Labour is engulfed in a civil war, Nicola Sturgeon wants an independence vote, and Boris Johnson is triumphantly hailing an inflatable of himself in Hartlepool.
Those are probably the biggest headlines you’ve seen from this weekend’s election results across England, Scotland and Wales.
But are things really that simple?
More than 5,000 council seats in England were up for grabs in this week’s elections.
So were the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Parliament, 39 police commissioners, 13 mayors, the London Assembly and the Hartlepool by-election.
While Keir Starmer ’s failings in the Red Wall have rightly been well-publicised, the results were always going to be complicated.
So we’ve compiled a guide to the results below - taking you through not just big news, but the important things you may have missed.
1. Nicola Sturgeon has got enough seats to hold a new independence vote
It’s tempting to start by talking about Labour ’s latest collapse.
But by far the most important result is further north, where Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP won 64 out of 129 Scottish Parliament seats.
That left her one short of an SNP majority. She failed to get key victories over Labour in Dumbarton or Tories in Aberdeenshire West.
But she can claim more of a mandate than in 2016, having won three more seats and raised her vote share by 1.4 points.
And with the pro-independence Greens winning eight seats, she’s pushing for a second referendum anyway in the next four years.
That could break up the UK, ending the Union that has survived more than 300 years.
Already the battle has begun over how it’ll work - with Boris Johnson insisting there should be no separation vote. But Michael Gove has signalled the UK government is unwilling to go to the Supreme Court to stop it.
2. Labour are being wiped out in the 'red wall'
Now we come to England’s main story of the night - its decimation in northern and Midlands heartlands.
Keir Starmer’s party lost Hartlepool, red since its creation in 1974, in a Westminster by-election that was even worse than expected.
New Conservative MP Jill Mortimer said Labour had taken the people of Hartlepool for granted as she notched up a 7,000 majority.
In an even more symbolic result, Labour lost control of Durham council for the first time in a century after losing 16 seats.
Durham was the first council to be run by Labour in 1919. But the Tories gained 13 seats, building on their victory in North West Durham in the 2019 general election.
Dudley, neck-and-neck until this week, now has almost twice as many Tory seats as Labour ones. Labour also lost control of Sheffield and lost nine seats in Sunderland.
Tory Ben Houchen was returned with a whopping 73% majority in the Tees Valley mayor election while Tory Andy Street held the West Midlands mayoralty, adding 7 points to his vote share despite Labour mounting a challenge.
3. But all is not terrible for Labour - or great for the Tories - elsewhere in England
What’s curious about recent English elections is not just the Red Wall, where Labour’s suffering, but the so-called Blue Wall.
While much of the southern map is Tory shires, these results suggest a pattern of Labour making in-roads in surprising areas.
Labour seized two key mayoralties from the Tories, the West of England and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, increasing the party’s vote share by 11 points and 14 points respectively.
New West of England mayor Dan Norris even thanked Keir Starmer in his speech, while Cambridgeshire & Peterborough’s new red mayor Nik Johnson won despite his party coming third behind the Lib Dems last time. Cambridgeshire council also slipped from the Tories’ grasp, with Labour and the Lib Dems both gaining.
This success in the south was not universal. Labour’s Sadiq Khan was re-elected London mayor but with a vote share down 4 points.
And the Tories kept most of their southern strongholds - plus seized control of Harlow, Essex, from Labour.
But the Tories did lost 10 seats in Surrey, and lost control of Tunbridge Wells after a Lib Dem push. In West Sussex meanwhile, Labour more than doubled their seat tally.... to nine.
All this appears to point to a redrawing of England’s election map after decades of tradition.
4. There's actually a slight swing towards Labour since 2019
This week’s results were comparing Labour to its local elections performance in 2016 and 2017.
One theory is that Labour sank much further between then and 2019, and has risen since, but not by the same amount.
Pollster Patrick English of YouGov said analysis of 1,247 ‘key wards’ implied a three-point swing to Labour since 2019.
If applied uniformly across Britain, it would mean a smaller Commons Tory majority with 340 seats, and 221 Labour ones.
That would support Keir Starmer’s narrative that he’s leading Labour on a slow path to recovery after the 2019 election disaster.
