Brexit has been blamed for the Labour Party's dismal night in local elections.
The ruling group on Sunderland City Council woke on Friday morning to find itself nine councillors poorer than when polls opened on Thursday.
A collapse in key seats saw gains by the Conservative Party , Liberal Democrats and UKIP.
And in what was labelled "terrible" and a "very poor night", Graeme Miller, the Labour leader of the local authority, appeared to take a swipe at the party's national leadership.
Sunderland City Council 2019 local election results IN FULL: How every candidate scored
"My gut is that national issues around Brexit caused a lot of Labour voters to not vote for us, or to vote for other parties," he said.
"They're not happy as a city which voted to leave that we [the Labour Party] haven't allowed that to happen and they see us as wanting to stay.
"That is far from helpful."
Coun Miller also conceded local issues played a part in some battleground, such as Washington South, where the Green Party landed its first ever North East councillor.
Campaigning on the ground there was dogged by fears for the future of Southern Area Playing Fields and plans for a waste incinerator.
He added he hoped this year's results represent a "blip".
"I don't want it to be a seachange," he added, "[if it was] we would be looking at next year with trepidation.
"We need to think carefully about what Brexit has done here, people have voted against the Labour Party on that."
Meanwhile, the first Green Party councillor in the North East was elected in Sunderland by just three votes.
The latest round of local elections saw the Green Party win its first ever seat in the city, smashing open the Labour Party's Washington stronghold.
The Washington South ward, one of five representing the town, has been short a councillor for much of 2019, following the ousting of ex-councillor Paul Middleton after his conviction for a child sex offence.
The vacancy was filled by Dom Armstrong, who polled 711 votes to the 708 collected by his Labour opponent Sean Laws.
The victory marked a debut win in North East council elections for the party - one which was quickly followed up with a second across the local authority border in South Tyneside.
And the new Coun Armstrong put the win down to dogged campaigning on local issues, specifically plans for a waste incinerator and fears for the future of the Southern Area Playing Fields, not the actions of his predecessor.
"We've had a pretty clean fight, we've just said what we can do, not what others can't do," he said.
Local elections: Labour and Conservatives suffer in the polls amid anger over Brexit
European election: See full list of North East candidates and parties standing in EU vote
