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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow, Claire Phipps and Kevin Rawlinson

Corbyn says Labour faces 'challenge on historic scale' to win general election – as it happened

Candidates draw straws to decide Northumberland council result – video

May taking 'nothing for granted' amid gains, while Corbyn calls Labour results 'mixed'

This live blog is closing now but below is a summary of events:

  • The prime minister, Theresa May, had next month’s general election in her sights as she reacted to Conservative gains of more than 550 seats in the local elections and some mayoral wins where Labour had high hopes.
  • Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, was also thinking of the general election, saying his party faced a challenge on a “historic scale”. But, while he accepted it had experienced “too many” defeats, he said “the results were mixed. We lost seats but we are closing the gap on the Conservatives”.
  • Despite Tory gains in Scotland, the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, called the results there an “emphatic” win for her party, which made gains itself and remains the largest north of the border.
  • Ukip faced a near total wipeout of its county council seats, with Douglas Carswell - formerly its sole MP - saying the party was “finished” in an article for the Guardian.
  • Plaid Cymru, which made a net gain of 26 in Wales, said it had won a “significant gains”. Its leader, Leanne Wood, said: “The story of the night seems to be Plaid and Tory gains versus Labour and Ukip losses.”

You can read a full round-up from my colleagues here.

In a 15-minute speech in Manchester on Friday night, Corbyn accepted Labour’s performance was mixed. He began, not by focusing on Andy Burnham’s emphatic win, but on a Labour hold in Oxfordshire – David Cameron’s old stomping ground.

We were defending a county council seat where our candidate, Laura, had a majority of 10. She now has a huge majority because there was a big swing to Labour in Oxfordshire.

Laura Price now has a lead of 126 over the Conservatives in Witney South and Central.

We’ve had results around that country that have been variable. I understand that, we all get that. I congratulate every Labour candidate for all the work they did in the election yesterday and the run-up to it, especially those that won in Cardiff, in Swansea, in Neath and Port Talbot, in Doncaster.

We gained seats in often very unlikely places. I was talking to some friends this evening in Kent, in North Ramsgate, where they gained some seats. Don’t let the media write this story, let us write the Labour story.

Updated

Several hours after Burnham’s triumph, Jeremy Corbyn came to Manchester for a victory rally. Hundreds of activists joined him on the steps of Manchester Central, the conference centre where the result had been announced.

Burnham was not among them.

Corbyn explained away the new mayor’s absence by saying: “I have spoken to Andy and he is already working hard on behalf of the people of Greater Manchester region.”

Burnham was in fact hard at work drinking champagne with his family and friends in what appeared to be Refuge, one of Manchester’s hippest restaurants, described by the Guardian’s food critic as “a drop-dead glamourpuss”.

Updated

Here’s that statement from the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in full:

Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn: ‘We have five weeks to win the general election, so we can fundamentally transform Britain for the many not the few.’ Photograph: Peter Powell/EPA

The results were mixed. We lost seats but we are closing the gap on the Conservatives. I am disappointed at every Labour defeat in the local elections. Too many fantastic councillors, who work tirelessly for their communities, lost their seats.

We have five weeks to win the general election, so we can fundamentally transform Britain for the many not the few.

We know this is no small task – it is a challenge on a historic scale. But we, the whole Labour movement and the British people, can’t afford not to seize our moment.

The British people have been held back for too long. Labour will put more money in people’s pockets with a £10 real living wage, look after our pensioners by protecting the triple-lock on state pensions and give everybody the care and dignity they deserve by properly funding our NHS and social care system.

I urge everyone to vote Labour because things can – and will – change.

Updated

Theresa May addresses the media at the end of her tour of the Octink sign manufacturing factory in Brentford, west London.
Theresa May addresses the media at the end of her tour of the Octink sign manufacturing factory in Brentford, west London. Photograph: Jack Taylor/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon at local council elections in Scotland
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon at local council elections in Scotland Photograph: Robert Perry/EPA

My colleagues Rowena Mason and Anushka Asthana write:

The Conservatives are making plans to pursue Labour heartland seats at the general election, after winning mayoral contests in north-eastern England and the West Midlands, as well as seizing control of 11 new councils.

Theresa May insisted she was “not taking anything for granted” but the local and mayoral results showed the Conservatives benefiting hugely from the collapse of Ukip’s vote across the country, including in areas of historic weakness.

The prime minister’s strategists have the confidence to go on the attack in June after the party swept up more than 500 new council seats in England, Wales and even Scotland.

It also pulled off a shock mayoral win in Tees Valley, a deeply Labour area in the north-east, and a narrow victory in the West Midlands, where former John Lewis boss Andy Street beat Siôn Simon.

Street, who became the favourite despite the dominance of Labour in the West Midlands, said he hoped the victory was the birth of a “new urban agenda” for the Conservatives.

Updated

The SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, hailed the Scottish local elections as an “emphatic” win for her party, despite the Conservatives gaining 167 seats and returning a record number of councillors.

The Tories returned 276 councillors north of the border – much more than double the tally they secured in the last local government elections five years ago.

The SNP remains the largest party in local government in Scotland, with 431 councillors voted into office, up slightly from the total of 425 in 2012.

However, if voting patterns are similar at the general election on 8 June, the surge in Conservative support could see Ruth Davidson’s party oust some SNP MPs from Westminster.

Updated

Jeremy Corbyn made a brief stop at the victory party of Liverpool’s first metro mayor, Steve Rotheram, where he attacked the Tories for how they have run “food bank Britain”.

In an appearance lasting a few minutes, Corbyn congratulated Rotheram, his parliamentary private secretary, whom he said had often told him “what you need to be thinking, what you need to be doing, and which football team you should be supporting”.

Standing in front of a group of placard-carrying activists gathered on a hotel lawn, Corbyn acknowledged the party had had a difficult time in local elections elsewhere. The Labour leader pivoted to the general election, saying Labour would work to end zero-hour contracts and jobs paying less than minimum wage.

“We will not be a government that presides over food bank Britain or asks teachers to go on the school gates and collect funds to pay the teachers’ wages,” he said. He took no questions from reporters.

Rotheram told supporters voters have a “marmite reaction” to Corbyn, but said they were attracted to his policies. Speaking to the Guardian, Rotheram acknowledged the party faced an uphill struggle in a campaign the Tories are framing as a personality contest between party leaders. “I think you’ll see a narrowing of the polls as long as we’re able to argue on policy ... If the contest is about May vs Corbyn, that’s a lot more challenging,” he said.

Updated

Conservative James Palmer has become the first regional mayor for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, the Press Association reports.

Palmer achieved a total of 88,826 votes, while Lib Dem Rod Cantrill had 67,205.

Counting included second-preference votes as no candidates achieved more than 50% in the first-preference round.

Turnout in the election was 33.57%, with 204,363 verified votes cast out of a total eligible electorate of 604,960.

That’s all from me for today.

My colleague Kevin Rawlinson is taking over now.

Chris Prosser, an academic who has developed a model for forecasting national election results from local election results, thinks today’s results would give the Conservatives a 16-point lead at a general election.

Responding to the results, Jack McConnell, the Labour peer who was Scotland’s first minister from 2001 to 2007, said his party could be seeing a second collapse south of the border.

I think with the current drift at the top of the Labour party it is not impossible that the decline that happened in Scotland over the last eight years could also happen in parts of England and Wales.

Updated

In his concession speech in the West Midlands, Labour’s Siôn Simon has said the party must respond now to the message it is being sent in its former heartlands, while also taking a swipe at the resources of his victorious rival, Andy Street.

“Some would say you need millions of pounds. we didn’t have access in our campaign to millions of pounds,” he said.

Simon said even in places like Birmingham city centre where Labour won, people were dissatisfied with the party, hinting that the general election and its spotlight on the national party had compounded the problem.

I will also say that even in places that we did win, in these last months we did hear coming back from the doorsteps a message from traditional Labour voters that, in a campaign overshadowed by national issues, they are not feeling confident the party is strong in the Labour values.

We in the Labour party have to hear that message coming up from our people and we need to respond and we need to respond to it now.

Updated

Here is Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, on the results.

Obviously I’ve been focused mainly on results in Scotland, but looking south of the border it’s clear that the Tories look like they’re on track to win the general election on the strength of their support in England.

So for people in Scotland, if we want to make sure there are strong voices for Scotland in Westminster, if we want to make sure there’s a really strong opposition to the Tories holding them to account, that can only come from the SNP in Scotland and this is a great launchpad for that campaign.

The SNP is now the largest party in all of Scotland’s major cities, in Edinburgh, in Aberdeen, in Dundee and in Glasgow, and we’re on course to win this election with more votes and more seats than any other party.

First minister Nicola Sturgeon and SNP candidate Susan Aitken attend the Glasgow count at the Emirates Arena.
First minister Nicola Sturgeon and SNP candidate Susan Aitken attend the Glasgow count at the Emirates Arena. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Updated

Green party councillors Kim Lung and Allan Young celebrate winning their seats with Scottish Green party co-convenor Patrick Harvie at the Emirates Stadium in Glasgow.
Green party councillors Kim Lung and Allan Young celebrate winning their seats with Scottish Green party co-convenor Patrick Harvie at the Emirates Stadium in Glasgow. Photograph: John Linton/PA

Updated

Labour has lost 133 seats in Scotland, but Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, says the results were “not as devastating” as polls and pundits had predicted. She said:

This time last week we were told Labour was going to lose control in every single one of our councils, we were going to lose half of our councillors. That’s not happened.

Time and time again in the towns and cities across Scotland it is Labour that offers that strong opposition to the SNP and their divisive plans for a second independence referendum.

There has been a strong focus on the constitution during these local government elections, there is no doubt about that, but the strength of the Tory surge is predominantly in the Borders and the Highlands.

Alan Rhodes was the Labour leader of Nottinghamshire county council, but is now leader of the opposition group. He told me that the possibility of losing control became clear as the days drew on.

The Labour party is in a difficult place at the moment. We need to listen to our electorate nationally and respond to their concerns in a more effective and efficient way and not continue to follow our own agenda.

We are here to serve the electorate. If the electorate lose faith we lose key councils like Nottinghamshire and public services are put at risk when the Conservatives take over.

The risk, he said, was that vulnerable people who most depended on the services did not get what they needed.

This doesn’t reflect on our four years in office locally, it is more reflective of the national malaise that the party finds itself in. I’m proud of what we’ve delivered and achieved in our four-year term - Labour councillors should be proud of that.

He said he was “prepared to talk to the Conservatives,” who are just short of the majority needed to get their programme through, about policies Labour could back.

Updated

If you are looking for a really good results analysis, Lewis Baston has written one. Here’s an extract.

Council elections are normally a mixed bag, with some comfort for everyone. It is rare for the overall narrative to be quite so clear – Labour’s performance in May 2016 was intriguingly mixed and productive to analyse. The results of the 2017 local elections are absolutely clear: a Conservative landslide.

The reason for the landslide is clear too – the collapse of the Ukip vote and the transfer of many of its former supporters to the Conservative cause following the adoption of hard Brexit by the May government. The contribution of Labour’s leadership and political direction to that party’s disaster is clear. When a party’s vote collapses, everyone should pick up a bit, as we saw when the Lib Dems plunged to defeat in 2015. But this time the Tory tiger feasted on the fresh carcass of the Ukip vote while Labour and the Lib Dems could only prowl hungrily on the sidelines, and received a few deep scratches from the Tories’ claws while they were doing so.

North East Derbyshire voted Conservative, even though its parliamentary seat has been Labour since 1935 and it covers the militantly working-class town of Clay Cross where Dennis Skinner grew up.

And here is the whole thing.

Updated

Corbyn says Labour has had 'difficult results', but claims some have been 'very good'

Jeremy Corbyn has been speaking to Labour supporters in Liverpool. He told them:

We’ve had some difficult results overnight. Some have been very good. We’ve gained seats in some places, we’ve held councils that many predicted we wouldn’t. And others, unfortunately, have not been elected. I want to use this opportunity to thank every Labour candidate and every party worker and supporter for the incredible effort they’ve put in in the past few weeks in this election.

We’ve now got four weeks until the general election. Four weeks to get a message out there. Pensioners do not have to live in fear of their pensions being cut in the future because the government will not protect the triple-lock. People don’t have to be living on appalling wages, through zero-hours contracts or minimum wage only, 6 million earning less then the living wage. Labour will change all of that. And Labour will invest in a growing economy, an economy that works for all.

Jeremy Corbyn speaking to Labour supporters in the garden of the Devonshire House Hotel in Liverpool.
Jeremy Corbyn speaking to Labour supporters in the garden of the Devonshire House Hotel in Liverpool. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Here are the West Midlands mayoral results in full.

First round

Andy Street (C) 216,280 (41.92%)
Siôn Simon (Lab) 210,259 (40.75%)
Beverley Nielsen (LD) 30,378 (5.89%)
Pete Durnell (UKIP) 29,051 (5.63%)
James Burn (Green) 24,260 (4.70%)
Graham Stevenson (Comm) 5,696 (1.10%)
Second round

Andy Street (C) 238,628
Siôn Simon (Lab) 234,862

Like the Tees Valley (see 2.30pm), the West Midlands is an area that was Labour on paper. As this Political Studies Association briefing shows (pdf), people in this region voted 42% Labour in the 2015 election and 33% Conservative.

Updated

10 facts that help explain the national share results

Earlier I posted the BBC’s national share figures, with a note about how they are calculated. (See 2.53pm) Here they are again.

Conservatives: 38%

Labour: 27%

Lib Dems: 18%

Ukip: 5%

Conservative lead: 11 points

Last night Labour sources were saying that these figures would provide the benchmark by which they would judge the elections. They may feel differently today. Here are 10 facts that put the national share figures into perspective.

1 - The Tory PNS figure is the highest it has been in local elections since 2008 (when it was 41%).

2 - The Labour PNS figure is the lowest it has been in local elections since 2010 (when it was 27%).

3 - The Tory PNS lead over Labour is the highest it has been since 2009 (when it was 15 points).

4 - The Lib Dem PNS figure is the highest it has been since 2010 (when it was 26%).

