.

This is a very good day for Reform UK. It’s also a good day for democracy, actually, because the Great British people have got a serious alternative to consider when they want to go and vote.

Helen Catt, a BBC political correspondent, has just tweeted that turnout for Blackpool South is 32.5%. This is much lower than the figure for the 2019 general election, which was 56.8% (though it is true that byelection turnout is usually less than it is for a national poll).

Updated

Here is a historical graph of how Blackpool South has voted since 1992:

Reform says it may have beaten Conservatives into second place in Blackpool South byelection

Reform UK leader Richard Tice said his party may have beaten the Tories into second place in the Blackpool South byelection, which Labour is expected to win.

He told Sky News it was “too close to call” but “I think we may just take it”.

“From our perspective, it’ll be our best byelection by a considerable margin, it will be usefully above our national polling average,” he said.

Tice added:

We’re the party on the up and what’s rapidly becoming clear, you are seeing it in some council elections elsewhere, in the north-east, is that we are becoming the real opposition in the north to the Labour party and I think that will continue in the Midlands and Wales.

These claims have not yet been independently verified by the Guardian.

Updated

Lib Dems 'hearing of gains in former Conservative heartlands' - source

A Liberal Democrat source has said that the party has already been “hearing of Lib Dem gains in former Conservative heartlands”.

“Lib Dems expecting to move forward overnight in Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Hertfordshire,” the source added.

While not all of these claims can be verified yet, the Liberal Democrats have held Eastleigh Borough Council in Hampshire, according to BBC News.

The Lib Dems have been static in terms of their national vote share for months, but officials have always said national polling is the wrong way to measure the party’s performance. Instead, they have been trying to focus on specific battles they think they can win.

Updated

The Conservatives lost control of North East Lincolnshire after Labour won five seats and the Liberal Democrats and independents one each, with four results still to come.

The party needed to win six seats on the night to retain control, but took only one of the first eight to be declared.

The Mirror’s deputy political editor, Mikey Smith, has said No 10 and the Conservative party are refusing to say when, where or how Rishi Sunak, the UK’s prime minister, has voted. They were asked whether Sunak had voted for Susan Hall, the Conservative candidate for London mayor, but this reportedly was not confirmed.

The latest YouGov poll puts Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, 22 points ahead of Hall, with Khan, who is seeking a third term, on 47% to Hall’s 25%.

The Green candidate, Zoe Garbett, is on 7% while Liberal Democrat Rob Blackie is tied on 6% with Reform UK’s Howard Cox.

The results of four of the 11 mayoral contests (East Midlands, North East, Tees Valley and York & North Yorkshire) will be declared during the day on May 3, while the rest - including London and the West Midlands - will be declared on May 4.

Labour says taking Thurrock council means party is on course to win general election

Labour has won won Thurrock, which had been under no overall control with the Conservatives as the largest party.

Labour won 10 of the first 13 wards to be declared, giving them 25 seats on the council which has a total of 49 seats, with four results still to come, according to the Press Association.

Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, told Times Radio that the Thurrock result showed the party was on track for a general election win.

A Labour party spokesperson said:

This is exactly the kind of place we need to be winning to gain a majority in a general election.

The people of Thurrock have sent the Conservatives a message that they want change.

“That is a key battleground parliamentary seat,” the Labour MP for Torfaen and shadow minister without portfolio (Cabinet Office), Nick Thomas-Symonds, said.

“The Conservatives have held it for the last 14 years, so winning back that seat is crucial for us in terms of winning a general election,” he told BBC radio.

“So to be taking control of the council this evening is a really significant step.”

Updated

The Green party has won its first ever council seats on Newcastle city council (see a breakdown of the results of the council’s election – which Labour won – here)

After gaining Elswick from Labour, Khaled Musharraf told BBC Radio “it was just about time”.

“The community was looking for something different. Nothing was happening in the community for a long period of time,” he said.

Asked if it was a sign of voters “fed-up with mainstream political parties and looking for an alternative,” Musharraf said he would “echo” that.

