Local elections live: Keir Starmer hails 'last stop' before general election as scale of Tory collapse becomes clear (2024)

After a flood of local elections results through the day yesterday, we are expecting some key races to be declared today.

Mayoralties

Counting started in the London mayoral race at 9am - and we're expecting a result late afternoon or early evening.

The West Midlands contest will also be declared this afternoon - we are expecting the result around 2pm.

We will also get results from:

• Liverpool City Region around now;
• South Yorkshire around 1pm;
• Greater Manchester around 2pm;
• West Yorkshire around 3.30pm;
• Salford Cityaround 7pm.

London Assembly

We will get results from fourteen London constituencies.

There will also be the results from the London-wide top-up list that will elect another 11 assembly members.

These are expected to be declared throughout the day, and we'll bring you those as we get them.

Councils

Results in four council races are expected to be declared today:

• North Tyneside;
• Stroud;
• Warrington;
• Salford.

A further eight police and crime commissioners will also be revealed.

We've had a full day of results already, with many more to come today.

So what is the state of play?

Councils

Labour has netted 174 seats and a further eight councils in what has been a very positive set of elections for the opposition.

The Liberal Democrats have netted another 101 seats and control of one additional council, which is a good set of results for the party, which is aiming to push out the Tories wherever it can.

The Conservativeshave had a disastrous set of elections, losing 449 councillors so far, as well as control of 12 councils.

The Green Party has netted an extra 65 seats, making serious gains in places like Bristol where it hopes to win another parliamentary seat at the general election.

Mayoral races

Four of the 11 mayoral contests have been declared so far.

The Tories held on to the Tees Valley mayoralty, with Lord Ben Houchen hanging on, despite a big swing to Labour.

But that is where the good news end for the government.

Labour took the North East mayoralty, defeating a former Labour mayor turned independent.

The opposition also won the brand new mayoralty of East Midlands, and emerged victorious inYork and North Yorkshire - a region that encompasses Rishi Sunak's own constituency.

We are expecting the results from the remaining contests today, and we'll bring you those as soon as we have them (more on timings here).

We've had one of the final remaining council results in, from Epping Forest.

The Conservatives lost three seats but have managed to hold on to the Essex council.

Labour is celebrating big wins in the Blackpool South by-election, in the local elections and in most of the mayoral races that have declared so far.

The Conservatives could lose up to 500 councillors, though their candidate Ben Houchen did hold on to his role as mayor of Tees Valley. A win which gave the prime minister something to be pleased about and will probably help him keep his job for now.

But are these grim results for the Tories enough to see Labour winning the next election? Sky News's projection is that it won't be. They will be the largest party but short of an overall majority.

On the Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson talks to Professor Michael Thrasher who carried out the analysis and Sky's deputy political editor Sam Coates on what signals we can take from these results.

👉Listen above then tap here to follow the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts👈

In the days running up to the elections, Number 10 was verging on the unsubtle.

Senior Downing Street figures were conceding that should Ben Houchen lose the mayoralty of the Tees Valley Combined Authority to Labour, there would be a challenge to Rishi Sunak. At that point they would be unable to stem the tide of letters sufficient to trigger a vote of no confidence.

In turn, this might have triggered an unwanted and catastrophic early election.

This is unusual behaviour - for the prime minister's closest allies to be openly speculating on his survivability - yet it is a sign of the turbulence of politics of the moment.

There was method in their madness.

Read the full analysis here:

We've had a full day of results already, with many more to come today.

So what is the state of play?

Councils

Labour has netted 173 seats and a further eight councils in what has been a very positive set of elections for the opposition.

The Liberal Democrats have netted another 100 seats and control of one additional council, which is a good set of results for the party, which is aiming to push out the Tories wherever it can.

The Conservativeshave had a disastrous set of elections, losing 446 councillors so far, as well as control of 12 councils.

The Green Party has netted an extra 67 seats, making serious gains in places like Bristol where it hopes to win another parliamentary seat at the general election.

Mayoral races

Four of the 11 mayoral contests have been declared so far.