5- The Ukip PNS figure is lower than it has ever been (although the BBC only started producing a national share figure for Ukip in 2013) and it is less than half what it was last year (when it was 12%).

6 - The Tory lead is almost double what local election experts Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher predicted, on the basis of how parties have been performing in local elections recently.

7 - The PNS figures suggest Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is going backwards (it was on 31% PNS in last year’s local elections).

8 - And the figures suggest the Tories are surging ahead since last year (when they were on 30% PNS).

9 - The Tory lead is bigger than it was at the general election, when the Conservatives got 38% of the GB vote and Labour got 31%.

10 - But the Tory lead is smaller than opinion polls suggest. The Financial Times’ opinion poll tracker, which is based on a time-weighted average of all the main pollster’s most recent polls, currently has the Tories on 46% and Labour on 29%. The PNS figure could be taken as evidence that the polls are overstating the Tory lead, although it is only a reflection of what would happen if people voted across the whole of Britain as they did in the locals. As explained earlier, in general elections some people vote differently, and the 1980s experience suggests the governing party could do even better in a general election. (See 11.22am.)

Updated

Andy Street is giving a victory speech now.

He thanks his team. And he says when he launched his campaign, he wanted it to reach every community in the West Midlands. He wanted to be “moderate, tolerant and inclusive”. And he wanted to propose practical solutions.

He says he hopes his victory represents the birth of a new, Tory urban agenda.

Updated

The Conservatives' Andy Street has been elected West Midlands mayor

The Conservatives’ Andy Street has been elected West Midlands mayor

Sky News produces its own national share figures (see 2.53pm). On the basis of their analysis, they have produced projected figures for how many seats the main parties would get in a general election if people were to vote as the did yesterday.

They say these results put the Tories on course for a majority of 48.

Sky’s projections for how the local election results would play out in a general election.
Sky’s projections for how the local election results would play out in a general election. Photograph: Sky News

Here are the first round figures for the West Midlands mayoral contest, where the Conservative Andy Street is up against Labour’s Siôn Simon.

Conservatives: 216,253 (42%)

Labour: 210,259 (41%)

Lib Dems: 30,378 (6%)

Ukip: 29,051 (6%)

Greens: 24,260 (5%)

Updated

May claims EU 'bureaucrats' are trying to stop UK getting a good Brexit deal

Theresa May has had a short session with reporters at a workplace in Brentford. Here are the main points. Only some of her replied-to questions were broadcast, but if I’ve missed anything, I will post it later.

  • May renewed her claim that “bureaucrats in Europe” were trying to stop Britain get a good Brexit deal. That was why people should vote for her, she said.

This is not about who wins and who loses in the local elections. It is about continuing to fight for the best Brexit deal for families and businesses across the United Kingdom, to lock in the economic progress we have made and get on with the job of making a success of the years ahead.

The reality is that today, despite the evident will of the British people, we have bureaucrats in Europe who are questioning our resolve to get the right deal. And the reality is that only a general election vote for the Conservatives in 34 days’ time will strengthen my hand to get the best deal for Britain from Brexit. So today I will continue with my efforts to earn the support of you the people.

  • She said that she and her party would not “take anything for granted” in the light of her local election victory. She said:

Since I became prime minister I have been determined to make sure that this is a government that works for the whole country and it is encouraging that we have won support across the whole of the United Kingdom. But I will not take anything for granted and neither will the team I lead because there is too much at stake.

  • She dismissed claims that her local election victory made her warnings about the prospect of a “coalition of chaos” if Labour won the election redundant. Asked about this, she replied.

I don’t take anything for granted, and if you just look at what’s happened in the last couple of years, we saw that the opinion polls got it wrong in the 2015 election, they got it wrong for the referendum and of course Jeremy Corbyn has himself pointed out that he was a 200-to-1 chance for the Labour leadership. That is why I’m not taking anything for granted.

What was also interesting was what she did not say: in her opening remarks, and in her first two answers, there was no reference to “strong and stable leadership”. Perhaps all the jibes about this have got to her.

Updated

Theresa May has been speaking to reporters. She says she is not taking anything for granted.

  • May vows to carry on fighting “bureaucrats in Europe” who she says are trying to stop the UK getting the best Brexit deal.

So she will continue to push for the right deal.

Q: Do you think you could get back into Number 10 with a bigger majority?

May says she is not taking anything for granted. Only a vote for her will allow her to get the best deal for the UK.

Q: Doesn’t this show that your talk of a “coalition of chaos” is not plausible?

May says she is not taking anything for granted.

She says the polls have been wrong before. She says Jeremy Corbyn was a 200 to 1 outsider when he stood for the Labour leadership. She is not taking anything for granted.

I will post the full quotes shortly.

Updated

Andy Burnham is making a victory speech in Manchester. He says he has been given a big job to do, and he won’t let people down.

He got 63% of the vote, he says. “Wow,” he says. He points out that this is more than the 59% his Labour colleague Steve Rotheram got in Liverpool. (See 1.47pm.) That is Manchester 1, Liverpool nil, he says.

He says he will represent everyone in Manchester. And he wants to make politics work for people. He will make sure the voice of Manchester is heard more loudly then ever before.

Updated

Burnham elected mayor of Greater Manchester

Andy Burnham, the Labour former health secretary, has been elected mayor of Greater Manchester.

Here are the turnout figures for the mayoral elections.

Perhaps Tim Farron has been reading Steve Fisher’s Twitter feed. (See 3.01pm.) Speaking to Lib Dem supporters in St Albans, the Lib Dem leader asked people to imagine what it would be like if Theresa May won the election with bigger majorities than Margaret Thatcher had in 1983 and 1987 (144 and 102). He said the Lib Dems were fighting to stop a coronation of this kind.

Tim Farron.
Tim Farron. Photograph: Sky News

The Lib Dems have also sent out a press release claiming they are “on course to make scores of gains at the general election and establish themselves as the real opposition to the Conservatives, based on the local election results in so far”. It says:

Seats as diverse as Bath, Cambridge, Cardiff Central, Cheltenham, Eastleigh, Eastbourne, Edinburgh West, St Albans and Watford would fall to the Liberal Democrats on the basis of the results so far. This would more than double the size of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party.

The Liberal Democrats topped the polls in Eastbourne despite Theresa May’s visit, and early signs are they are surging ahead in Scottish seats such as East Dunbartonshire and North East Fife.

The press release does not actually mention that the Lib Dems have actually lost council seats – 35 across Britain as a whole, according to the latest figures.

Updated

With more than a third of councils having declared their final results, the Tory surge was evident across Scotland. Early ward results showed the Tories were on course to become the second largest group behind the SNP in Edinburgh, with Labour knocked down into third place.

The Tories won their first ever councillor in the Western Isles, and saw substantial gains in Stirling, where they drew level with the SNP on nine seats each; South Ayrshire where they are now the largest group; and in Renfrewshire, where they put on eight seats to take them to nine.

That included a Tory councillor elected in Ferguslie Park, the most deprived ward in the UK, as the party continued its resurgence under Scottish leader Ruth Davidson. Annie Wells, a Tory MSP who voted Labour in 2012, said the surge in support was “tremendous. It’s people in their 60s voting Conservative for the first time. We’re hearing that from across the country.”

With no councils yet showing any one party in overall control, the SNP recorded substantial wins in Aberdeen, deposing Labour as the largest group, and won in West Dunbartonshire, again pushing Labour out of power.

Labour recorded three morale-boosting wins, narrowing holding Inverclyde by a single seat, winning in Midlothian, until yesterday an SNP minority administration, and keeping East Lothian, where Labour hopes it could just topple the sitting SNP MP George Kerevan at the general election in June.

Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson with candidate Mark Brown at the local elections at Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh.
Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson with candidate Mark Brown at the local elections at Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Updated

The newly elected Conservative mayor of the Tees Valley said there has been a “political earthquake”, the Press Association reports.

Ben Houchen said in his victory speech after defeating Labour’s Sue Jeffrey:

We are seeing a massive trend towards the Conservatives. We have started to turn the Tees Valley blue.

He said the party will target five seats in the general election – improving on the one it held at the last election, James Wharton’s Stockton South.

Ben Houchen.
Ben Houchen. Photograph: Huw Evans Picture Agency Ltd

Updated

Carwyn Jones, Labour’s first minister in Cardiff, says his party defied the “doom-mongers” in Wales

The Tories had been briefing that they’d be walking into power right across Wales this morning – that simply has not happened.

People realise that only Welsh Labour will stand up for Wales and we thank them once again for that trust.

Despite defying the doom-mongers in places like Cardiff and Flintshire, there is no question it was a mixed night for us, and as the true party of Wales we are always more stretched than our opponents.

We faced strong challenges from all parties, and independents, right across the country.

For those who lost their seats, they need to know that they have not campaigned in vain, the battle goes on and we thank them for the incredible service they have given to Welsh Labour and their communities.

Updated

Steve Fisher, the Oxford academic who works with Prof John Curtice on election analysis, says Theresa May is going into the general election with a bigger lead in projected national share (PNS - see 2.53pm) than Margaret Thatcher had before the 1983 and 1987 elections.

Prof Will Jennings, who runs the Polling Observatory at Southampton University, has sent us a snap analysis of the results. Here it is.

There is only one party that can take any cheer from these results.

If there was any doubt, these results confirm that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership is steering Labour towards a bad defeat in the general election. Labour is weak everywhere – in Scotland, England and Wales. There are arguably no crumbs of comfort for it. A lack of enthusiasm leading to depressed levels of turnout surely must be a big danger for Labour on June 8.

Ukip has been decimated as an electoral force – losing almost all its councillors so far. Given that the political tide has clearly turned on them, it is little wonder that Nigel Farage stepped aside as party leader when he did (and that Arron Banks opted not to stand in Clacton in the general election). This reversal in fortunes cannot be put down simply to the change in leadership, and is a consequence of the Conservatives having taken on the mantle of the party of Brexit.

Crucially, the results are consistent with what the national polls are telling us: that the Conservatives have an unassailable lead over Labour and are steadily peeling off Ukip voters, while also making gains in Scotland.

The results also confirm that talk of a Liberal Democrat revival has been far too premature: their failure to gain seats suggests their challenge will be limited at the general election.

Tories ahead of Labour by 11 points on national share, BBC says

The BBC has released its first estimate of its projected national share. This is its assessment of what the result would be if there had been elections in every ward in Britain and if people had voted the same way as they did yesterday.

National share is the most useful way of working out who “wins” local elections because it makes allowance for the fact that some years more elections take place in Tory-leaning areas and some years more contests take place in Labour-leaning one. As a result the raw voting numbers are skewed. The national share is an artificial number, but it is calculated based on an analysis of voting behaviour and almost everyone in politics treats it as gospel.

(Just to make life complicated, there are two national share figures that get used. Prof John Curtice does one for the BBC called the “projected national share” (PNS). Prof Michael Thrasher does one for Sky called the “national equivalent vote” (NEV). Their figures are always very similar, although sometimes they differ by a point or two in the share they give a particular party.)

Here are the BBC’s PNS figures. They could change later in the day as more figures become available, but they won’t change by much.

Conservatives: 38%

Labour: 27%

Lib Dems: 18%

Ukip: 5%

Conservative lead: 11 points

Updated

Here are the Tees Valley results.

First round

Ben Houchen (C) 40,278 (39.45%)
Sue Jeffrey (Lab) 39,797 (38.98%)
Chris Foote Wood (LD) 12,550 (12.29%)
John Tennant (UKIP) 9,475 (9.28%)
Second round

Ben Houchen (C) 48,578
Sue Jeffrey (Lab) 46,400

Mayors are elected using the supplementary vote, which means that if no candidate gets more than 50% on the first round, the top two go into a second round and other votes are redistributed according to second preferences.

Labour’s Sue Jeffrey was the only woman seen as having a good chance of being elected as a metro mayor. As Susanna Rustin argued in a Guardian article earlier this week, the introduction of a mayoral system in local government has been “disastrous for women’s representation”.

Tories win Tees Valley mayoral contest

The Conservatives have won the Tees Valley mayoral contest.

This is a big win for the Tories because, on the basis of how people in the region voted in 2015, it should be Labour. According to this Political Studies Association analysis (pdf), the Labour vote here was 43% in the 2015 general election, and the Tory vote was 30%.

Turnout in the election for Liverpool city mayor was just 26%. Speaking to the BBC, Steve Rotheram, the former Labour MP who was elected with 59% of the vote on the first round, said that his team expected a low turnout because the Liverpool city region is a new creation and people were not familiar with it.

Although Rotheram won handsomely, his win was only in line with the vote in that region in the 2015 general election. Rotheram beat the Conservative candidate, Tony Caldeira, who got 20% of the vote. According to this Political Studies Association analysis (pdf), in 2015 people in the Liverpool city region voted 62% Labour and 18% Conservative.

Steve Rotheram
Steve Rotheram Photograph: Steve Rotheram/BBC

Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit, a local government thinktank, says Labour is being “all but wiped out” in the English counties. Here is his take on the elections so far.

The Conservatives now have a comprehensive grip on shire England, taking Derbyshire from Labour and taking majority control of counties such as Northumberland, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire.

Labour look like they will be all but wiped out in the counties. Ukip already have been.

Labour will now be pinning their hopes on the new combined authority areas that are electing metro mayors for the first time, though the West Midlands looks desperately close and the Conservatives have already won the West of England.

The big question mark hanging over the mayoral elections has been whether turnout will be big enough to give the new mayors the mandate and legitimacy they need to hit the ground running and to act as an effective political counterweight to Whitehall.

At around 30%, it’s broadly in line with turnout for the county council elections that happened yesterday and with local elections generally. It’s certainly far better than the disastrously low turnout we saw in the first police and crime commissioner elections. The new metro mayors will be local government leaders working with other leaders, often heading cabinets of council leaders: this level of turnout will mean they can do this with the same level of mandate as the rest of local government.

Most incoming mayors will be privately pleased with this level of turnout, while hoping to raise their profile in office and improve significantly upon it next time they go to the polls.

Updated

Here is my colleague Severin Carrell’s story on Labour losing control of Glasgow.