“When I spoke to people struggling with local issues – rubbish bins, potholes, safer safes – that is what helped us to win,” he told the BBC.

Labour officially gains Hartlepool council

Labour has officially gained Hartlepool council, according to our live election tracker. It was under no overall control, with Labour two councillors away from a majority. Now the polls have been counted, Labour won nine of the 12 seats up for grabs, with independents winning two and the Conservatives one.

Brenda Harrison is set to become the council’s first ever female council leader. In a celebratory tweet, she said the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has changed the Labour party, as she vowed to reverse the damage done by the Conservatives in the area.

Hartlepool has a symbolic importance for Starmer, who, according to polls is likely to be the next UK prime minister, after Labour lost the parliamentary byelection there in 2021.

Starmer considered resigning as Labour party leader after the defeat in the Hartlepool byelection three years ago, according to a biography.

The loss of the County Durham constituency to the Conservatives was a blow to Starmer as the party had held the seat since it was created in 1974.

Updated

John Curtice: Size of swing is to look out for in Blackpool South byelection result

The polling expert Prof John Curtice has said it is the size of the swing that will be significant in the Blackpool South byelection result, not the fact that Labour are the party likely to win the seat.

We reported earlier (see post at 23.00) that the Tories “do not expect” to win the Blackpool South byelection.

Labour sources are confident of victory in Blackpool South, with activists said to have reported large numbers of former Tory voters saying they would back Labour for the first time.

Curtice told Times Radio:

The Labour party are saying ‘gosh, we might win Blackpool South’. Going on to say well, of course, we’ll forget the fact that we won this constituency from 1997 to 2019.

And then if the Labour party is going to have any chance of winning an overall majority Blackpool South should be a home banker.

What will be interesting about Blackpool South is not whether labour win, but whether or not they can record something like the 20% swings from the conservatives that they achieved in places like Tamworth and Wellingborough and Selby where really big swings were needed.

But it’s the size of the swing that will matter not whether or not labour the simple fact that Labour are likely to win the seat.

We are expecting the result some time between 3 and 4am this morning.

Updated

Labour retained control of Newcastle upon Tyne after winning 12 of the first 19 seats to be declared early on Friday morning.

The party held 46 of the 78 council seats going in to polling day and needed to win 10 of the 27 being contested to retain control.

The Liberal Democrats had won four, Greens two and independents one, with eight seats still to declare.

Labour retained control of South Tyneside, but lost at least seven seats to independents.

The party needed to win four seats of the 14 seats it held going in to polling day, and while it achieved that, its majority will be reduced.

Labour has held Newcastle upon Tyne, with 15 out of 27 wards declared, according to partial results reported by BBC News.

Alison McGovern, the Labour MP for Wirral South, has told Times Radio that Labour losses to the Greens in Newcastle are worrying.

“Early Green performances look v strong with a couple of striking gains in Newcastle. Overall Greens are averaging 11% where they are contesting wards, and are up a little on 2019 – their best ever year in local elections,” Politics professor Rob Ford tweeted.

“Big Labour declines in two Newcastle wards with c.40% Muslim population – one lost to Greens, other narrowly held off independent challenge.”

Labour holds Sunderland city council - official result

Labour officially holds Sunderland city council, according to our live tracker. We reported the result earlier (see post at 01.10) but this was based off a partial count compiled by the BBC.

The final result in Sunderland was Labour 18, Liberal Democrats four and Conservatives three, with Reform UK beating the Tories in 16 of the 25 seats being contested.

So the new council’s make up is:

  • Labour: 53

  • Liberal Democrats: 12

  • Conservatives: 10

Updated

Helen Catt, a political correspondent from the BBC, has said the result from the Blackpool South byelection vote is not expected to be in until at least 3am this morning. Sky News is reporting the result should be in somewhere between 3 and 4am.

My colleague, Morgan Ofori, has been to Blackpool South to speak to voters about how they feel about Scott Benton, the former Tory MP who quit parliament before the conclusion of a recall petition among his constituents.

