Final local results to be declared as Conservatives pick over bleak showing

A big feature of these local elections were the mayoral races taking place across England.

It included three new positions: East Midlands, North East and York & North Yorkshire. London’s incumbent Sadiq Khan was bidding for a record third term.

Watch the video below to see who won and where:

On Saturday night, West Midlands Mayor Andy Street lost his berth after a nail-biting count.

That will be a huge disappointment to the Conservatives who had hoped to hang on there. Especially with a razor thin margin, and after counting some votes again and again.

But even with the Street defeat, it seems “the moment” is more likely to be the one where Rishi Sunak’s position as leader has been confirmed. So far.

Why?

Well, Tory HQ can’t mention the mayor in Tees Valley, Ben Houchen’s victory, often enough.

Second, the pundits’ calculators suggested that if the whole country had voted on Thursday, the gap between the Conservatives and Labour comes out at 9%: not, theoretically, an insurmountable gap to close when the general election campaign is miles away and could bend the curves.

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We are almost at the end of this election – just two more results are yet to come through.

What did Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have to say about his party’s performance?

Sunak’s immediate reaction to his election losses in the local elections was that they were “disappointing” but stressed the win in the Tees Valley mayoralty.

That victory was the rare bright spot for the Tories. The party had lost more than 470 council seats, while Labour won the Blackpool South by-election.

Speaking on Friday, Sunak cited his party’s success in Teesside as proof that results in the “key battleground” showed that at the next general election voters “are going to stick with us”.

He added that Labour “knew they have to win here in order to win a general election”, but voters know “the Conservatives are building a brighter future for Teesside and a brighter future of Britain”.

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The polls opened on Thursday at 06:00 BST. That’s a long time ago in politics.

Let’s have a look back at what the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer had to say about his party’s gains.

Starmer didn’t hesitate long after it became clear that Labour would be taking home a major victory in the Blackpool South by-election, with a massive 26% swing, that he believed time was up for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

“That wasn’t just a little message, that wasn’t just a murmur, that was a shout from Blackpool – we want change,” Starmer said in the small hours of Friday morning.

In a more personal blow to the prime minister, Labour’s David Skaith won the York and North Yorkshire mayoral election – an area covered by this mayoralty contains Sunak’s own constituency of Richmond.

“Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is now winning in Rishi Sunak’s backyard,” remarked a Labour spokesman.

And at a rally last night with the new West Midlands Mayor Richard Parker, Starmer said Britain has “had enough of 14 years of decline, chaos and division” and that voters want “to usher in national renewal with Labour”.

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While Labour has found reason to celebrate in the results of this year’s local elections, so too have the Liberal Democrats, after they gained 104 councillors and won control of Tunbridge Wells and Dorset council.

Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park, tells BBC Radio 5 Live her party was delighted with the results.

Alluding to the party’s dinosaur-themed stunt, she points to Cheltenham Borough Council – where the Lib Dems retained control – and where “the Tories are now extinct… it’s a very encouraging sign for us”.

She says the picture emerging “is that people are sick to death of this Conservative government, they’re tired of being ignored, they’re tired of this right-wing rhetoric”.

Salford City Council has just announced its results, meaning we now have a complete picture from the 2024 local authority elections.

A third of councillors were up for election and Labour have picked up one at the Conservatives’ expense.

It doesn’t have any impact on who runs the council or the overall national picture, but it wraps up a bleak run of results for the Tories with another Labour gain.

We’re just waiting for police and crime commissioner results in Sussex and Kent before we can officially declare the 2024 local elections over.

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Sadiq Khan securing a third term as London mayor confirmed “Ulez isn’t the big election issue that some people thought it was,” says Nick Bowes.

Bowes – who worked with Khan on his 2016 mayoral election campaign – says opinion polls had pointed “for a while” that the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) in August 2023 was not a big factor for voters.

He adds: “It looks like Ulez was a dog that didn’t bite.”

Speaking to Radio 5 Live Breakfast, Bowes says some voters realised Ulez “didn’t affect them” and within a couple of weeks the “noise” around the policy dampened down.

He continues: “Some people like politicians that stick to their guns and principles and don’t back down.

“You can’t argue that Sadiq hasn’t done that with Ulez. To a group of voters, that matters. I think that got people out to vote for him.”

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There was a lot of chatter on Laura Kuenssberg’s show earlier about the general election – despite the fact that we’re still awaiting the last results from the local elections.

In January, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he expected to go to the polls “in the second half” of 2024, but there has been speculation that an election could take place earlier.

The latest a Parliament can be dissolved for a general election is on the fifth anniversary of the day it first met.

That means 17 December 2024. However, 25 working days are then allowed to prepare for the election.

So, the very latest the next election could be is 28 January 2025.

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The local elections are not quite over yet as we’re still waiting for three more results.