The Scottish Conservatives’ first councillor in Shettleston said he was “shocked” to win in the east end of Glasgow, a former Labour stronghold, the Press Association reports.

Thomas Kerr, 20, put his win down to opposition to another Scottish independence referendum.

He said: “I’m shocked as well, when you stand as a candidate for the Conservatives in the east end of Glasgow you don’t expect something like this to happen, but I think people recognised I’m a local voice and will stand up for local issues.

“They wanted to send a message to Nicola Sturgeon that they don’t want a second referendum.

“Most people that I spoke to are former Labour voters but I also spoke to people who have voted SNP but are fed up and want a Government that will get on with the day job rather than focusing on independence.”

And Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, tweeted her congratulations.

The Conservative Andy Street has won the first round of the West Midlands mayoral contest, according to PolitcsHome’s John Ashmore.

Back to the West Midlands mayoral elections, and it was a similar story in Wolverhampton as Labour’s Sion Simon came on top again with 20,594 (45%) of the first preference votes. Andy Street received 36% of the vote with 16,514. Ukip’s Pete Durnell came in third with 2911, followed by Liberal Democrat Beverley Nielsen with 1,990, James Burn of the Green party got 1,794 and Communist Graham Stevenson received 570. Turnout in Wolverhampton was 25%.

Street got his first win in Walsall. The area which has a Tory-controlled administration was the third to declare its first preference votes. The former John Lewis boss received 23,694 (48%) votes. Simon received 34% of the vote with 16,725. Ukip got their highest result of day so far with 3,501, followed by the Liberal Democrats’ Beverley Nielsen at 2,047. The Green party’s James Burn received 1,465 of the vote and Communist Graham Stevenson received 442. Turnout was 24%.

Updated

Ukip have finally won a seat.

My colleague Helen Pidd says Labour’s Andy Burnham seems to be on course for a big win in the Greater Manchester mayoral election.

Labour's Steve Rotheram elected Liverpool city mayor with 59% of the vote

Steve Rotheram, the former Labour MP, has been elected mayor of Liverpool city region on the first count, with 59% of the vote. Here are the figures.

Steve Rotheram (Lab) 171,167 (59.30%)
Tony Caldeira (C) 58,805 (20.37%)
Carl Cashman (LD) 19,751 (6.84%)
Tom Crone (Green) 14,094 (4.88%)
Paula Walters (UKIP) 11,946 (4.14%)
Roger Bannister (TUSC) 7,881 (2.73%)
Tabitha Morton (Women) 4,287 (1.49%)
Paul Breen (Jury) 729 (0.25%)

And here are the latest results for Wales in terms of council seats gained/lost.

Again, to provide comparison, in brackets I have given the total number of seats gained or lost by the same parties in 2012, when Wales last had council elections. (The 2012 figures are the final ones; the 2017 ones are not quite final, because a few results are yet to come in.)

Labour: -97 (+232)

Independents: +14 (-64)

Conservatives: +72 (-61)

Plaid Cymru: +29 (-41)

Lib Dems: -10 (-66)

Here are the latest results for England in terms of council seats gained/lost.

To provide some comparison, in brackets I have given the total numbers of seats gained or lost by the same parties in 2013, when these councils last had elections. (The 2013 figures are the final figures; the 2017 ones are not the final ones, because some results are yet to come in.)

Conservatives: +189 (in 2013: -335)

Labour: -82 (+291)

Ukip: -76 (+139)

Lib Dems: -25 (-124)

Greens +3 (+3)

Updated

Voters on Merseyside have limited enthusiasm for the first Liverpool city regional mayor, if turnout is anything to go by: 26.1% across the region. In the borough of Halton, which falls under the new mayor’s jurisdiction despite being in Cheshire, turnout was just 20.5%.
On a day of grim news for Labour, the contest offers a little cheer: the runaway favourite to win is Labour’s Steve Rotheram, a Corbyn ally who has been a local MP since 2010. The result is expected to be announced shortly.

Updated

Labour’s Siôn Simon has won 44% of the first preference vote in Coventry, one of the seven regional councils in the West Midlands mayoral race. It was the first result declared in the area.

Simon took 24,331 (44.4%) votes, with the Conservatives’ Andy Street receiving 20,345 (37%). The Liberal Democrats’ Beverley Nielsen received 3,339, followed by Green candidate James Burn on 2,984 and Ukip’s candidate Pete Durnell on 2,928 and Communist Graham Stevenson receiving on 821.

Updated

Douglas Carswell says 'it's over' for Ukip

Douglas Carswell, the former Ukip MP, told the BBC that he was glad to see the demise of his former party.

Speaking as Ukip’s first and last member of parliament, I’m absolutely delighted with this result. A lot of people like me, 3.8 million of us, supported Ukip at the last election because we were so passionate about that referendum. Now what we need to do is make sure that Theresa May gets a mega mandate to go and make sure we get on with it and go and get Brexit and get the deal that is in our interests. We are starting to see that. And I think it’s wonderful to watch ...

There are a lot of good people in Ukip, and I would not want to say anything unkind, but we all know that it’s over. Let’s be frank: I would be surprised if Ukip manages to field more than 100 candidates at the general election ... Thousands of Ukip supporters and activists out there realise that actually the only way to make sure we get the deal that we now need to get is to make sure that Theresa May gets a mega mandate on 8 June.

Updated

I’ve just been speaking to Stewart Young, the leader of Labour’s group on Cumbria county council, which before yesterday’s poll was a Labour-LibDem administration. Labour lost 10 seats on the council, some of them in longtime Labour areas he had expected to hold. The Tories are now the largest group. He said:

Some of the things that are happening I am sure will be the same as elsewhere: the Ukip vote seems to have collapsed. Quite a bit of that Ukip vote originally came from us, but it hasn’t come back to us, it’s gone to the Tories.

Gillian Troughton, who lost the recent byelection in Copeland to the Tories and is now standing as Labour’s general election candidate, lost her county council seat, which doesn’t bode well for 8 June.

Young says Labour’s leadership has been “an issue, but not as much of an issue as you might expect,” on the doorsteps.

When it did come up, we obviously tried to say this is the local elections, and have that discussion. A lot of people accepted that, but whether they went into the polling stations, you never know.

Young could now seek to strike an agreement with the Lib Dems and perhaps some of the local independents; but he points out that all parties are likely to be wary in the runup to the general election, when the Conservatives are pushing the narrative of a “coalition of chaos” between Labour and other opposition groups.

Updated

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary and a close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, is on the BBC’s elections programme. It was put to her that these elections might overstate Labour’s support because there may be people who were willing to vote for a Labour council but who won’t vote for Corbyn to become prime minister next month. She disagreed, telling the programme:

This is a relatively low turnout type of election. At the general we will have a higher turnout. And I believe that Labour voters will be repelled by Tory triumphalism and the notion of giving Theresa May some kind of blank cheque.

Diane Abbott.
Diane Abbott. Photograph: BBC

Updated

Peter Kellner, the elections expert and former YouGov president, has just told the BBC that the latest share of the vote figures suggest that the Conservatives are on course for their best result in local elections during government since 1979. They could be doing even better than the Tories did during the local elections held at the time of the Falklands war, he says.

Updated

Here are the latest figures from the BBC for percentage change in share of the vote in England.

Latest change in share of the vote figures for England.
Latest change in share of the vote figures for England. Photograph: BBC

Updated

Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, has said it was “a good night at the office” for his party in Wales.

We are incredibly proud of the big advances we’ve made so far – it’s been a good night at the office.

We’ve gained overall control of Monmouth, made huge strides in the Vale of Glamorgan, doubled our representation in Wrexham, and reached double-digits right in the backyard of the first minister.

Updated

Steven Woolfe, the MEP who was tipped to become party leader until he got involved in an altercation with a colleague and eventually left the party, has told Radio 5 Live that he will vote Conservative at the general election. He said:

I’ve got no choice – it would have to be Theresa May. The darker forces within Ukip ... have managed to rise ... and that just won’t work in the United Kingdom.

Updated

The final Cardiff results are in. This is from the Press Association’s Ian Jones.

The councillors losing their seats are not just dots on a chart, they’re loyal party workers thrown out of a job. In recognition of that, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson just put out this statement:

I want to pay tribute to all our councillors, particularly those who lost their seats last night or this morning, and thank them on behalf of the Labour party for all their hard work. They are the glue that holds the Labour party together. They are the ones who pound the streets, week in week out, communicating the Labour message. They are at the forefront of the fight against austerity at council chambers across the country. I have nothing but respect and admiration for each and every one of them and I want to thank them for their contribution to our movement.

Arron Banks, the former Ukip donor and Nigel Farage ally, has issued a lengthy statement saying the current party leadership has “crashed the car”.

If we use the analogy of UKIP as a racing car, Nigel was a skilled driver who drove the car around the track faster and faster, knowing when to take risks, delighting the audience.

The current leadership has crashed the car, at the first bend of the race, into the crowd, killing the driver and spectators.

As one of the Leave.EU team said to me: a strategic bullet to the back of the head.

It’s a sorry state of affairs.

Banks said he had advised Paul Nuttall, the current Ukip leader, to only put up candidates against pro-remain MPs. Nuttall did not take this advice, and the party will stand against some pro-leave candidates.

Comparing Nuttall unfavourably with Farage, Banks went on:

Arguably, Ukip under Nigel was the most successful political party ever. He can say he destroyed Cameron, Osborne, Corbyn, Clegg and the Labour party.

He re-drew the political map of the country in his image. No other politician in the last 50 years could claim that.

He was so successful that Mrs May has positioned herself as a champion of Brexit, the downtrodden JAMs, grammar schools, and controlled immigration. It turns out these policies were wildly popular after all. Take another bow Nigel!

Banks said that he expected the Conservatives to win a “massive majority” but that he expected Theresa May to then fail to get immigration under control. He said he would launch a new movement in the autumn to exploit potential Tory failings.

Here is my colleague Simon Jenkins on the demise of Ukip. He argues that the results are terminal for the party and that it should disband.

The Scottish Tories are on course for large gains across many of Scotland’s 32 council areas, picking up seats from Paisley to Glasgow to Aberdeenshire, in line with a sharp rise in support detected by pollsters. But Tory officials are trying to dampen down excitement about these results, arguing the party is coming from a very low base.

In 2012, the Tories only won 13.3% of first preference votes under the single transferrable voting system used in Scottish council elections, 2.35 points down on 2007.

“It’s looking pretty good,” said a spokesman for Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson. “But we are coming from an incredibly low base. The increases look huge but we’re coming from a time when the party was in the doldrums.”

Clackmannanshire, Scotland’s smallest mainland authority, was the first to fully declare and showed the SNP held its eight seats but failed to make gains. The council remains in no overall control, but in line with that surge in Tory support, the Tories increased their holding by four seats to take five. Labour were the main losers, dropping three seats to win five in total.

With counting in Scotland only starting at 9am, the first Scottish ward-level results are already throwing up surprises, with several very prominent local politicians losing their seats.

Willie Young, Labour’s finance convenor and former group leader in Aberdeen, was among the earliest casualties. Despite speculation the SNP would take Fife from Labour, the SNP group leader Neale Hanvey lost his seat to a Conservative while in Shetland, where councillors traditionally sit as independents, council leader Gary Robinson failed to get re-elected.

Counting of votes gets under way in the Scottish local government election at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow.
Counting of votes gets under way in the Scottish local government election at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Updated

Labour loses control of Glasgow

Here is more on Glasgow, where Labour has lost overall control of the council for the first time in more than 35 years. The focus is now on whether the SNP can gain enough seats to run it with a majority. Here are some tweets from journalists.

What the results so far show – Alan Travis's analysis

The Welsh overnight results, where the estimated 5% swing from Labour to Conservatives was marginally less bad than the 7% swing against the party in England, have revealed the extent of Labour’s bedrock which may yet limit the scale of Theresa May’s landslide victory on 8 June.

Labour has not done well in Wales. Experts predicted the loss of 100 Labour councillors in Wales and with results declared in only 13 out of the 22 councils the party had already lost 75 of them.

The loss of control of councils in Bridgend, which is the 20th most marginal seat on the Tory general election hitlist, and Wrexham, which is the 25th Tory target, would deliver May a majority of at least 52-62 on 9 June.

Labour took some comfort from the fact that they managed to hang on to control of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport in their traditional south Wales heartlands. But if they had lost Cardiff, which has two parliamentary seats which are 76th and 79th on the Tory hitlist, then May could have been looking at a majority of 165 to 170. This would have even exceeded Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s landslides.

In England the results have held no such silver linings for Labour. Perhaps it is not surprising that there is not much Labour bedrock to be found in the traditional Tory shire counties where most seats were contested yesterday.

If Labour had any hopes of benefiting from the dramatic drop in the Ukip vote the results so far provide no comfort. In Lincolnshire in particular, where Lincoln was 15th on Labour’s hitlist of theoretical gains, Ukip saw a 16.8 point drop in its share of the vote to 7.5%.

But while the Conservative vote went up by 17.4 points to 53%, Labour saw only a 0.7 point increase to 19.3% – nearly all the Ukip vote went straight to the Tories. This rather confirms Boris Johnson’s claim that Ukip were “a lost tribe of Tories” rather than disaffected Labour voters who might return to the party. The Lincolnshire results will be a blow to Paul Nuttall’s hopes in Boston.

There is one part of the country where Labour does have some strength in the English counties and this is the east Midlands. It will be worth watching out for the results later today in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire where there are many parliamentary marginals including Derbyshire North East (18th on Tory list), Gedling (28th), and Mansfield (53rd).

These east Midlands results might actually provide a better guide to what might happen on 8 June than the much vaunted mayoral fight in the West Midlands where a lowish turnout percentage in the 20s may give a false impression.

It is often argued that local elections are no guide to general election results as people split their votes. But it is worth recalling what happened in 1983 and 1987 when the last Tory landslides happened. In both cases the Tories underperformed their eventual general election share of the vote and Labour did better in the locals than in the subsequent general election. (See 11.22am.)

Updated

Labour has lost overall control of Glasgow for the first time in 40 years, the BBC reports.