You can read his feature here:

The former Blackpool South MP was facing likely ejection from the Commons after he was suspended for 35 days over his role in a lobbying scandal, triggering a process whereby local people could force a byelection if at least 10% of registered voters signed the petition.

Benton took his seat from Labour in the 2019 election with a majority of just under 3,700, and Labour will be seen as firm favourites to take it back in a byelection.

Benton lost the Tory whip in April 2023 after suggesting to undercover reporters at the Times that he would be willing to break lobbying rules for money. The MP had offered to lobby ministers on behalf of the gambling industry and leak a confidential policy document for up to £4,000 a month.

Updated

How does the Guardian's live results tracker call the election results?

The results in our live tracker are provided by PA Media newswire (PA).

Numbers for change in seats are calculated against the state of the council just before this election. Other organisations calculate using the previous election, and this can lead to discrepancies.

PA release results for each council only when its full count is complete. PA collates results only for elections that were due in this electoral cycle, meaning there may be council byelection results in other parts of the country that are not included.

There are frequent changes in ward boundaries, sometimes accompanied by changes in the number of councillors overall.

Updated

The Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said the results in the Sunderland area, where partial results show a Labour hold of the council seat (see post at 01.10), show “if you vote Reform, you get Labour”.

He told BBC News:

It’s a very straightforward equation for people at the next general election.

If they want to vote Reform, they’ll end up with Labour MPs, and they’ll end up with a Labour government, and then they’ll end up, probably, with everything they didn’t want to vote for based on the profile of Reform voters.

Updated

The Conservatives have retained control of Broxbourne, in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. This has not come as much of a surprise to commentators as the Tories held 27 of the 30 seats, and only 10 are being contested (9 were won by the Tories and one by Labour). You can follow all the results live on our tracker here.

Updated

Labour takes control of Hartlepool - Sky News

The Labour party has said it has gained control of Hartlepool, according to Sky News, in a symbolic electoral victory the party has reportedly called a “groundbreaking moment”.

This result is not official. The Guardian uses data compiled from the Press Association which waits until all seats are counted to gives us a comprehensive result.

A Labour spokesperson said of the reported Hartlepool gain: “Keir Starmer pledged to change the Labour party after that result, and today’s win shows that this changed Labour party is ready to deliver the change that communities like Hartlepool are crying out for.

“Making gains here shows that the party is on track to win a general election and is firmly back in the service of working people.”

The 2021 Hartlepool byelection will be best remembered with pictures of a 30ft Boris Johnson balloon bobbing above the real Johnson’s head as he beamed at the victory.

Tory candidate Jill Mortimer – who defeated Labour rival Paul Williams by nearly 7,000 votes – hailed the result as a “truly historic” moment.

Updated

Labour holds Sunderland city council in first result of the night, according to partial count

We have our first council result of the night – from Sunderland, where, according to partial results tallied by the BBC, Labour has held the city council.

According to BBC News, Labour won the first four seats declared to ensure it retains control of the council, having entered the elections with 47 of the 75 seats.

The Guardian uses data from the Press Association which waits until all 25 seats are counted (which explains why our election tallies are different to those from the BBC and Sky, and why our results will appear later than theirs).

Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist and lead election analyst for the BBC, said that the city – where 61% voted for Brexit – has its own unique characteristics that makes it a good area for Reform to pick up votes.

“Above all this is a very Eurosceptic part of the country,” Curtice, who said that Reform has put a candidate in every single ward in Sunderland, told the BBC. “It is also somewhere where Ukip has done well in local elections in the past.

“We have now seen Reform outpoll the Conservatives in each of the ward results we have got in for Sunderland so far.”

Reform’s leader Richard Tice has claimed his party was outperforming the Tories in Sunderland.

“Outstanding early results in Sunderland,” he wrote in a post on X. “We expect to beat Tories in majority of 25 seats in Sunderland.”

