Labour’s Claire Ward elected first mayor of East Midlands as Sunak gets boost in Tees Valley after Tory losses – live (2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can find our full result tracker here …

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

Davey told supporters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labour: 34% (down 1 point)

Conservatives: 25% (down 1 point)

Lib Dems: 17% (down 3 points)

Others: 24% (up 5 points)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The BBC has just published its projected national share figures.

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

Labour: 34%

Conservatives: 25%

Lib Dems: 17%

Others: 24%

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

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

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

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

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

Sunak said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the results in full.

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

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

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

She said:

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

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

Wools said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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