This is from the Press Association’s Tom Wilkinson.

The former Ukip MP Douglas Carswell (who left the party to sit as an independent in March, and who is now leaving parliament) has posted a message on Twitter implying “it’s over” for Ukip.

Salmond says Tories have 'eliminated Ukip by becoming Ukip'

Alex Salmond, the former SNP leader and former Scottish first minister, has just told BBC News that the Conservatives have “eliminated Ukip by becoming Ukip”.

One very interesting trend, when you see the disappearance of Ukip, from English politics, and Welsh politics for that matter, is the extent to which the Conservative party have actually become Ukip. They’ve eliminated Ukip by becoming Ukip. The sort of extreme language that Theresa May used in Downing Street the other day, that could have come from Nigel Farage. So the Conservative party have managed to beat Ukip, assimilate their votes, but they’ve done it by becoming Ukip. And as that message sinks home I think a lot of people will think twice before endorsing this type of Conservative party.

Alex Salmond.
Alex Salmond. Photograph: BBC

A Lib Dem source in the West Midlands says things are looking good so far for Andy Street, the Conservative mayoral candidate. “Tories have won, we think,” a party source said.

The Greens are claiming success of sorts on the Isle of Wight, where they are proudly claiming to be the second-most popular party by votes, a massive advance from the last set of local elections, in which they contested just one ward and gained fewer than 300 votes.

This time the Greens got 5,607 votes, according to their tally, above Labour on 4,134 and the Lib Dems on 2,783.

Now for the context: they were still well behind the 9,500-plus vote total for independent candidates, and took just one seat, the same as Labour and one fewer than the Lib Dems. The Tories now have 20 councillors, and take overall control of the council.

But the Greens hope this augurs a decent result on the Isle of Wight in the general election, where they came third in the 2015 contest.

Also, they note that the combined independent, Green, Labour, and Lib Dem vote was above 50%, tying in with their favoured idea of the so-called progressive alliance.

The party’s co-leader, Jonathan Bartley, who will visit the Isle of Wight later today to see the new councillor, has been talking up the Greens’ local election performance.

He said: “Across the country Greens have gained seats - with first seats in Orkney and the Isle of Wight, and a first win in Wales.”

Here is the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on developments in Scotland.

Sir Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has been touring the broadcast studios this morning playing down the idea that a good result in the local elections means a Conservative general election victory is a dead cert. For obvious reasons, the Conservatives do not want their supporters to get complacent, in case that encourages people to stay at home on 8 June.

The turnout in local elections is much, much lower than in a general election. So it is wrong to predict what is going to happen on June 8. We still have a general election to campaign for and to win.

Fallon is partially right; local elections are not always a sound guide to what will happen in a general election.

Here is an extract from a paper on this subject by David Cowling, the BBC’s former head of political research.

The key question is whether people vote the same way in local and general elections?

Fortunately, we have considerable evidence on this subject because for the previous five general elections (1997, 2001, 2005, 2010 and 2015) local elections were also held on the same day in various parts of England.

Research undertaken by Colin Rallings, Michael Thrasher, Galina Borisyuk and Michael Turner of Plymouth University (published September 2015) observed that: “Analysis of aggregate data in 1997 suggested that a minimum of 11% voted for different parties at the local and general elections with survey data showing that some 21% of respondents who were validated as having voted claimed to have done so”. And for the most recent election they point out that the British Election Survey suggests that, by one calculation, “it appears that 25.2% of 2015 voters should be classified as split ticket, seven percentage points higher than in the [2010 election].”

But Fallon’s argument may also be misleading because previous experience suggests that, if anything, the governing party is likely to do better in a general election than in a local election. Here is an extract from a blog by YouGov’s Anthony Wells on the same subject.

In 1983 and 1987 Margaret Thatcher called an election immediately after the local elections (general election campaigns were shorter then), meaning then – as now – we got local elections in May and a general election a month later. This is the comparison between the projected vote shares coming out of the local elections and the actual general election results just a month later.

The shares of the vote were, once again, radically different. In 1983 the Tories squeaked a three point lead in the local elections, but crushed Labour by sixteen points in the general election four weeks later. The eleven point Tory lead in the 1987 general election was almost double the six point lead they got in the locals just a month before.

Council and general election results compared in 1983 and 1987.
Council and general election results compared in 1983 and 1987. Photograph: YouGov

Updated

The Press Association has more on how the Conservatives lost the chance to gain control of Northumberland county council after two candidates who tied were forced to draw straws. (See 10.04pm.)

The Conservatives missed out on gaining control of Northumberland county council after the final seat came down to the drawing of straws.

The Tories replaced Labour as the largest group, but after two recounts, South Blyth ward was tied.

The returning officer was then forced to decide the election by the drawing of straws, with the Liberal Democrat candidate Lesley Rickerby picking the right one to defeat Tory Daniel Carr.

This finally brought to an end a nail-biting ten-hour wait for the candidates.

Rickerby called the experience “very traumatic” and said she was in no rush to repeat what had happened.

“It’s unbelievable that when you consider we have a democratic service that we end up having to draw straws,” she said.

“It was very traumatic and I certainly would have preferred it to be a majority, but the way our system works, after a couple of recounts, we had no choice.

“The returning officer decides if we would flip a coin or draw straws and he went with straws.

“I felt if I did it I was choosing my own destiny but I cannot deny it was very traumatic.

“When you enjoy doing something like representing people I would have been very disappointed to lose it that way.

“I’m certainly don’t want to do that again in a hurry, it really was the last straw.”

The Conservatives won 33 seats, but the combination of Labour, Lib Dems and independents denied them a controlling majority. Labour ended up with 24, the Lib Dems three and independents seven.

Updated

Ukip’s leader, Paul Nuttall, has released a statement conceding that it had been “a difficult night” for the party.

However, he said, this was both expected and arguably a necessary sacrifice for Ukip to make:

If the price of Britain leaving the EU is a Tory advance after taking up this patriotic cause then it is a price Ukip is prepared to pay.

Referring to those Ukip councillors who lost their seats, he said: “Frankly, there is nothing they could have done in the face of a big national swing to the Tories.”

Nuttall continued:

Our electoral success over recent years was a key driver in forcing the Conservatives to embrace our cause under a new prime minister who was campaigning for a remain vote in the referendum a year ago.

May’s recent apparent dispute with the European commission and stern statement outside No 10 that forces in Brussels were seeking to influence the UK election “was particularly fortuitously timed for the Conservatives”, Nuttall said. Ukip was targeting general election seats “and we remain excited by our prospects in the best of these”, he promised.

Saying politics was “a long game”, he ended: “We are the victims of our own success and now we pick ourselves up and go on to further success in the future.”

Updated

On the BBC Prof John Curtice says early figures from the Scottish Borders council shows the Conservative vote up 19 points on 2012, when Scottish council elections were last held. That is consistent with what the opinion polls are saying about the Conservatives’s standing in Scotland, he says.

Yesterday Jeremy Corbyn described himself as “Monsieur Zen”. He certainly seemed to be exuding calm when he left his home this morning, smiling at reporters, although not answering their questions.

Jeremy Corbyn leaving his home
Jeremy Corbyn leaving his home. Photograph: Sky News

Here are some mayoral election turnout figures from the Local Government Information Unit.

What Labour HQ is advising candidates to say about the results

Labour’s candidates will be sent out on the airwaves to call results “a mixed picture” and to stress Conservative gains in Wales have “failed to materialise”, the party’s leaked election script reveals.

Would-be MPs will admit the results are “disappointing” but say the party has “done better than people were predicting”.

One success the party will be stressing is retaining Swansea, Cardiff and Newport councils, the latter of which the party will say was a Tory target.

“Some of the predictions of doom and gloom across the board aren’t quite panning out as some thought,” the script said. “There are some disappointing results but there are good ones too such as holding on to the councils in Neath Port Talbot and Newport.”

Asked about poor results in Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent, the party will stress those were gained at a high point for the party in 2012 and that it expects Wales “to be challenging”.

Another success that will be promoted is the success of Ros Jones in the Doncaster mayoral contest, though any other result would have been near unthinkable.

Candidates will also suggest much of the Conservative surge is down to the Ukip collapse and say the results are being judged against a high point for the party in 2012.

“In England the councils were last fought in 2013, midway through the 2010-15 Parliament and not long after our high point in 2012,” the script says. “At the time, Ukip were on an estimated 23 per cent of the vote, taking many votes and seats from the Conservatives. The early signs are that Ukip’s vote has completely collapsed, leaving the door open to Conservative gains.”

Labour’s expected wins in the Greater Manchester and Liverpool mayoral contests will be presented as a key victory. “They are exactly the sort of seats the Tories have been saying they’re targeting in this campaign; there are a number of marginal seats there so we’ll be looking closely at the results,” the script says.

The Tories have spent this campaign saying they’re going into traditional Labour areas like the North West, so we’ll be looking closely at the results in places like Manchester and Liverpool.

Scotland will also be described as “challenging elections for Labour” and compared to the 2012 results “where Labour significantly exceeded expectations”. Bad results to come will be blamed on “an independence referendum that caused deep divisions in Scotland” and losses will be expected after Labour’s collapse both in the 2015 general election and Holyrood elections. “We expect these results to reflect that,” the script says.

Updated

Stephen Kinnock says Labour's performance 'disastrous' and that Corbyn is partly to blame

This is what the Labour MP Stephen Kinnock told the BBC earlier (see 9.44am) about why he thought Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership helped to explain what he described as his party’s “disastrous” performance.

I think we can’t just put a spin on this – the fact of the matter is that Jeremy’s leadership does come up on the doorstep on a very regular basis. What we have to do is make this election about more than leadership, we’ve got to make it about the future of our country ...

We are seeing from people on the doorstep that they are worried about the polarisation of our politics, they do feel there is a shift to the hard left and a shift to the hard right. And my vision of the Labour party is not one where we are anywhere near the hard left. We are a party that is a centrist, patriotic party that stands up for working people, that believes in rebuilding our public services and realises that we have got principles but if you want to be putting those principles into practice, you have got to win power, and if you want to win power you have got to be in touch with the people of this country. That’s what we have got to get back to.

I’ve taken the quote from PoliticsHome.

Updated

Results so far

Here are the latest results from the BBC.

Seats

  • The Conservatives have 570 seats, gaining 163.
  • Labour has 410 seats, losing 127.
  • Independents have 204 seats, gaining 21.
  • The Lib Dems have 147 seats, losing 28.
  • Plaid Cymru have 50 seats, gaining 8.
  • The Greens have 11 seats, gaining 6.
  • Ukip have lost 41 seats and have not held any.

The Conservatives had hoped to gain control of Northumberland, which has been a hung council. They won 33 out of 67 seats. But they were deprived of a majority because one seat had to be decided by a straw draw, which is what happens when there is a tie, and the Lib Dems won. This is from the BBC’s Fergus Hewison.

Ukip is victim of its own success, says Suzanne Evans

Ukip still has not won any seats. Suzanne Evans, Ukip’s health spokeswoman, told Sky News that Ukip was a victim of its own success.

Brexit is something we have fought for long and hard and most sensible people recognise that if it weren’t for Ukip we would not be in the position we are now as a country, we would not have triggered article 50, we would not be heading out of the EU.

That really does put us in a dilemma. We have got what we wanted, but unfortunately, we have been in a sense the victims of our own success. We do have a duty now to reform, because what concerns me is that there is still a desperate need for a sensible third party in British politics.

Updated

The Labour MP Stephen Kinnock has told the BBC that the elections have been “disastrous” for this party.

Here are the BBC figures showing what the results so far say about how the share of the vote has changed in England.

Change in share of vote in England.
Change in share of vote in England. Photograph: BBC

Here is the latest take on the results from Prof John Curtice, the BBC’s lead elections expert.

It looks as though [Ukip] is doing pretty much in line with the 6, 7% it is getting in the opinion polls. It has not disappeared entirely. You can still see a recognisable Ukip vote. But its misfortune is that it was defending a very, very good set of results back in 2013 and compared with that the party is a pale shadow of itself.

The second thing to say is clearly the Labour party has had a difficult night. Allowing the Conservatives to gain somewhere like Warwickshire was clearly bad. Its vote in general is lower than it was in 2013 and that was not a particularly good year ...

The Liberal Democrats [are showing] some signs of recovery. Their vote seems to be up three points. The truth, however, [is it is] still not a performance on the scale that we got used to with the Liberal Democrats before they joined the coalition with the Conservatives ... But still far too early to talk about a significant Liberal Democrat rival.

The big story is Conservative and Labour. A pretty bad night for Labour, with just a couple of glimmers of hope: hanging on to Cardiff, which we weren’t necessarily expecting, actually hanging on to Newport too, which was quite a good result, and also running the Conservatives much closer in the West of England mayoral election than we might have anticipated.

Yes, the Conservatives have done well. No doubt they would have won a general election if it had been held yesterday. What we can’t be quite so sure on at the moment is just how well they’ve done ...

A few markers. It may be the best result for the Conservatives, certainly for 10 years, maybe for 25 ... For Labour, probably their worst result since they lost power at Westminster in 2010.

Results so far

Here are the latest results from the BBC.

Seats

  • The Conservatives have 561 seats, gaining 155.
  • Labour has 403 seats, losing 125.
  • Independents have 201 seats, gaining 25.
  • The Lib Dems have 142 seats, losing 29.
  • Plaid Cymru have 47 seats, gaining 12.
  • Ukip lost 41 seats and have not held any.

Councils

  • The Conservatives have won control of 10 councils, gaining five.
  • Labour has won control of five councils, losing three.
  • Independents have gained control of two councils.
  • Six councils have no overall control, down by four.

Labour had braced itself for dreadful results in Wales.

It did lose control of councils that will hurt, including two of its valleys heartlands, but fared much better than expected elsewhere including in Swansea, Newport and, most importantly, Cardiff.

The party argued that the much-vaunted Tory surge through Wales had not come. Shadow Welsh secretary Christina Rees MP said:

The predicted Tory advance in Wales has simply failed to materialise. We have defied the pundits to deliver some extremely strong results across Wales – holding Cardiff, Newport, Torfaen and Neath Port Talbot, retaining control with gains in Flintshire and, against a Tory onslaught, increasing our majority in Swansea.