As well as to the city council in Sunderland, Reform is running a full slate of candidates in Bolton, where it is in alliance with Bolton for Change, a registered political party set up by two former candidates of the Brexit party.

Other places to watch in terms of Reform’s local elections campaign include Hartlepool, where Tice is to run again after coming third there in 2019, just over 1,000 votes behind the Tories.

You can read my colleague Ben Quinn’s profile of Reform’s election strategy here:

Updated

Helen Catt, a political correspondent from the BBC, has said the counting at the Blackpool South byelection vote has not begun yet. This is the most hotly anticipated vote of the night as a loss here could trigger a Tory leadership contest against Rishi Sunak. We are expecting results in the early hours of the morning (possibly between 2-4am).

The Westminster byelection has been triggered by the resignation of former Conservative MP Scott Benton amid a lobbying scandal.

Nine candidates are vying to replace him in the House of Commons. On the face of it, Labour’s Chris Webb is favourite to win.

Labour said it was hopeful of taking back the seat, which Benton won with a majority of 3,690 in 2019, but the race for second place could be problematic for Sunak if the Tories are outflanked on the right by the Reform party.

Updated

Tory councillors predict poor result for party amid low turnout expectations

Conservative councillor Ron Shepherd on North east Lincolnshire council has been quoted by Sky News as saying:

National politics are always a factor. All the seats are going to be close tonight because it is a low turnout.

Some of the issues that affect local politics are out of our control. Coupled with a low turnout, it does not look too good.

The results are something of a culmination of our successes over the past seven years and this is the backlash.

Meanwhile, councillor Simon Bosher, leader of the Conservative group in Portsmouth, has been quoted as saying it is going to be a “tough evening” with lots of people expected to vote for other parties in protest of the government.

According to Toby Paine, a Local Democracy reporter for Portsmouth city council, Bosher said:

A lot of it is probably not due to the work of councillors, it’s more to do with conflating it with the national picture …

Cllr George Madgwick, leader of Portsmouth Independents Party, said he is expecting a “disastrous” turnout.

“I think it’ll be down across the whole city except for one or two wards,” Madgwick said.

Some psephologists have predicted the Conservatives could lose 500 council seats – about half of those the party is defending this time around – but Labour sources have said the figure is too ambitious.

Updated

Anneliese Dodds, the Labour party chair, has said the results of the Blackpool South byelection will be a “critical” measure of Rishi Sunak’s strength against the Labour party.

Labour sources are confident of victory in Blackpool South, with activists said to have reported large numbers of former Tory voters saying they would back Labour for the first time.

As we reported earlier (see post at 22:54), Labour’s national campaign coordinator, Pat McFadden, also highlighted the importance of Blackpool South, saying the “historic byelection” is the only chance for voters to “directly reject” Sunak’s Conservative party.

Dodds told Sky News:

The key election when it comes to looking at the overall strength of Rishi Sunak, I would say, against the Labour party is of course that byelection in Blackpool South.

It is a really critical place of course because in 2019 the Conservatives won almost 50% of the vote, so it will be really important to see what happens there …

The key thing is going to see whether Labour is moving forward in those areas where it is really critical that we build support before the next general election.

Of course it’s also going to be critical to see whether the Conservatives can pick up any seats.

If they can’t pick up seats in these elections, then they’re going to be even further behind than (former Conservative prime minister) John Major was in the run-up to the 1997 election.

Updated

Forecasts suggest the Tories could lose up to half of the council seats they are defending in England, with chancellor Jeremy Hunt saying the party expects to suffer “significant losses”.

With a general election expected later this year, the results from council, mayoral and police and crime commissioner contests and the Blackpool South parliamentary byelection will be closely scrutinised for signs of whether Labour’s national opinion poll leads can be turned into electoral success.

The Guardian’s political correspondent, Eleni Courea, has a useful guide on the seats up for grabs in the elections:

Updated

Counting is well under way with local and mayoral elections taking place across England and Wales (as well as a byelection being held in Blackpool South and police and crime commissioners being chosen across England and Wales):

Updated

There is frenzied speculation that a leadership challenge will be mounted against Rishi Sunak if the election results over the weekend are even more disastrous than anticipated.