• Salford – A third of councillors are up for re-election on Salford City Council. Labour already have a massive majority and only three Conservative wards went to the polls, so there’s not much up for grabs here. That result is due at 17:00 BST.
• Kent – Voters in Kent will find out if Conservative police and crime commissioner Matthew Scott will win a third term. He was last elected with 57.8% of the vote, compared to Labour on 25.3%, so a change here would be a surprise. We’ll know more at 15:00 BST.
• Sussex – Another police and crime commissioner election has taken place in Sussex. Conservative Katy Bourne has held this post since it was established in 2012 and won by around 130,000 votes last time. Again, no upset expected here – but we won’t know for sure until 15:30 BST.

As ever, all timings are subject to change – but by late afternoon, we should finally be able to officially declare local elections season done and dusted for another year.

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If you missed Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, here’s a quick roundup of what the guests said this morning:

• Former home secretary Suella Braverman has said the “terrible” local elections results make a Labour government at the next general election likely, which fills her with “horror”
• Braverman says she regrets backing Rishi Sunak but the party should not change leader now, and that the PM needs to “own” the results and fix it
• Mark Harper, the transport secretary, predicts the local election results point to a hung parliament at the general election
• Harper adds that the Tories have a plan to reach disillusioned voters, citing Ben Houchen’s mayoral win in Tees Valley as an example of the party successfully gaining back support
• Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator, says his party’s defence of Israel, following the 7 October attack, may have cost it some support
• We also heard from Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo who says her government cannot guarantee how many asylum seekers it can take, but it “expects to relocate thousands”

The Rwandan government won’t guarantee how many people it can take from the UK if flights start to depart.

Rishi Sunak has promised that migrants arriving in the UK without permission will be sent to Rwanda rather than allowed to claim asylum in the UK.

Around 40,000 have come to the UK since the law was changed in 2023 and are in line for deportation.

Rwanda has signed a five-year deal with the UK, with costs estimated to be at least £300 million already.

Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Rwanda’s government spokesperson Yolande Maloko said: “I cannot tell you is how many thousands we’re taking in the first year or in the second year.”

When asked if Rwanda could accommodate all of the people in the current backlog, Maloko said it would “depend on very many factors that are being worked out now”.

Pressed to give a commitment on the number, Ms Makolo said “we are ready”.

But, she would not give an assurance it would be able to take the 40,000 people the UK would like to send, merely saying it would be “thousands”.

Earlier, we heard from Labour’s campaign chief Pat McFadden, who was asked if his party could lose votes in the general election over the position it has taken on Gaza.

At this year’s local elections, in 58 local council wards analysed by the BBC, where more than 1 in 5 residents identify as Muslim, Labour’s share of the vote was 21% down on 2021, the last time most seats were contested.

When McFadden was pressed by Laura Kuenssberg about this point, he began by saying that Labour defends Israel’s right to defend itself after 7 October but added that the party also wants to get a better future for the Palestinian people.

You can watch that exchange below:

The Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme is over until next week, but stick with us as we bring you more analysis on what we heard from the Conservatives’ Suella Braverman, Labour’s Pat McFadden and the rest of our panel.

We’ll continue to update you here with the latest updates from the local elections and what it means for the bigger picture. So stay with us.

Earlier on the programme, we heard from Transport Secretary Mark Harper, who defended his party despite its poor showing in this week’s local elections.

Yes there was low turnout, he said, and our voters did not come out and support our candidates, but he insisted that his party does indeed have a plan and it is “working”.

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Throughout today’s programme we heard from a panel featuring Conservative MP Paul Scully, former Labour minister Jacqui Smith and Guardian political editor Pippa Crerar.

At the outset, Scully said the public sent the party a “really hard message” and said the Tories need to “take a breath and show humility”.

Scully – who wanted to be the Conservative candidate for the London mayoral race – gave a scathing review of the party’s performance in the capital. He said the party “botched” the selection process which saw Susan Hall become the candidate, and failed to inspire during the campaign.

Scully said voters have “stopped listening” to the government and agreed that many Tory voters have “gone on strike”. He called for ministers to set out a more positive vision.

Smith admitted she was “rolling her eyes” at Scully, Harper and Braverman “wrestling for the future” of the party with the public left facing a raft of problems with public services and the cost of living.

Asked about Labour’s prospects, she said there are “no easy answers” to the country’s problems but that the the UK needs a government which isn’t fighting in public.

What does this all mean for Rishi Sunak? Well, asked about what she’s picked up from Tory sources about the mood among rebels, Crerar said she thinks they have decided against any sort of leadership challenge.

She continued: “The Tories have reached the end of the road when it comes to the public feeling they can improve their lives, especially after damage inflicted by Truss and Johnson.”

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Makolo says the Rwandan government is “serious about offering people a home and we are doing it for the right reasons”.

Asked about Labour saying they would withdraw from the scheme, Makolo says critics should “come up with another solution that is innovative and is not just deterrence and enforcement”.

For many, Rwanda is associated with the 1994 genocide, which saw the country descend into brutal ethnic violence.

Makolo says the country has “worked very hard to get to where we are after basically an apocalypse”.

She tells the BBC Rwanda is safe and committed to tackling discrimination, adding: “Discrimination is what almost destroyed this country.”

“We are attacked unjustly. Living in Rwanda is not a punishment, it’s a beautiful country.”