Phil Bale, the Labour leader in Cardiff, said the result in the capital had been very encouraging.

We’ve exceeded all expectations to retain control. Across Wales we always said this is going to be tough local election campaign for Welsh Labour after we did so well in 2012. There are beacons within the results. We have shown we can stand up to the cuts coming in from the Tories.

As soon as the general election was called it changed the dynamic of the campaign. It’s very hard to get people to focus on local issues and yet we’re talking about some of the most important services people rely on.

There was disappointment for Labour in Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent, areas associated with the great Labour figures including Keir Hardie and Aneurin Bevan. Blaenau was lost to the independents and Merthyr may go the same way when a final ward votes next month. The leader of Merthyr, Brendan Toomey, was one of the most high-profile casualties, losing his seat to an independent. He said:

It is quite clear that huge numbers of the public aren’t entirely happy, to say the least, with the way the Labour party is going at the moment.

But in reality these are not seismic shocks for Labour. Both councils were run by independents until Labour’s success of 2012 and there is a proud tradition of independent councillors in Wales. Labour took succour in the fact that it was losing here to independents rather than the Tories.

The upset may be more bitter in Bridgend, where Labour lost overall control. This is the assembly seat of the Welsh Labour leader and first minister, Carwyn Jones, and where Theresa May parked her tanks last week when she visited, making clear that she was in the hunt for so-called safe Labour seats as well as marginals. Jones tweeted:

Plaid Cymru said it had made breakthroughs in places like Bridgend and Blaenau Gwent and got its first ever councillors elected in Aberavon in the steel-making town of Port Talbot.

The party was disappointed not to take overall control in Ceredigion but other key Plaid targets including Ynys Mon (Anglesey) are counting later on Friday.

Plaid leader Leanne Wood said: “Across Wales there will be more Plaid Cymru councillors defending their communities and standing up to the Tories.”

The Conservatives gained control of Monmouthshire from no overall control but will not be entirely pleased with the results so far. Both the Lib Dems and Ukip lost ground.

Updated

On the Today programme Nick Robinson asked John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, about a May Day rally he attended at Trafalgar Square where he was photographed underneath a banner with the Communist hammer and sickle and what seemed to be a flag for the Syrian regime. Asked if he knew about those, McDonnell said of course he didn’t. It was a TUC event, he says. He was there to celebrate May Day.

He said if he had known about those flags, he would have objected. Even the TUC organisers did not know they were there, he said. “I was furious afterwards and I think so were the organisers themselves.”

The New Statesman’s Stephen Bush has written a good analysis of what the results so far tell us. Here’s an excerpt.

Unless last night’s results turn out to be wildly unrepresentative of the rest of the local elections, which is possible but not particularly likely, the Tories are on course for a blowout victory on 8 June. Its main plank is the almost wholesale absorption of the Ukip vote into the Conservative voteshare. Ukip were wiped off the map yesterday, and their votes – including much of the large number that originally voted Labour – went to the Tories.

That alone would be enough to lock in a Conservative rout on 8 June. But that in parts of the country the Labour vote actually declined as opposed to merely being overhauled points to the party’s wipeout trajectory.

Labour has failed to take control of Northumberland, which remains under no overall control, the Press Association reports. Other parties and independents have won 34 of 67 seats so far, with results from some divisions still to come.

According to the Press Association, Vale of Glamorgan remains with no party in overall control, but with the Conservatives as the largest party. Some ward results are still to come.

Key results from overnight

The Press Association has a useful guide to some of the most interesting results from overnight.

Severe blows for Labour in the south Wales valleys, with independents taking control of Blaenau Gwent and the result on a knife-edge in Merthyr Tydfil;

Labour losing control of Bridgend - the stronghold of first minister and Welsh Labour leader Carwyn Jones, which Theresa May had targeted with a campaign visit;

Better news for Labour in Doncaster, where Ros Jones was re-elected as mayor after taking more than 50% of the vote in the first round, and the Welsh councils of Newport and Neath Port Talbot, where it held on to control;

Victory for Conservative Tim Bowles over Labour’s Lesley Mansell in the run-off for the West of England metro mayoral post, covering Bristol and Bath;

A Ukip wipeout in former stronghold Lincolnshire, where Conservatives took overall control;

Conservatives replace Labour as the largest party in Cumbria;

Tories took a clean sweep in the bellwether town of Harlow - visited by Jeremy Corbyn the week before the vote - on their way to retaining control in Essex;

Tories gain control in Warwickshire as Labour’s representation collapses from 22 to 10;

Conservative leader of Somerset defeated by Liberal Democrat former MP Tessa Munt, though Tories retained control of the council;

Boost for Lib Dems in Hampshire, where ex-MP Mike Thornton in Eastleigh secured one of three gains from Ukip.

Election count staff count ballot papers for the local election at Riverside Ice & Leisure Centre in Chelmsford, Essex.
Election count staff count ballot papers for the local election at Riverside Ice & Leisure Centre in Chelmsford, Essex. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Plaid Cymru says it has made “significant gains” in Wales. It says it has made gains in Labour areas like Bridgend and Blaenau Gwent and won seats for the first time in Aberavon.

Plaid Cymru’s leader Leanne Wood said:

So far it looks positive for Plaid Cymru with our stronger areas yet to be announced.

We have broken new ground in all parts of Wales from Aberavon to Blaenau Gwent, and from Bridgend to Wrexham – the results are all looking positive for Plaid Cymru.

It’s also good to be holding and gaining seats where we have run councils like in Ceredigion where our strong record on running public services despite the onslaught of cuts.

The story of the night seems to be Plaid and Tory gains versus Labour and Ukip losses.

Updated

The Scottish government has rejected Tory complaints that ministers and officials breached purdah rules barring the release of politically-sensitive policy or spending announcements before the council elections.

A government spokesman said that in all four cases the Tories claimed “cash for votes” rules were breached, the rules were followed and honoured. The Tories first cited the ministerial decision to announce an £8.35m government investment in vacant office space in Glasgow, a key target for the Scottish National party, two days before the council elections. The government spokesman said:

Scottish government business continues throughout the local government election period. Ministers and officials continue to carry out their functions in the usual way. There is no automatic requirement to defer an announcement and officials are required to consider each case on its merits.

These instances represented legitimate government activity, properly considered against the guidance, and in each instance, the judgment was reached that the announcement was appropriate at this time.

On Thursday, as voters went to the polls, the Tories highlighted three new cases they said breached the purdah rules, where ministers announced new funding deals for crofters and the Scottish Seafood agency, plus unveiled an update on major infrastructure projects, eight to nine days before the council vote.

Updated

Conservative candidate for Chelmsford Central, Dick Madden (centre) celebrates after retaining his seat in the Essex county council local elections.
Conservative candidate for Chelmsford Central, Dick Madden (centre) celebrates after retaining his seat in the Essex county council local elections. Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Jon Lansman, the Momentum founder and one of Jeremy Corbyn’s key allies in the Labour party, says Sky is wrong to present the election results in terms of a swing from Labour to the Conservatives. (See 7.43am.)

McDonnell says there were 'some disappointments' for Labour, but not the wipeout predicted

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, told Sky News that there had been “some disappointments” for Labour but that the results were not as bad as some were predicting. He said:

Well, it’s mixed results definitely. It’s been a tough night. There have been some disappointments. There hasn’t been a wipeout in some areas that some of the polls were predicting.

If you look in Doncaster, we won the mayoral on the first ballot, which was very good. In West of England, where people never gave us much of a hope, we came within 5,000 votes of winning that. That was a good result.

And in Wales, where again there were predictions of a wipeout, and where Theresa May went down to campaign in Newport, we held on to Newport. Where we’ve lost in Wales is where we picked up seats from the independents in both Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent. They’ve reverted to independents.

But he said support for Labour could pick up when its manifesto was published.

The manifestoes from all the parties will be published in the next couple of weeks and I think you will see the support for our policies is incredibly strong and we will translate that into support for the party.

And he predicted that voters would warm to Jeremy Corbyn as they saw more of him in the general election campaign.

And as Jeremy gets more airtime, I think people are beginning to see the real Jeremy Corbyn’s character emerge and be in support ...

Now we are in the general election campaign, and the media are forced to give some balance, the televised broadcast media, I think what you are seeing is that we are picking up support, and as Jeremy gets more media time, people are seeing the real character of the man, this decent, honest, strong leader, in terms of principles and how to go forward.

John McDonnell on Sky News.
John McDonnell on Sky News. Photograph: Sky News

According to Sky News, the results so far are showing a 7% swing from Labour to the Conservatives since the last elections in these councils in England in 2013.

Iain Duncan Smith says there is no point to Ukip anymore

On Sky News Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative party leader and a leading leave campaigner, said that Ukip was doing badly because there was no point to it anymore.

The thing that Ukip were set up for was to get the referendum and let the British people decide. And the irony is that a year ago the British people did make that decision, they decided they wanted to leave, and the Conservative government under the brilliant leadership of Theresa May has actually now said we are going to leave ... The choices that are coming forward are about strong, stable leadership delivering a Brexit which is a good deal for the UK. And of course that means Ukip have really no skin in this game anymore. Because what’s the point? The real point is that you have a government going to deliver on what the British people want.

Iain Duncan Smith.
Iain Duncan Smith. Photograph: Sky News

According to the BBC, turnout in the elections was about 35%, up five percentage points on what it was four years ago, when the English council seats were last contested.

(The Scottish and Welsh council elections were last held five years ago.)

Updated

The numbers aren’t large but the Greens are having a quietly cheerful breakfast, with 10 seats secured so far in England, up five, including its first councillor in the Isle of Wight, Michael Lilley.

In the West of England mayoralty – a region the Greens are targeting in the general election; MEP Molly Scott Cato will stand in Bristol West – the party’s candidate, Darren Hall, scored 11.2%.

Updated

According to the BBC, Ukip’s share of the vote could be as low as 3%. Four years ago, when these elections were last contested in England, its share was 22% or 23% (depending on which of the two measures available you use).

Peter Reeve, Ukip’s local government spokesman, told the Today programme that it had been a difficult election, but he rejected claims that it was over for Ukip.

The party was defending seats it won in its best council elections ever, he said.

He also claimed that some of the independents elected were people Ukip worked closely with.

Updated

Sir Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, has been on ITV’s Good Morning Britain trying to deliver a “no complacency” message about the party’s successes. He said:

The reason we are not crowing is there is nothing yet, really, to crow about. Only a quarter of the votes have been counted and the turnout is only half what you get in a general election.

So it is far too early to predict - even from last night - what is going to happen by the end of today and it is five more weeks to the general election.

Labour holds Torfaen

Another dash of good news for Labour in Wales, securing 29 of 44 seats.

Labour holds Swansea

This – with Cardiff – means two key councils stay red, an important win on a mixed night for Labour in Wales.

Updated

Labour holds Cardiff

Labour has held Cardiff. Add that result on to its hold in Newport and an increase in its majority in Swansea and all of a sudden it feels like not such a terrible night for Labour in some its Welsh heartlands after all. The shadow Welsh secretary Christina Rees MP said:

Although there are still results coming in, it’s clear from what we know so far that the predicted Tory advance in Wales has simply failed to materialise.

We have defied the pundits to deliver some extremely strong results across Wales – holding Cardiff, Newport, Torfaen and Neath Port Talbot, retaining control with gains in Flintshire and, against a Tory onslaught, increasing our majority in Swansea.

It’s obviously been a difficult night for Welsh Labour in Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil, and it’s always a blow to lose hard working Welsh Labour councillors.

Though many counts are still to take place, the clear message from tonight is large swathes of Wales rejecting the Tories and voting Welsh Labour to stop them from walking all over Wales.

Results so far

Here are the results so far, with results in from 19 out of 88 councils.

  • The Conservatives have won nine councils, up five. They have won 441 seats, up 113.
  • Labour has won four councils, down two. It has won 308 seats, down 58.
  • The Lib Dems have won 118 seats, down 13.
  • Plaid Cymru have won 40 seats, up eight.
  • The Greens have won 10 seats, up four.
  • Ukip have lost 30 seats and have not held any.
  • Five councils are under no overall control. One is held by independents.

Hartlepool is one of Ukip’s target seats for the general election. But the party is not doing well there in the locals, according to the BBC’s Richard Moss.

Updated

On the Today programme Prof John Curtice said the Conservatives had won the West of England mayoralty more narrowly then expected.

Here are the figures that bear that out.

This is how the main parties did in the 2015 general election in the seats covered by the West of England region.

Conservatives: 36.8%

Labour: 28.1%

Lib Dems: 14.1%

Ukip: 11.1%

Greens: 9.5%

Those figures are from this briefing (pdf).

And here are the first round result in the mayoral election.

Tim Bowles (C) 53,796 (27.31%)

Lesley Mansell (Lab) 43,627 (22.15%)

Stephen Williams (LD) 39,794 (20.20%)

John Savage (Ind) 29,500 (14.98%)

Darren Hall (Green) 22,054 (11.20%)

Aaron Foot (UKIP) 8,182 (4.15%)

Obviously, a mayoral election is not the same as a general election, so in some respects the comparison is inexact. But the Conservatives did less well in first-round voting than you might expect from the 2015 figures. That is partly because of the strong third place performance from the Lib Dem Stephen Williams, a former MP.

Updated

And this is from Prof Michael Thrasher, Sky’s elections expert.

Ukip received one in eight votes cast at the 2015 general election, and therefore those votes are absolutely critical in a month’s time at the General Election.

The indications from the local elections are that Ukip is losing all of its councillors and it’s the Conservatives that are making the gains on the basis of that collapse.

Prof Roger Scully, the Welsh elections expert, said so far there had been a “much smaller” swing from Labour to Conservative in Wales than in England.

Labour’s worst losses in Wales have been to independents in Wrexham, Merthyr and Blaenau Gwent. But Labour held up well in Newport, Cardiff and Swansea.

This is what Prof John Curtice, the BBC’s lead elections expert, told the Today programme about the results so far.