The recent defection of the former Conservative health minister Dr Dan Poulter to Labour could further push rebellious Tories to plot against the prime minister.

The Guardian’s deputy political editor, Jessica Elgot, looks at the myriad of issues facing Sunak, who insists he is not “distracted” by his personal ratings lingering at record lows.

Election analyst Matt Singh has a useful thread going through the elections we will have results from overnight.

He says people should be wary of the usual spin the parties deploy before and after election results – either to manage expectations or to explain away losses.

Singh adds that it is already apparent that there is a “sizeable personal vote for incumbents”, which he says should not be taken as an accurate measure of any wider trends.

Updated

Here are the front pages of tomorrow’s newspapers:

The Green party co-leader Carla Denyer said that she is anticipating “another record night” for the Greens, with the party boosting its councillor numbers for the fourth successive election.

More than 2,660 council seats are up for grabs, with the Green party defending just over 100.

Denyer said:

It has been a wonderful experience to be out on the doorstep listening to voters and understanding why their concerns over the cost of living, cuts to local services and the climate crisis are turning into votes for the Green party.

I want to thank every single voter who has gone to the polls today to vote for a fairer, greener country.

Our fantastic volunteers and candidates have been out knocking on doors, listening to voters and responding with a positive vision of what their Green vote would mean.

As counting begins, I look forward to another record night for the Green party. We have increased our councillor numbers at each of the last four elections – and I believe we can do so again.

That will lay the firmest of foundations for our general election campaign when we are going to do everything we can to get at least four Green MPs elected to parliament.

We know that having a Green in the council chamber or in parliament delivers for people, the community and the planet.”

The Greens have never been stronger in local government and will target Bristol, where they are already the largest party, writes Robert Ford, professor of political science at Manchester University.

Updated

The results of the London mayoral contest and London assembly elections are due on Saturday. Labour’s Sadiq Khan is seeking a third term and polls have put him comfortably ahead of Tory Susan Hall, despite jitters in Khan’s campaign team.

Following the closure of the polls tonight, Khan said his campaign and Labour activists “sent out a message of fairness, of equality and of hope”.

The London mayor said: “Whatever the results this weekend might bring, I am so proud of that.”

Updated

Conservatives expecting 'difficult' evening, transport secretary concedes

Transport secretary Mark Harper has said this evening could be very “difficult” for the Conservatives, reflecting wider fears among Tories that they are likely to suffer heavy losses later.

Speaking to broadcasters, he says he thinks that “very high base” will “make the evening difficult”, according to BBC News.

Harper denies that this shows the Tories were more popular under Boris Johnson (under whose leadership he said the party experienced a “vaccine bounce” in local elections) than Rishi Sunak.

He is referring to a set of local council seats that were last contested in May 2021, when the Conservatives under Johnson were at a high point after the UK’s Covid vaccine rollout, and the party enjoyed its strongest performance since 2008.

Updated

Conservatives 'do not expect to hold Blackpool South seat' - report

The first boxes have arrived at the count in Blackpool South, Rishi Sunak’s first big electoral test.

The Conservatives do not expect to hold the seat after today’s byelection, a senior party source has told Sky News.

The source said “the stars could not be more aligned against us” after the former MP Scott Benton resigned after being found guilty of breaching standards rules in a lobbying scandal.

A Conservative source told Tamara Cohen, Sky News’ political correspondent, that the Tories expect losses of about 500 council seats tonight, as we reported in our opening post.

Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, has described the Blackpool South byelection as “historic” and has singled it out as the most important “election of the night”.

McFadden, who is the Labour MP for Wolverhampton South East, said:

The most important election of the night is the historic byelection in Blackpool, caused by yet more Tory chaos and scandal.

It’s the only election today where voters have had the opportunity to directly reject Rishi Sunak’s party in Westminster.