The Tories held on to the Tees Valley mayoralty, with Lord Ben Houchen hanging on, despite a big swing to Labour.

But that is where the good news end for the government.

Labour took the North East mayoralty, defeating a former Labour mayor turned independent.

The opposition also won the brand new mayoralty of East Midlands, and emerged victorious inYork and North Yorkshire - a region that encompasses Rishi Sunak's own constituency.

We are expecting the results from the remaining contests today, and we'll bring you those as soon as we have them (more on timings here).

Following his victory speech in the East Midlands, Sir Keir Starmer spoke to broadcasters, and was asked if Sadiq Khan was the right candidate for the London mayoralty, given how close the race appears to have been.

The Labour leader said: "Sadiq Khan was absolutely the right candidate.

"He's got two terms of delivery behind him, and I'm confident that he's got another term of delivery in front of him."

He turned to the broader picture across the country, saying he is there in the East Midlands having won "a significant victory" in the mayoralty, which is "the pattern across the country".

Sir Keir added: "This is effectively the last stop on the journey to the general election, and I'm really pleased that we've been able to show we're making progress."

It was put to the Labour leader that there were also some losses yesterday, and he said in response: "In some places, we didn't get all the votes that we wanted. And of course we will fight to get those back."

But he insisted Labour has made "significant and very real progress everywhere that we needed to do so".

Sir Keir Starmer is speaking at a victory rally in the East Midlands, alongside Claire Ward, who won the mayoralty there yesterday.

Ms Ward opens the rally by thanking Labour activists in the region for the work "not just to secure our mayoral victory here in the East Midlands, but to secure Labour here in the East Midlands, right across all of our seats".

She says the aim is to bring "power and taking funding from Westminster" to the region to "choose our own priorities".

The new mayor introduces Sir Keir, who hails the "fantastic" and "really important victory".

"You fought for this with a very, very positive campaign," he tells the gathered activists.

"You were rewarded with the trust and confidence of the voters in the East Midlands - a really, really important area for us."

The Labour leader declares that the win will enter the "history books", saying it will be remembered as "the day you were able to persuade people that we are a changed Labour Party with a positive plan to take to the country, and they can safely put their vote against the Labour cross".

Sir Keir repeats what he said yesterday, that the local elections results are a message to the government that the public is "fed up with your division, with your chaos, with your failure".

He declares: "I'm sorry. I don't care which political party you support - if you leave your country in a worse state than when you found it 14 years later, you do not deserve to be in government for a moment longer."

Today, he says, is the "beginning of the turning of the page" ahead of the general election, and adds that there is "lots of work to do".

The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has arrived at a victory rally in the East Midlands.

Claire Ward won the brand new mayoralty yesterday, defeating sitting Tory MP Ben Bradley.

The region encompasses over a dozen parliamentary battleground seats, such as Mansfield (where Mr Bradley is the sitting MP), Bassetlaw, and Bolsover.

Sir Keir will argue that the result shows Labour is winning across Britain, and that voters are fed up of the Tories,

Watch live on Sky News, in the stream above, and follow live updates here in the Politics Hub.

Boris Johnson has paid tribute to the villagers who Sky News revealed turned him away from a polling station when he tried to vote without a valid photo ID - under rules he introduced.

The former prime minister said he attempted to cast his ballot using a magazine sleeve with his name and address on as proof but was prevented from doing so.

The requirement to provide photo ID was introduced by Mr Johnson during his time in Downing Street as part of the Elections Act 2022.

Writing in his Daily Mail column, he said: "I want to pay a particular tribute to the three villagers who on Thursday rightly turned me away when I appeared in the polling station with nothing to prove my identity except the sleeve of my copy of Prospect magazine, on which my name and address had been printed.

"I showed it to them and they looked very dubious… within minutes I was back with my driving licence and voted Tory."

Thursday's election is the first time many voters in England and Wales have had to present ID to vote under provisions first rolled out at last year's local elections.

As well as driving licences, other acceptable forms of ID include passports, proof of age cards, blue badges, and some concessionary travel cards.