Ukip have had a very bad night. Four years ago, when in these equivalent elections in England, they did remarkably well. Tonight we’ve seen pretty much confirmation of the message of the opinion polls, that the Ukip vote now seems to be being badly squeezed, not least by the Conservatives, apparently because Ukip voters now think that Theresa May is going to bring about the vision of Brexit that they are after. That is the one clear, unambiguous thing.

It’s also perfectly clear this has been a pretty bad set of results for Labour. After all, back in 2013, Labour didn’t do that well. We said they were getting the equivalent of no more than 30% of the vote. Well, actually, on average, Labour’s share of the vote is down in these overnight results. That is not the kind of performance that you would expect from a party on the brink of a general election victory.

For the Conservatives, undoubtedly this looks like at first glance a very good set of results. It’s probably consistent with them having a double-digit lead in the opinion polls.

But Curtice also said the Conservatives won the West of England mayoralty “much more narrowly” than expected. Their share of the vote was down compared with the 2015 general election, he said.

Updated

The Snap: your election briefing

What’s happening?

There’s an awful lot of counting still to be done, so settle in for a blizzardy Friday. We’ll have all the results as they come in on the live blog.

Given any numbers will become out of date between pressing send on this briefing and it landing on your screen, today’s Snap will tread the line between face-saving fuzziness and its usual incisive campaign chatter.

One clear result comes from the West of England, where Conservative Tim Bowles has beaten Labour’s Lesley Mansell in the second round of voting. Neither scored 50% in the stiflingly close first round, but the divvying-up of supplementary votes pushed Bowles over the line. An early bruise for Jeremy Corbyn, then, but he’ll hope for – and, barring banana skins, will get – better in Greater Manchester and Liverpool later, where Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram are tipped for the top. And there was red sky in the morning (is that the good one?) in Doncaster, where Labour’s Ros Jones held on as mayor with a boosted majority.

Thomond. DONCASTER, 16th September 2014 - Ros Jones, directly elected mayor of Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Commissioned for Politics / Rowena Mason copy.
Ros Jones: back in Doncaster. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

It’s Theresa May who’ll be having the jolliest breakfast, though, with the Conservatives so far making chunky gains in councils across England and Wales.

(Important interruption: Scotland doesn’t begin its count until a civilised 9am. We’ll catch up with those results later.)

Of 10 councils declared in England, the Tories have nabbed nine of them; the other – Cumbria – is under no overall control. In Wales, it’s helped itself to Monmouthshire. Labour has held on to Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Newport. But the loss of Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil to independents will sting.

With plenty of authorities still to tot up the totals, it’s the country-wide plusses and minuses that are the ones to watch. At time of writing, the Tories are +105 councillors in England and +31 in Wales. Labour is -45 and -71, respectively. The Liberal Democrats are down by single digits, but currently lord it over Labour in second place overall in England.

Disappearing act of the night, though, belongs to Ukip. Down 39 seats in England and two in Wales, it currently has a tally of zero and has so far saved not one of the seats it held. Ukip’s Lisa Duffy said she “won’t use the word ‘disaster’”. Everyone else will use the word “disaster”.

At a glance:

Poll position

There’s quite a large poll going on right now. What bearing will it have on 8 June? Let the insta-experts (and some of the actual ones, too) weigh in…

In the meantime, we have YouGov. Its latest Westminster polling has the Conservatives recovering by four points to 48%; Labour dipping two to 29%; the Lib Dems sliding one to 10%; and Ukip doing the same to 5%.

Diary

Here’s how we can expect Friday to pan out:

  • From 9am, counting starts in Scotland. Expect results from 11.30am onwards.
  • Council results from England and Wales will continue to roll in; by early afternoon we should have a reasonable idea of the overall picture. (Current ideas are not unreasonable, just incomplete.)
  • Around 3pm could see a declaration in Liverpool, where Labour’s Steve Rotheram is likely to be the new region mayor.
  • The North Tyneside, Tees Valley and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough mayoralties could declare around this time too.
  • West Midlands and Greater Manchester mayors could be announced by 6pm.

Read these

Helen Lewis, in the New Statesman, has been on the campaign trail with Labour’s Jess Phillips in Birmingham Yardley:

Birmingham Yardley is a Labour-Liberal marginal and Phillips has a majority of only 6,595. But residents here voted for Brexit by 60%, which gives Phillips a fighting chance. It helps that her opponent is the former local Lib Dem MP John Hemming, whose biggest claim to fame is that his wife kidnapped his mistress’s cat…

She believes she will beat Hemming because ‘he doesn’t know where the Remain vote is in this constituency’, while Brexit-leaners switch from the Lib Dems to the Conservatives. ‘In 2022, this seat will be a fight between me and the Tories,’ she says. ‘Well, if I’m still here.’

Jess Phillips Labour MP Fabio De PaolaFor Guardian Weekend Magazine. Pictured is Jess Phillips Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley photographed at her home in Birmingham today 30th January 2017. Photo by Fabio De Paola
Jess Phillips: probably doesn’t carry that everywhere. Photograph: Fabio de Paolo for the Guardian

Tom McTague, in Politico, has been gauging the PM’s “war room”:

Such is the scale of the ambition at Tory HQ that the biggest threat, senior campaign insiders say, is complacency, both internally and across the country at large. Any hint that staff are taking the election for granted is stamped on immediately. One campaign official said, only half in jest, that being caught looking at newspaper polls in the open-plan office is a sackable offence…

The deep professional links between those running the Tory campaign have given it a head start on Labour for the June 8 election campaign, insiders say. They didn’t have time to think about it – they simply reassembled the team from 2015 and got back to work.

Revelation of the day

Local can still mean local. Labour has lost Blaenau Gwent to the independents, but those rushing to lob blame-analyses at the Labour leader or Brexit should probably pause, says BBC Wales’ Rhodri Lewis:

People around here are not necessarily anti-Corbyn. They voted Labour out because of the bin collections. I was told that the council is still getting 100 complaints a week about the new bin collections.

The day in a tweet

And another thing

Would you like to wake up to this briefing in your inbox every weekday? Sign up here!

Here is more on the election of Tim Bowles, a Conservative, as new West of England mayor. There were six regional or metro mayor elections yesterday, and this was the first to declare.

Bowles, a businessman and South Gloucestershire councillor, achieved a total of 70,300 votes, while Labour’s Lesley Mansell had 65,923 - a difference of just 4,377.

Turnout in the election was 29.7%, with 199,519 people voting out of a possible 671,280.

Bristol saw a turnout of 31.1%. The turnout for the mayoral election in 2016, which saw Labour’s Marvin Rees win, was 44.87%.

Speaking after his election, Bowles paid tribute to his Labour rival. He said:

I would like to pay my very, very sincere thanks to Lesley and all of the other candidates. I think we have genuinely developed a really good rapport and friendship throughout the campaign. I believe we have become really good friends.

Labour has suffered bruising losses in Wales, including “embarrassingly” in the constituency of Welsh Labour leader Carwyn Jones, the Press Association reports.

All the nation’s 22 councils have been subject to the poll and while all results have not yet been declared, the latest figures show Labour has lost control of Bridgend, which is represented by first minister Jones in the Welsh Assembly, after losing 10 seats there.

The party was also dealt a severe blow in the south Wales valleys, with independents taking control of Blaenau Gwent and the result on a knife edge in Merthyr Tydfil - where the final three seats will be declared on June 8 with Labour needing to win them all to retain a majority.

Labour fared better in other areas retaining overall control of Newport and Neath Port Talbot councils and winning the same number of seats as it held previously on both Wrexham and Flintshire councils, both of which remained under no overall control.

Speaking at Cardiff City Hall where Labour won all of the 15 seats up for grabs in the Cardiff South wards, Welsh Labour and Co-operative MP for Cardiff South and Penarth, Stephen Doughty said he was “really, really pleased” with the results in the area where the party won two seats from Plaid Cymru and one from the Lib Dems.

He said: “There are some strong results coming in from other parts of Wales, mixed results in other areas but I think we can be proud of the campaign we have run here.”

A spokeswoman for Plaid Cymru said the loss of Bridgend, where the nationalist party gained two seats, increasing its total there to three, was “quite embarrassing” for Welsh Labour and undermined the status of Mr Jones.

She said: “The concept of Labour safe seats in Wales is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

“Plaid Cymru is encouraged by the progress we are making in all parts of Wales.”

Elsewhere, the Conservatives gained control of Monmouthshire from no overall control and Ceredigion remains under no overall control, with Plaid Cymru retaining its position as the largest party.

Ballot papers being counted at Llanishen Leisure Centre in Cardiff, Wales.
Ballot papers being counted at Llanishen Leisure Centre in Cardiff, Wales. Photograph: Matthew Horwood/Getty Images

Wales – a little like Cornwall – has a long tradition of independent councillors. It is no huge surprise to see independents overtaking Labour in places like Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil at a time when the party is under stress nationally. Both authorities were controlled by independents before Labour’s excellent election in 2012.

The former leader of Merthyr, Brendan Toomey, lost his seat by 22 votes. The victor was a woman called Tanya Skinner, an ex-area manager for a group of housing associations based in south Wales and a mother of two.

On her Facebook page she said: “A huge thank you to all 802 people who took the time to vote for me and put their faith in me. I will do my very best for you #feelinghonoured”

Giving three reasons why people should vote for her she had said:

1 – I will fight to keep our neighbourhood clean.

2 – I will work hard to keep you informed and up to date on local issues.

3 – I will ensure that residents of the Park ward are represented within MTCBC (Merthyr council).

Here’s her Facebook page.

Labour has long had a problem with independents in Blaenau Gwent. Peter Law stood down from the Labour party in protest over all-women shortlists, stood as an independent and won at the 2005 election.

Updated

Both the BBC and Sky will separately publish projected national vote shares based on individual wards in selected council elections later today which will give the first indication of whether the mammoth opinion poll leads that Theresa May has been enjoying over Jeremy Corbyn have translated into the kind of victories in Labour heartlands that she needs to secure to be looking at repeating Thatcher’s landslide performances.

One major note of caution to this is the question of turnout. The Association of Electoral Administrators described it at 5pm yesterday as “slow but steady” while some returning officers around the country reported quieter than usual polling stations. The metro mayor elections, in particular, have been described by some political scientists as possible anticlimaxes with turnouts possibly below the 25% seen in the last set of police and commissioner elections. This will lead to questions about the legitimacy of the new mayors but also reduce their value as a general election guide.

Updated

Good morning. I’m here after a night’s sleep ready to take the blog through for the rest of the day.

In total there were 90 councils across Britain holding elections yesterday, and most of the results are still not in. But it is already clear that it has been a bad night for Labour.

On Radio 4 within the last hour Barry Gardiner, the shadow international trade secretary, said it had been a “really disappointing night”. But he said in some places there were local reasons for the losses.

In Bridgend, Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr I think it’s right to say that most of the problems we have had there - losing control where we were in control - were through the splits within the Labour Party itself and the independents.

Ukip’s Lisa Duffy, a former leadership contender, said it had been a “disappointing night” for the party, “especially in Lincolnshire and Essex”. She went on:

As a party we will learn from this, we will grow and we will move forward and we will continue to be positive.

The Lib Dem president Baroness Brinton said the picture was “a bit patchy” for her party but she said in areas where the party was strong, “we have done very well in, and I think that does bode well for the general election”.

The Conservative policing minister Brandon Lewis said the results were “encouraging” for his party, but he stressed that many councils had yet to declare. And he issued a warning against complacency.

We can’t assume that what happens in local elections will automatically be replicated in general elections.

Andrew Sparrow is here on the blog, as I burrow myself away to roundup the night’s developments for the Snap, our morning briefing email. Which, should you like to, you can sign up for here.

Conservatives win West of England mayoralty

Tim Bowles, on 70,300 votes, wins it from Labour’s Lesley Mansell, on 65,923, in the second round.

Updated

Here’s a snippet from Blaenau Gwent, where Labour lost out to the independents. It’s a reminder that it’s not all about Jeremy Corbyn v Theresa May and Brexit. BBC Wales’ Rhodri Lewis, who was at the count, suggested it could be down to the previous Labour administration’s three-weekly bin collections:

People around here are not necessarily anti-Corbyn. They voted Labour out because of the bin collections.

I was told that the council is still getting 100 complaints a week about the new bin collections.

Counting of second preferences in the West of England mayoral race continues.

Conservative Tim Bowles took a narrow lead over Labour’s Lesley Mansell in the first round, but they’ll now benefit from the supplementary vote system that divvies up the second preferences of those who voted for the eliminated candidates.

Labour loses Bridgend to NOC

Though still the biggest party, Labour dropped from 39 seats to 26 and with that lost its majority.

The Tories leapt by 10 to take them to 11 seats, though independent candidates pipped them with 13.

Bridgend’s assembly member is Carwyn Jones, first minister and Welsh Labour leader, so the result will be a further disappointment on a mostly cheerless night.

Updated

And another reminder (with apologies to the all-night blog readers, who’ve seen this before): counting in Scotland doesn’t get under way until 9am, with results from around 11.30am. It’ll all be in the live blog later.

Updated

Results so far in Wales

With nine councils declared:

  • Newport and Neath Port Talbot for Labour.
  • Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil for independents.
  • Monmouthshire for the Conservatives.
  • Bridgend, Ceredigion, Wrexham and Flintshire all NOC.

Here are the councillors totals so far across Wales, with counting ongoing:

  • Labour 257 seats (-67)
  • Independent 151 (+40)
  • Conservative 83 (+25)
  • Plaid Cymru 41 (+11)
  • Liberal Democrat 29 (-7)
  • Ukip 0 (-2)

Updated

Results so far in England

Ten councils declared: nine (Dorset, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Isle of Wight, Lincolnshire, Somerset, Warwickshire) for the Tories; one (Cumbria) NOC.

With counting ongoing, here’s the latest councillor numbers:

  • Conservatives 433 seats (+105)
  • Liberal Democrats 101 (-9)
  • Labour 67 (-45)
  • Independent 34 (-15)
  • Greens 10 (+5)
  • Residents’ Association 1 (-2)
  • Ukip 0 (-39)

In counting so far, Ukip has lost every seat it had held.