It’s going to be a long night and the full picture of results from local elections may not be clear until over the weekend, but we expect to see Labour gains that show we’re making progress in the places we need to win the next general election.

Labour are the frontrunners to regain Blackpool South – which fell to the Conservatives as the “red wall” crumbled in 2019.

The seat fell vacant after the former Tory MP Scott Benton resigned after breaching standards rules in a lobbying scandal. Benton won the once solidly Labour-voting constituency in the 2019 election with a 3,690 majority.

Electoral Commission says majority of voters able to cast ballots despite stricter ID requirements

The Electoral Commission said “most voters” were able to cast their ballots despite the stricter ID requirements.

A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission said:

Our initial assessment of the elections is that they were well-run, and millions of voters were able to exercise their democratic rights.

This is a testament to the efforts of electoral administrators, who work tirelessly to ensure the smooth delivery and integrity of polls.

A number of new measures from the Elections Act were in force at these elections, including voter ID for the first time in Wales and parts of England. The electoral community has been working hard to prepare voters for these changes. Most voters who wanted to vote were able to do so.

We will now begin to collect evidence from voters, electoral administrators, partner organisations, and campaigners to understand their experiences of the elections and identify any potential obstacles to participation.

Ministers have faced significant criticism over the limited number of acceptable forms of ID, particularly the decision to allow documents such as the older person’s bus pass but almost none issued to younger ones, such as other travel passes and student documents.

The Electoral Commission warned last year that it was difficult to assess the consequences of requiring photo ID before voting.

Updated

While much of the focus tonight will be on tightly held contests between Labour and the Conservatives, the Lib Dems will also have significant influence in the polls and are looking at Dorset council as their main target, writes the Observer’s policy editor, Michael Savage.

Dorset, where they are aiming to become the largest party on the council, is controlled by the Tories. It would confirm a comeback in the south-west, on top of its progress in the “blue wall” home counties.

The party will also hope to take control in Wokingham, represented at Westminster by John Redwood, in west Oxfordshire, whose MP was once David Cameron; and in Elmbridge, where Dominic Raab’s Westminster seat is a top target.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, issued this statement after the polls closed at 10pm:

Davey said:

The message across the country today was loud and clear. Voters want an end to this appalling Conservative government.

People are sick of the Conservative party’s endless infighting, unaffordable mortgages, an NHS in freefall and filthy sewage being pumped into their rivers and seas.

They want change and they want to see the end of Rishi Sunak’s Conservative party in office. That is why, up and down the country, so many lifelong Conservative voters backed the Liberal Democrats today, because they know Liberal Democrat councillors will never take them for granted and fight for the issues they care about.

Updated

What are some of the key results to look out for overnight?

The Guardian’s political correspondent, Eleni Courea, has an excellent piece about the key results to look for overnight. Here is a snippet of her explainer:

  • Early hours of Friday

The result of the parliamentary election in Blackpool South will set the tone early on. Labour is expected to win back the seat, which fell vacant after the former Tory MP Scott Benton resigned after breaching standards rules in a lobbying scandal. Benton won the once solidly Labour-voting constituency in the 2019 election with a 3,690 majority.

Between about 1.30am and 4am on Friday, 39 councils are expected to declare their results, giving a partial picture of the overall outcome. Among the councils due to declare at around 3am is Harlow, a key bellwether town and general election battleground where all 33 seats are up for grabs. Keir Starmer went to Harlow, which is now Tory-controlled, for his eve-of-poll campaign visit on Wednesday.

Overnight results are also due to come in from Rushmoor, Thurrock and Redditch, all of which are Tory-controlled but which Labour hopes to take.

You can read the full story here:

Updated

George Osborne: It will be 'Armageddon' if Ben Houchen loses Tees Valley mayoral race

The former Conservative chancellor, George Osborne, has said that if Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, loses his seat then it will be “Armageddon” as that will signify a “massive landslide defeat” for the Tories.

In 2021, Houchen secured the job with almost 73% of the vote and was seen as a standard bearer for Boris Johnson’s levelling up agenda.

