Reform has gained control of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Havering councils as well as hundreds of councillors at Labour\u2019s expense in England\u2019s local elections. Although early counting showed Sir Keir Starmer\u2019s party holding Halton, Chorley and Knowsley, they have since ceded control of Hartlepool and Tameside. <\/p>\n
Elsewhere, the Conservatives held Broxbourne and the Liberal Democrats gained Stockport. A more complete picture will emerge throughout the morning. <\/p>\n
Labour\u2019s loss of Tameside is worrying, not least because they have comfortably controlled the council since 1980. The borough forms part of Angela Rayner\u2019s constituency. The switch was driven by Reform who gained 18 seats.<\/p>\n
The result in Hartlepool marked an end to Labour\u2019s brief stint back in control of the council. Reform gained 12 seats, leaving no party with a majority.<\/p>\n
The Liberal Democrats have also had success, taking control of Portsmouth and completing a clean sweep of Richmond-upon-Thames, giving them control of every single seat in the area.<\/p>\n
In London, Labour has managed to hold Hammersmith & Fulham, Ealing and Merton, although they lost control of Wandsworth. <\/p>\n
Every other result can be seen on the map below. You can click the buttons to switch between district and county council results.<\/p>\n
What did the polls predict beforehand?<\/p>\n
Pollsters predicted a tough night for Labour: More in Common suggested the party would end up losing between 1,500 and 2,000 seats across England, mostly at the expense of Reform. <\/p>\n
The Greens are also forecast to win more than a thousand seats.\u00a0<\/p>\n
National opinion polls suggest Reform is still the most popular party, although its lead has slipped in recent months. The Greens are in the ascendancy.<\/p>\n
In Scotland, results are expected to be announced later in the afternoon. The latest MRP projections have the SNP narrowly missing out on a majority, with 62 seats. But there are questions over whether unionist parties \u2014 led by Reform \u2014 can make a breakthrough and dent SNP hopes.<\/p>\n
The first seat to be declared in Scotland, the Orkney Islands, has been held by the Lib Dems who snagged over 70 per cent of the vote \u2014 8 percentage points more than at the last local elections. Labour remains braced for poor results in Glasgow as the day progresses.<\/p>\n
In Wales, Labour\u2019s century-long dominance is under threat. The majority of the seats in the Senedd are expected to be made up by Plaid Cymru (43) and Reform UK (34), according to YouGov\u2019s latest modelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reform has gained control of Newcastle-under-Lyme and Havering councils as well as hundreds of councillors at Labour\u2019s expense…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-572979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}