It’s already clear the Labour leadership is likely to face recriminations in the morning, and Richard Angell, chair of the centrist Labour group Progress and a long-time critic of Jeremy Corbyn, said he was concerned about the spinning from the party’s HQ:

It is deeply worrying that even before any votes had been counted the Labour leadership were setting expectations at rock bottom.

The fact is there is one factor that is raised on the doorstep again and again, and it is unfair to try and shift any blame onto those who have had to deal with it.

Updated

Ceredigion stays NOC

Plaid Cymru remains the largest party, on 18 seats, but doesn’t win the majority.

As Press Association points out, it might not be over yet for Labour in Merthyr Tydfil:

Merthyr Tydfil hangs in the balance and will not be decided until next month whether it will be run by Labour or independents.

Thirty of the 33 seats on the authority have been contested, with independents winning 16 and Labour winning 14.

The election of three councillors in one ward was postponed after a candidate died, with this vote due to take place alongside June’s general election.

Both Labour or the independents could still reach the 17 seats necessary to have overall control of the council.

Conservatives win Monmouthshire

The Tories have taken the council from no overall control; thus far they’ve won 22 of the 43 seats. Counting is ongoing.

It is unprecedented for local elections to be held during a general election campaign. Margaret Thatcher showed greater caution than Theresa May before her two landslide victories in the 1980s. In both cases – in 1983 and 1987 – Thatcher waited for the results of the local elections before firing the starting gun for the Westminster contests.

Many psephologists caution about using the local election results as a barometer for the parties’ performance at a subsequent general election, as voters often split their votes between the parties when it comes to who runs the council and who runs the country, even when the elections are held on the same day.

Nevertheless, they can still provide a big indicator of the relative position of the parties and especially when it comes to share of the vote, provide a valuable check on the accuracy of the opinion polls.

As the Political Studies Association graphic shows, in the 1980s landslides the Conservative vote actually went up each time between the local and general elections. In 1983 their national share of the local elections vote was only three points ahead of Labour, but that became a massive 16-point lead in the subsequent general election. The same pattern repeated itself in 1987 when a six-point lead at the locals became an 11-point lead at the general election.

In the 1980s landslides the Conservative vote actually went up each time between the local and general elections.

Counting resumes in the West of England, to match those second preferences to the two second-round candidates, Tim Bowles (Conservative) and Lesley Mansell (Labour).

The breakdown of votes from the first round might be of help for those trying to predict the outcome:

  • Bowles topped the first-round with 53,796 votes.
  • Mansell was second with 43,627 votes.

All other candidates were eliminated and their votes – where the second preferences were cast for either Bowles or Mansell – will be tallied again:

  • Stephen Williams (Lib Dem) 39,794 votes
  • John Savage (independent) 29,500
  • Darren Hall (Green) 22,054
  • Aaron Foot (Ukip) 8,182

Plaid Cymru claimed it was breaking new ground across Wales, with new councillors in Wrexham, Blaenau Gwent, and Port Talbot.

But there were also disappointments. The party, for example, lost out to Labour in the central Cardiff ward of Grangetown.

Plaid will hope for more cheerful news later in the day when councils including Gywnedd and Ynys Mon (Anglesey) declare.

Updated

Labour holds Neath Port Talbot

Counting continues, but the party has a majority of the 64 seats already.

A reminder of the second preference voting system for the metro mayors.

If no candidate gets 50% in the first round, everyone bar the top two is eliminated.

The second preferences of their voters are then added to the tallies of the top two to determine the winner.

In the West of England vote, then, the Conservatives’ Tim Bowles and Labour’s Lesley Mansell will be hoping to scoop up the second preferences of Lib Dem, independent, Green and Ukip voters. Might that favour Mansell?

West of England mayoral vote goes to second round

Nobody has secured 50% in the West of England metro mayor contest, so we will go to second preferences. Here’s how the first round looks:

  • Tim Bowles (Conservative) 27.3%
  • Lesley Mansell (Labour) 22.2%
  • Stephen Williams (Liberal Democrat) 20.2%
  • John Savage (Independent) 15%
  • Darren Hall (Green) 11.2%
  • Aaron Foot (Ukip) 4.2%

Mixed news for Labour in Wales.

The party has held on to Newport, which will give activists a huge boost when they turn their attention fully on the general election campaign. The Tories have high hopes for Newport West next month.

But Labour has suffered in the south Wales valleys towns of Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil.

The Independents have won 16 seats to Labour’s 14 in Merthyr. The election in one of the council’s wards (three seats) was postponed due to the death of a candidate. That election takes place in June.

Labour has been beaten by independents in Blaenau Gwent.

It will be a blow for Labour to have lost seats in the south Wales valleys that have been held by Labour heroes: Keir Hardie in Merthyr, Aneurin Bevan in the area now covered by Blaenau.

But so far it hasn’t been as dreadful for Wales as was expected. Their vote has held up in places like Flintshire and Wrexham in the north.

The party remains positive about Swansea and there have been some decent results so far in Cardiff. It looks like it will be bad for Labour in Wales – but perhaps not the catastrophe that was predicted by some.

Conservatives win Isle of Wight

The Tories have taken IoW from no overall control; of the 40 seats on offer, with counting continuing, they already have 22.

Labour holds Newport

Labour has 27 of the 50 seats, with counting ongoing. It will hold on to Newport.

Despite so far losing every one of the seats it had held – with counting continuing, of course – Ukip’s Lisa Duffy said the results are not a “disaster” for the party.

Duffy admitted it was “very disappointing” that Ukip had lost all of its 13 seats in Lincolnshire. She told the BBC:

I won’t use the word ‘disaster’, I’ll use the word ‘challenging’.

We knew it was going to be a difficult night.

Lisa Duffy.
Lisa Duffy. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

The Ukip crushing continues: they have lost all their seats on Lincolnshire county council. They previously held 13; now zero.

The Conservatives took that council from no overall control, boosting their own seats from 35 to 58.

Labour loses Merthyr Tydfil

As with Blaenau Gwent, independents have ousted Labour from control of the council.

And here are the stats from Doncaster, where Labour mayor Ros Jones recaptured her post easily, with a clear majority in the first round of voting:

Labour loses Blaenau Gwent

Independents have taken the council from Labour.

A reminder: I am not ignoring Scotland. Counting won’t start till a civilised 9am on Friday, with first results due around 11.30am. The live blog will still be running right through Friday, so we’ll have it all here when it happens.

Labour says it has held Newport – which it was at danger of losing to NOC.

This hasn’t yet been officially confirmed.

Updated

Conservatives hold Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire takes the Tory council total to eight, and the number of councillors to a round 400, so far.

This one goes out to those readers for whom an election night isn’t an election night without talk of swings:

Labour hold Doncaster mayoralty

In Doncaster, Labour’s Ros Jones is re-elected in the first round of voting, with over 50% of the vote.

She won 32,631 votes. Her closest contender, Conservative George Jabbour, got 13,575.

Results so far in England

Eight councils declared: seven (Dorset, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Somerset, Warwickshire) for the Tories; one (Cumbria) NOC.

With counting ongoing, here’s the latest councillor numbers:

  • Conservatives 383 seats (+92)
  • Liberal Democrats 87 (-10)
  • Labour 65 (-40)
  • Independent 22 (-8)
  • Greens 9 (+4)
  • Ukip 0 (-36)

In counting so far, Ukip has lost every seat it had held.

Results so far in Wales

With two councils – Wrexham and Flintshire, both NOC – declared, here’s the councillors totals so far across Wales, with counting ongoing:

  • Labour 127 seats (-30)
  • Independent 96 (+22)
  • Conservative 42 (+10)
  • Plaid Cymru 15 (+2)
  • Liberal Democrat 14 (-3)
  • Ukip 0 (-1)

And that’s confirmed now: Brendan Toomey, who was the Labour leader in Merthyr Tydfil (and a firefighter), has lost his seat to an independent.

As my colleague Steven Morris has been reporting, expectations for Labour in Merthyr Tydfil & Blaenau Gwent are low.

Labour councillor Brendan Toomey, leader of Merthyr Tydfil council, told Radio 4 he expects to lose his seat:

It’s the birthplace of Labour – we are having a very disappointing evening to say the least.

It is quite clear that huge numbers of the public aren’t entirely happy, to say the least, with the way the Labour party is going at the moment. There’s no doubt about that.

But I would say it goes a lot deeper than that.

But Toomey said he remained confident “without any shadow of a doubt” that Labour’s Gerald Jones would be re-elected to Westminster in June.

Conservatives hold Somerset

Results still being counted, but they’ve snared 28 seats so far out of 55.

Conservatives overtake Labour in Cumbria

The council remains under no overall control, but the Tories have replaced Labour as the largest contingent.

Conservatives gain Gloucestershire

The Tories have taken Gloucestershire from no overall control.

They have 27 of the 53 seats so far, with counting ongoing.

Updated

Grim news for Labour in Copeland, where it lost its Westminster seat in a byelection in February.

Its candidate in that byelection, Gillian Troughton – who lost to the Conservatives’ Trudy Harrison on that occasion – has tonight lost her council seat in Howgate. That’s gone to to the Tories too.

Updated

Some good news for Labour in Wales. The party remains the largest in Flintshire in the north – all results are in. Party activists campaigning in the general election seats of Delyn and Alyn & Deeside will be cheered.

Meanwhile, Labour party sources are downplaying the significance of what is looking to be a bad night for them in the south Wales valleys areas of Merthyr Tydfil & Blaenau Gwent.

They point out that both were gains for the party in 2012, when Labour enjoyed an exceptional set of results and were controlled by independents prior to that. Both areas have a tradition of supporting independents and sources claim that what happens there today does not mean the party is heading towards a general election calamity.

The party continues to be optimistic of a reasonable night in Swansea and Newport, claiming a Tory surge is not happening there.

Spotted! A flicker of that #LibDemFightback in the south-west of England:

Flintshire stays NOC

But there’s a rise for Labour here:

  • Labour 34 seats, +3
  • Independent 25, +2
  • Tories 6, -2
  • Lib Dems 5, -2
  • Plaid Cymru 0, -1

Tories retain Dorset and Hampshire councils

No surprise here.

Full results not yet in for either council, but so far the Conservatives have won 23 of 45 seats in Dorset; and 42 of 78 in Hampshire. Counting continues in some wards.

Wrexham stays NOC

Wrexham remains under no overall control.

Labour has lost 11 seats here, taking it down to 12. It was previously the largest party, though without a majority. Technically it still is, but it’s been leapfrogged by independent candidates, who now number 26, a rise of seven.

The Tories have gained four seats, up to nine. Plaid Cymru took two extra, a total of three. Lib Dems dropped from four to two.

Jeremy Corbyn told a reporter on Thursday he was “Monsieur Zen”. Well, judging by the first few results, it’s looking as though he’ll have to be very laidback indeed not to take fright at Labour’s performance.

In Wrexham, in Harlow, in Warwickshire, the emerging pattern is of the Conservatives picking up seats at Labour’s expense.

In some places, the Tories are hoovering up ex-Ukip voters – why back an anti-EU protest party when the prime minister promises a “red, white and blue Brexit” and stands outside Downing Street accusing dark forces in Brussels of trying to fiddle the general election?

Elsewhere, there appears to be some straight Labour-Tory switching going on. And so far at least, there’s little sign of the much-vaunted #LibDemFightback.

Labour spinners were in expectation-management mode even before the polls closed on Thursday; but the fact is, oppositions on the path back to power are meant to be winning council seats, not shedding them.

And on the last two occasions in recent-ish memory when local elections and general elections were held in the same year but not on the same day – 1983 and 1987 – the opposition (Labour in both cases) did much worse in the national poll.

At the last general election, just two years ago, there was a whole swath of Labour seats across the Midlands and the North where Ukip polled strongly, in some cases running them a close second. If those voters switch their allegiance to the Tories in large numbers, as many seem to have done on Thursday, Corbyn’s party could be facing an electoral meltdown on 8 June.

A lot of Labour MPs are going to wake up on Friday morning feeling very anxious indeed.

Conservatives win Lincolnshire

Conservatives hold Essex

Essex stays blue: not an official declaration yet, but they’ve sealed 50 of the 75 seats, so it’s theirs.

Wales latest

Labour is pleased with how the count is going in Swansea and Newport, but much less sanguine about Blaenau Gwent in the valleys. This used to be Labour hero Aneurin Bevan’s patch.

Party sources played down early losses in Wrexham, claiming the picture was skewed by defections from the party to independents.

The Tories were looking and sounding positive in Cardiff, where Labour faces losing control of the city council.

Jayne Cowan, a Tory councillor of 18 years in Rhiwbina, north Cardiff, said that on the doorstep people had been speaking about both national and local issues. The latter includes the recycling centre, possible library closures, parking, the state of the roads; the former (obviously) Brexit and Theresa May.

Cowan said: “Before the general election was announced most of the issues were to do with dog fouling, pot holes, planning. After the general election was announced people who haven’t voted Tory before were saying we have a choice, Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn, and we’re going to go with Theresa May. There’s been a shift.”

Julie Morgan, the Labour assembly member for Cardiff North, said campaigning was always tough. “But this has been particularly difficult with the general election actually being called during the campaign. When people saw us campaigning they were confused, not knowing if we were there for the general election or the local one.

“Cardiff North has always been a marginal [Westminster] seat so you usually get some idea of how the country is going from Cardiff North. I won the assembly election here 12 months ago and we trebled our majority so we have a strong base here.”

Plaid Cymru assembly member Neil McEvoy was upset that candidates in west Cardiff were not able to see all the ballot boxes opened:

Conservatives win Warwickshire

We have our first council result.

With the Tories taking 29 seats so far of the 46 on offer, they have taken Warwickshire county council from no overall control.

We’re anticipating that the first of the new metro mayoralties to declare a winner will be West of England.

Turnout there for the first election to the role was 29.6%.

This fluctuated across the areas covered by the new mayoral region, with a 30.88% turnout in Bristol (which has a Labour city mayor), 27% in South Gloucestershire and 30.52% in Bath and North East Somerset.