The most recent polls puts him and Labour’s Chris McEwan almost neck and neck. A Conservative defeat could be the upset that risks creating the sort of panic among Tory MPs that could trigger a confidence vote in Rishi Sunak’s leadership.

Speaking on the Political Currency podcast he hosts with former shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, Osborne said:

If Ben Houchen loses it will be Armageddon – because at that point, people will say “we are absolutely headed now for a massive landslide defeat”.

And there will be people in the Conservative parliamentary party saying: “change course, change leader”. They’ve already started talking about some of the policies that they would come up with.

Not that I think they can change the political weather … You would never have guessed 20 years ago that the future of the Tory leadership would depend on how people are voting in Teesside. But I think right now, that is the case.

Osborne also said that it would be “pretty bad” if Andy Street, the incumbent West Midlands mayor, loses his race. He said that the national Conservative brand would be the reason for his defeat, not his local record as mayor.

Before the polls closed, Street had sent out a two-page letter to voters in the West Midlands in which Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, lavishes him with praise and dismisses the Tories’ record in Westminster. Like Houchen, Street is also facing a knife-edge vote.

Osborne said:

If Andy Street loses in the West Midlands, that’s pretty bad … [if that happens] I think Andy Street will probably come out and explain why he’s lost.

And it’ll be clear he defied the national polls as far as he could, but ultimately, the Conservative brand brought him down. That would be bad for Sunak and that might well provoke a lot of talk about the leadership contest.

  • Tees Valley result expected: 12.30pm, Tees Valley (Friday lunchtime)

  • West Midlands result expected: 3pm (Saturday afternoon)

Updated

Polls for council, mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections close in England and Wales

It has just gone 10pm UK time and the polls have now closed across the country.

Polls have been open since 7am for council, mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales.

There has also been a parliamentary byelection in Blackpool South. There are no elections in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and no local council elections in Wales.

Updated

Tories brace for heavy losses in English council elections and mayoral contests

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the 2024 local elections.

It could be a long night for local Conservatives as the party braces for the potential of heavy electoral losses that could destabilise Rishi Sunak’s premiership.

The elections, which are considered the last test of voters’ opinion before the upcoming general election, expected later this year, cover more than 2,600 seats across 107 English councils (metropolitan, unitary and district).

Labour and the Conservatives are each defending about 1,000 seats, and psephologists predict that the Tories may lose about 500. Even the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is on record as saying the party expects to suffer “significant losses”.

As well as councils in parts of England being chosen, 37 police and crime commissioners will also be picked across England and Wales, along with the London mayor and assembly, nine combined authority mayors and one single authority mayor (Salford).

On top of all this, a byelection will select the new MP for Blackpool South, after former Conservative MP Scott Benton resigned in the wake of a lobbying scandal. Labour is expected to win. The results are expected early on Friday morning.

I will be taking you through into the early hours and leading the blog until about 6am, bringing you the key results as they come in, with latest reactions and analysis.

Here is a breakdown of what we are expecting to be called overnight:

Councils:

  • 12.30am: Broxbourne

  • 1.30am: Hartlepool, Rochford, Sunderland

  • 2am: Bolton, Gosport, Ipswich, Newcastle upon Tyne, North East Lincolnshire, South Tyneside, Wigan

  • 2.30am: Chorley, Eastleigh, Fareham, Hart, Oldham, Portsmouth, Rushmoor, Southend-on-Sea

  • 2.45am: Exeter

  • 3am: Harlow, Kingston upon Hull, Lincoln, Sefton, Tameside, Thurrock

  • 3.15am: Reading

  • 3.30am: Colchester, Gateshead, Redditch, Stockport

  • 4am: Peterborough, Plymouth

  • 4.30am: Southampton

  • 5.30am: Winchester

Police & crime commissioners:

  • 1.30am: Cumbria

  • 2.30am: Avon & Somerset

  • 3.00am: Lincolnshire

You can read all the council results live on our tracker here.

Updated

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