Analysis is to be taken with a pinch of salt, though - as this week’s results show there is no uniform set of thinking in the UK.
5. The Green Party have quietly been the biggest success of the night
You won’t have seen it on the front pages, but the Green Party is celebrating a surge in the local election results.
As more people cycle, walk and appreciate nature in the pandemic, and as left-wingers have jitters about Labour, the party gained 70 council seats with most declared.
That means the Greens ended up with more than double the seats they had originally, out of those contested this time around.
In the Scottish Parliament, the Greens added three seats to their tally to reach eight.
In the London Assembly they have three of 25 seats, up one, and candidate Sian Berry was a strong third in the capital’s mayor race.
She finished with almost 8% of first-choice votes, up two points and way ahead of the Lib Dem who lost her deposit.
Ms Berry said: “It is a serious mandate for the ideas we were putting in front of the public this campaign - rent controls, flat fares, and a higher living wage.”
Sandy Hore-Ruthven lost her bid to unseat Labour’s mayor of Bristol, but she raised the Greens’ vote share by 19 points and came a strong second.
It’s been suggested that the Greens eating into left-wing Labour votes could be partly to blame for Keir Starmer’s woes.
This isn’t just a general fringe party thing either. By comparison, the Lib Dems were pretty static - down 11 council seats with most results declared.
6. Wales was a success story for Labour - bucking England's trend
All 60 seats were up for grabs in the Welsh Parliament.
Polls had suggested Labour - while the biggest party - had an uphill struggle to win an overall majority.
But the party did not suffer the collapse seen in England at all, winning 30 of the Senedd seats and allowing Mark Drakeford to stay on as First Minister.
Only one of Wales' so-called red wall seats, the Vale of Clwyd, fell to the Welsh Conservatives, and the party also unseated the former Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood in Rhondda.
Wrexham, meanwhile, remained a marginal brick in Labour’s ‘red wall’ with a slightly higher majority.
Voters flocked to the two main parties, with Labour and Tories each raising their constituency vote share by 5% overall since 2016.
7. Scottish Labour are fairly pleased with themselves, too
It helps that Scottish Labour set their expectations low, only hoping for a “strong third” behind the SNP and Tories.
But those were surpassed, with Labour notching up a 21% vote share in constituencies - only just behind the Conservatives - and 17% in the regional list.
Leader Anas Sarwar’s 22 seats are behind the 24-seat tally achieved in 2016. Labour’s vote share was also down since 2016 across the board. But insiders insist overall, this is a boost since the 2019 wipeout.
Mr Sarwar also knocked a very slight dent in Nicola Sturgeon’s vote share in a publicity-grabbing run against her in her own seat.
And Labour clung on in ultra-marginal Dumbarton, where deputy leader Jackie Baillie held out to deny the SNP a majority.
There’s a long, long, long way to go, but Scottish Labour have not collapsed completely - and low expectations were met.
8. It was a bad night for fringes
Nigel Farage’s latest outfit Reform UK had won just two council seats in the entire country with most of the 5,000 results declared.
Anti-‘woke’ controversialist Laurence Fox won 1.8% of the vote in London, more than Count Binface but losing his £10,000 deposit.
He was pipped to the post by YouTuber Niko Omiilana, who ran on a policy of cutting Freddos to 5p and telling the PM to “shush”.
Alex Salmond missed out on any Scottish Parliament seats with his new outfit Alba, which he now suggests he won’t lead for long.
UKIP had also lost all five of the seats it was defending at the time of writing.
9 And it was a good night for incumbents
One thread that unites many of these clashing results is a boost for incumbents - politicians who were already in the job.
And perhaps that’s not too surprising, as Brits looked for a stable “devil you know” in a time of crisis.
It may be true too that the success of the vaccine rollout prompted some to reward sitting politicians, especially the Tories.
The ruling parties in all three nations of Great Britain increased their vote shares, including the SNP in Scotland and Labour in Wales.
Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford, who locked down earlier than England in Autumn, saw his personal seat majority up by 10,000.
And Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham - outspoken over Covid - notched another four points onto his vote share too.