[Edited 2am BST: this was misreported as 13.52%; correct figures are here, thanks to BW2017 below the line for pointing it out.]

Conservative Tim Bowles is touted as the frontrunner, but Labour’s Lesley Mansell and the Lib Dem Stephen Williams are in play.

The other candidates are Aaron Foot for Ukip, Darren Hall for the Greens, and independent candidate John Savage.

Updated

The hotly contested mayoral race in the West Midlands remained too close to call according to a survey commissioned by a local paper.

In the closing hours of the campaign, the result of an online survey randomly delivered to almost 1,500 online readers of the Birmingham Mail was inconclusive.

According to the survey, Labour’s Sion Simon was slightly ahead of Conservative Andy Street going into the vote, with 36.5% of the vote compared with 34.8%.

And Simon was again slightly ahead after second preference votes of losing candidates were counted, with 52.25% to Street’s 47.75%.

The gap was, however, not significant and means it is too close to call ahead of the declaration.

The only significant difference has seen support for Ukip’s Pete Durnell slip from above 15% in the previous poll to 8.5%. Lib Dem Beverley Nielsen seemed to be catching up in fourth place with 8.1%, with James Burn fifth for the Green party with 7.6%. Trailing was Communist Graham Stevenson on 4.4%.

The biggest issue for most voters in the area was the NHS, followed by education, although immigration was highest among Ukip supporters.

Results are due at 5pm on Friday.

We’re still piecing together clues and markers as results trickle in – but things like this suggest the Lib Dem hopes of a south-west England revival won’t be straightforward:

The question in the aftermath of these elections will, of course, be what they mean (or might mean) for the general election.

But why wait for the aftermath? Andrew Gwynne was quizzed by Sky News on what the ramifications could be for Labour and, specifically, Jeremy Corbyn:

This is a unique situation … We have never in my lifetime had a set of local elections in the middle of a general election campaign …

I’m conviced the Labour campaign going forward will learn from those areas where clearly we have got challenges.

But he says the leadership issue is settled:

The last thing the Labour party needs in the five weeks ahead … is to be introverted and looking in on ourselves and talking to ourselves.

We’ve got to go out to the country … I’m confident that over the next five weeks we can put forward our case.

Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s campaign and elections chairman, has been talking to Sky News about the party’s prospects tonight.

He’s being cautious, to say the least.

Labour is “expecting a difficult night in Scotland”, he says, because of the proportional vote:

That always was going to be a difficult contest for us.

Gwynne says the picture in Wales is more mixed:

Some of the predictions of doom and gloom are not quite panning out … There are parts of Wales where there are challenges but other parts of Wales where the Labour vote does appear to be holding up.

He says it’s difficult to compare results in Scotland and Wales with previous elections: the last round, in 2012, was “Labour’s high watermark”, he says.

On other party prospects, Gwynne says the Tories would need to make a mark on the new mayoral seats to count the night a success:

These are precisely the kind of areas the Conservatives do need to make inroads in.

And on Ukip:

The difference this time round is the Ukip vote has seemingly collapsed and gone to the Conservatives … it looks like that is where the Labour vote is being squeezed.

Andrew Gwynne campaigning in his own Denton and Reddish constituency.
Andrew Gwynne campaigning in his own Denton and Reddish constituency. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Updated

(I’m not ignoring Scotland, by the way; no results declared there yet.)

Results so far in Wales

With the same disclaimer as for England below – the ward results (NOT full councils) so far:

  • Labour 36 seats (-1)
  • Independent 16 (-1)
  • Conservative 9 (+1)
  • Liberal Democrat 6 (+2)
  • Plaid Cymru 2 (-1)
  • Green 0
  • Ukip 0

Results so far in England

No councils declared yet; no mayoralties either. But we have a dash of results from individual council wards. Here’s how it stands:

England

  • Conservatives 45 seats (+21)
  • Labour 11 (-15)
  • Liberal Democrats 4 (-2)
  • Independent 3 (+2)
  • Greens 1
  • Ukip 0 (-6)

Ukip is not predicted to have a good night, with signs its votes have slipped to the Tories in many areas.

It has lost Basildon Westley Heights in Essex to the Conservatives, along with Boston North.

Former on-off leader Nigel Farage told LBC he was steeling himself for an unhappy outcome, telling LBC:

It’s not just Labour that’s going to lose seats tonight – and I’m very glad I’m coming off air in a moment.

A reminder: we’re still spotting individual wards, not full councils yet.

And with 4,500-odd of them, I won’t be able to spot them all (but readers spying any particularly interesting ones can @ me in the comments below, or find me on Twitter @Claire_Phipps).

Jeremy Corbyn’s trip to Harlow last week doesn’t seem to have helped Labour councillors there – the Conservatives have taken all four Harlow seats, the BBC reports:

Southend Labour chair Gray Sergeant thinks it bodes ill for the party in June:

My colleague Steven Morris is in Cardiff, where counting is under way, and sends this update:

Labour was bracing itself for a miserable night in Wales, where it feared losing control of major councils including Cardiff and seats across the country.

Party activists have said that Jeremy Corbyn is not playing well on the doorsteps, and the party has struggled to distance itself from the leader, a tactic in last year’s assembly elections, when it did well.

As the counts began, Labour’s shadow Welsh secretary, Christina Rees, said:

I want to extend my thanks to all our fantastic Labour candidates and activists across the country. They have been working hard for months, knocking on thousands of doors, talking to voters and spreading our message that only Welsh Labour can stand up for Wales.

It always inspires me that even when times seem tough for Labour, they never fail to rise to the challenge with a passion and energy that no other party can match. Our Welsh Labour councils and councillors have a huge amount to be proud of, and whatever the results, they will all continue to play a crucial role in working with the Welsh Labour government to deliver for their communities and stop the Tories walking all over Wales.

Updated

We’re beginning to see results from some individual wards.

June Tandy, leader of the Labour group on Warwickshire county council, has lost her seat to the Conservatives.

Good evening: do settle in for a few hours as we await early-hours results in today’s local and mayoral elections.

A quick reminder of what we’re watching: all councils in Scotland (32) and Wales (22) are up for grabs, along with 34 councils in England.

We also have eight mayoral races to look out for, including six newly created ones:

  • West Midlands
  • Greater Manchester
  • Liverpool city region
  • Cambridgeshire & Peterborough
  • Tees Valley
  • West of England

The two others – in Doncaster and North Tyneside – are elections to existing mayoralties.

We’ll track all the results here, through the night and into Friday (the proper bit of Friday, with sunlight).

Updated

My colleague, Claire Phipps, will be taking over the live blog now, as attention starts to turn towards the local and mayoral election results.

Question Time: Davis struggles with food bank questions

And that’s it for Question Time.

  • The Conservative Brexit secretary, David Davis, drew some criticism from the audience in Wigan (a Labour constituency since 1918) for his attempt to draw the general election as a choice between who people trusted more to handle the Brexit negotiations: Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn. He also struggled to defend the government’s record when asked about the numbers of people driven to use food banks in the UK.
  • His Labour opponent, Rebecca Long-Bailey, received support for her answer to the same question, in which she savaged the government’s record on a “shameful” issue. She also found some perhaps rare common ground with the Ukip leader, Paul Nuttall, who highlighted the need for better investment across the UK.
  • Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood placed the blame squarely on the government’s austerity policies and, when asked about Brexit, insisted that Wales not be forgotten in negotiations.
  • Siemens UK chief Juergen Maier explicitly tried to steer clear of political debate but said he wanted to see a better industrial strategy from whichever government was formed after the election and engaged with the audience on the threats and opportunities posed by automation in the workplace. The UK needs to invest more in R&D, he says.

Updated

The programme’s final thought comes from an audience member: the NHS is struggling because the country is too full and Labour “opened the borders”.

According to the fact-checking website, FullFact: “EU immigration contributes to financial pressure on the NHS, but its annual impact is small compared to other factors. Whether EU immigrants pay enough into the public finances overall to cover their costs is difficult to say, and researchers give different answers. However, it does appear that they make more of a net contribution than other groups.”

Paul Nuttall says Labour spent plenty but stuffed the NHS with “pen pushers”.

“He wants to privatise the NHS,” says Leanne Wood. Nuttall looks huffy but he doesn’t get a chance to come back in on that. He once wrote a blog in support of privatisation.

Updated

We’ve moved on to the NHS. What does Labour plan to do about wastage, inefficiency and poor management in the health service? It’s been thrown out to the other panellists, as one might expect.

  • We need to start by putting more money into it, says David Davis. He says the NHS is actually providing better and better care but that it needs to keep innovating.
  • There has been a narrative put out about inefficiency, says Rebecca Long-Bailey, “and it comes from Jeremy Hunt’s playbook”. She blames government cuts and says Conservative ministers have been preparing the NHS for privatisation. In response, Davis asks for examples of actual privatisation. He keeps talking over Long-Bailey’s answer.

Updated

Rebecca Long-Bailey recounts the story of an ex-serviceman she says was forced to rely on food banks. “It is shameful,” she says. And she adds that there is insufficient investment in industry to provide people with jobs that pay living wages.

Ukip’s Paul Nuttall says there is a problem with homelessness because the UK hasn’t built enough houses for many years. He adds that too much money is spent in London in relation to that spent elsewhere in the country.

Question from the audience: “Should we hang our heads in shame that, in one of the richest countries in the world, people are queuing for food?”

  • It is tragic, says Juergen Maier, and we need to look at the industrial strategies that will help the UK increase living standards.
  • “Nobody is comfortable with the idea of food banks,” says Tory minister David Davis. But Theresa May is notable for focusing on industrial strategy. He claims we have the highest level of employment ever, to some disquiet from the audience.

David Dimbleby asks Davis what May meant when she said there were complex reasons people go to food banks. There are sometimes delays to people’s payments, he offers. More disquiet among the audience. Leanne Wood lists Conservative austerity policies as among the reasons.

Updated

Labour’s Rebecca Long-Bailey says the media has focused on her colleagues arguing with each other, rather than on their policies.

We’re moving on from Brexit. “Why is the media refusing to portray Jeremy Corbyn in a positive light?” is the question from the audience.

They’re reflecting a lot of his own party, David Davis says.

Juergen Maier says, in terms of business, he would like to see less of the “business is nasty” attitude. He says the media will “just pick up anything that sells a good story” and that people are intelligent enough not to pick up on that.

Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood says the right and far-right are on the march and the media is reflecting that. However, she says she doesn’t think Corbyn is helping himself by refusing to appear on TV debates if the prime minister doesn’t.

Updated

Paul Nuttall says the EU is saying Brexit cannot be a success because its politicians are terrified Brexit will lead other member states to leave. The EU needs the UK more than the other way around, he says.

Updated

Of the six new metro mayors, there is only one woman expected to be elected when results are announced on Friday. Labour’s Sue Jeffrey is odds-on to win in Tees Valley, a Labour-voting region of north-east England that includes Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Darlington.

Turnout, however, is predicted to be dismally low. Few believe more than 20% of the electorate in the region will turn out to vote, thanks to a creeping disaffection with politics, apathy towards the idea of elected mayors, and the small matter of the imminent general election.

In Hartlepool, Ukip is extremely confident that it will win the only seat up for grabs on the town’s Labour-held council. Winning the only seat available on Thursday would take Ukip to seven councillors on the 32-seat Hartlepool borough council. But, more importantly, the party believes it would signal that the party is on course to overturn Labour’s 50-year grip on the constituency when voters go to the polls on 8 June.

Updated

Asked whether a €50bn, €60bn or €100bn divorce bill would be too much, David Davis says they all would be. He says the UK wants to talk about free trade to begin with; something the EU has already said it has no intention of doing.

Rebecca Long-Bailey demands to know what would be the lowest figure, which Davis bats away as a bad negotiating tactic. He says the better question is whether the public trusts Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn to handle the negotiations. The former was met with a smattering of boos and hisses.

Paul Nuttall says Theresa May has been a failure as home secretary. What Britain needs, he says, is someone who would be prepared to walk away if the UK does not get the deal it wants.

Updated

Leanne Wood says May’s pronouncements had more to do with the election than the Brexit negotiations and were irresponsible. She accuses May of speaking “on behalf of English nationalism” and says Wales has been ignored.

Our first question from the audience: do we need a “bloody difficult woman” to negotiate Brexit? That harks back to the words used by Theresa May this week.

  • David Davis claims the leak from the dinner with Jean-Claude Juncker was misleading and that the prime minister contented herself with saying she didn’t recognise the account in the interests of stability. But a line was crossed, he said, when the European Commission started to bully the British people. We’re lucky to have a “bloody difficult woman”, he says.
  • Rebecca Long-Bailey turn May’s slogan on her, saying it was “unstable” and adding that the prime minister has been using this as a party political issue. She calls for patriotism in getting a good deal for the UK post-Brexit.
  • Siemens’ Juergen Maier says we need a little more understanding and that proper debate will follow once emotions cool off.

Updated

We’ll be under way in just a moment. David Dimbleby chairs Question Time from Wigan tonight.

Updated

Before Question Time gets going, here’s a piece from the Guardian’s political editor, Heather Stewart, as the polls close in local and mayoral elections across England, Scotland and Wales. She writes that Labour is bracing itself for a “challenging” night.

Senior Labour sources are playing down expectations, warning that they could be set to lose council seats, particularly in Scotland and Wales, and claiming that 2013 – when these seats were last contested – saw a strong performance for the party, then led by Ed Miliband.

In total, there are 35 English council elections – most of them for county councils – and every seat in Scotland and Wales is up for grabs.

Updated

Hello, this live blog will be following the night’s political events, starting with this evening’s edition of Question Time and moving on to the local election results and reaction.

With the general election looming, some are looking to the local ballots as a bellwether, though recent experience shows it ill behooves anyone to make predictions.

Due to appear on the BBC programme are: the Brexit secretary, David Davis; the shadow business secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey; the Ukip and Plaid Cymru leaders, Paul Nuttall and Leanne Wood; and the chief executive of Siemens UK, Juergen Maier.

That kicks off at 10.45pm, so check back for updates then.

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