Conservatives lose seats in early returns

A by-election has also taken place in Blackpool South.

Counting continues in the by-election in Blackpool South, where voters are choosing a new MP after the resignation of Scott Benton following an undercover sting by journalists from The Times.

Early indications suggested that the result may have come in by now, but it looks like it may be another couple of hours.

The BBC have reported that turnout in the constituency was just over 32 per cent, well down on the 56 per cent from the last general election, although this is a fairly common occurrence for by-elections.

Labour has gained control of Rushmoor council in Hampshire in what the party has described as a “truly historic” result.

“Rushmoor — the home of the British Army — has never had a majority Labour council before, and has been run by the Tories for the last 24 years,” a Labour spokesperson said.

The council includes the Aldershot parliamentary constituency, which if won would return Labour a healthy majority at the general election.

It continues a bad night for the Conservatives, with early results showing the party has lost around two thirds of the seats it has defended.

The Conservatives have also lost North East Lincolnshire to no overall control after Labour made early gains.

Reform UK beat the Conservatives in 16 out of the 25 seats contested in Sunderland, according to the final results.

“We are now becoming the real opposition to Labour in Red Wall areas and this will grow,” Richard Tice, the party leader, said.

Labour won 18 seats, the Liberal Democrats four and the Conservatives three.

Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, said the results in Sunderland showed “if you vote Reform, you get Labour”.

He told the BBC: “It’s a very straightforward equation for people at the next general election. If they want to vote Reform, they’ll end up with Labour MPs, and they’ll end up with a Labour government, and then they’ll end up, probably, with everything they didn’t want to vote for based on the profile of Reform voters.”

Labour has gained control of Thurrock, in Essex, where the Conservatives had until been the largest party.

There were no Reform candidates standing but that was not enough to stop Labour from taking ten of the first 13 wards to be declared, giving them a majority on the council. Thurrock had been under no overall control since last year’s election.

The council was virtually continuously Labour for 30 years after 1974, but Ukip topped the poll here for three years from 2014. It then became the second heaviest Leave-voting area in the country back in 2016, with almost three quarters of locals backing Brexit.

The Conservatives secured a majority in 2021, but since then, local issues have dominated — a botched solar farm investment pushed the council to declare itself effectively bankrupt, and required both government intervention and a bailout.

The local authority was previously under Conservative control after the last local election, but last month moved to no overall control after two Tory member voted against their own financial strategy and were suspended.

Labour have gained Hartlepool from no overall control after winning nine seats.

The local council, which has been controlled by a Tory-independent coalition since 2019, was within three seats of switching to a Labour majority last year. A third of the 36 council seats were up for election this year. Labour will see the win as evidence of a return of the so-called “red wall”.

As elsewhere in the wall, the expectation was that Reform UK would split the Tory vote and hand Labour the victory.

This was also evident in the final results in Sunderland, where Reform UK beat the Conservatives in 16 out of the 25 seats contested. Labour won 18 seats, the Liberal Democrats four and the Conservatives three.

“We are now becoming the real opposition to Labour in red wall areas and this will grow,” Richard Tice, the party leader, said.

Labour has held on to Newcastle upon Tyne, South Tyneside and Chorley councils. All three were fairly safe bets for the party, although independents made several gains in wards in South Tyneside.

Horsley Hill and Simonside and Rekendyke both changed hands from Labour to independent, but the party did gain Castle (Newcastle upon Tyne) from the Liberal Democrats.

Labour believes it has won control in Hartlepool, with the council previously being under no overall control.

Hartlepool has a symbolic importance for Sir Keir Starmer after Labour lost the parliamentary by-election there in 2021, a result which almost forced the party’s leader to quit.

A party spokesman said: “Winning back Hartlepool council is a groundbreaking moment after the disappointing results we saw here in 2021.

“Keir Starmer pledged to change the Labour Party after that result and today’s win shows that this changed Labour Party is ready to deliver the change that communities like Hartlepool are crying out for.

“Making gains here shows that the party is on track to win a general election and is firmly back in the service of working people.”

The London Labour mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan has said his campaign “sent out a message of fairness, of equality, and of hope” after the polls closed.

Khan, who is seeking his third term in office, praise the work of Labour activists. He said: “Whatever the results this weekend might bring, I am so proud of that.”

Khan’s main rival, the Conservative London mayoral candidate Susan Hall, said she was “forever grateful” for the public’s vote. She added: “Thank you to everyone who voted today and all who came out and helped, I’m forever grateful.

“No matter the result, I’ll never stop listening to you and fighting for a better London for all of us.”

A total of 11 mayoral contests are taking place in the local elections, including for the London mayoralty.

Forecasts have consistently put Khan ahead of Hall, with a poll published on Wednesday by Savanta giving him a ten-point advantage after his lead had tapered over the campaign.

Now that voting has ended, ballot boxes will be transported to 14 counting centres in the city and counting may continue until the early hours of the morning. Verification will start at 9 am.

In the race to become Tees Valley mayor, potholes have become one of the defining issues. Constance Kampfner visited the area to find out whether Ben Houchen — lionised by Conservatives as Britain’s “most popular politician” — can keep his seat.

The first results in local council elections have been announced, with the Liberal Democrats picking up control of a council in Leicestershire from the Conservatives and the Labour Party also gaining St Anne’s ward in Sunderland from the Tories. Labour held Sunderland city council as a whole.

The early results, according to the Britain Elects website, also indicate a strong performance from Reform UK, who earned 32.3 per cent of the vote in Redhill (Sunderland), which Labour held comfortably. The Tory vote dropped over 22 per cent in the ward.

Professor Sir John Curtice also notes on the BBC that Reform have outpolled the Conservatives in each of the wards in for Sunderland so far, which he believes may be a reflection of the Euroscepticism in the area.

Boris Johnson was turned away from a polling station on Thursday after not providing acceptable photo ID.

The former prime minister — who oversaw the Elections Act 2022, which mandated proof of identification for voting — was rebuffed by staff in South Oxfordshire, according to Sky News.

Johnson was attempting to cast his ballot in the election for a police and crime commissioner for the Thames Valley. A spokesman for Johnson confirmed that he returned with correct ID later on and managed to vote

The former prime minister Boris Johnson this week endorsed Ben Houchen and Andy Street in their Tory mayoral races, urging voters to “forget about the government” in Westminster.

Street, the West Midlands mayor, attempted to distance himself from Rishi Sunak in a neck-and-neck battle with Labour, and sent out leaflets in which Johnson urges voters to support the incumbent mayor even if they dislike the Conservative government.

“You might not like everything the Conservatives have done,” Johnson says in the leaflet. But he argues: “Forget about the government. Forget about Westminster. The election is about the next four years in the West Midlands — and who do you want in charge.”

With voters going to the polls in a third of councils, this week The Times named Torridge district council in Devon as the best performing local authority in England according to government performance statistics.

The figures rated Torridge — which is run by a group of independent councillors — highly for almost everything it does, unlike Nottingham city council, which came out worst. Find out where your council ranks here.

The first result of the night could come from Broxbourne in Hertfordshire, which is expected to declare at 1.30am. More than 30 other councils should declare their results overnight, including Bolton, Portsmouth and Southampton. Almost all the rest will be throughout the day.

The results of Tees Valley and three more of the 11 mayoral contests will be declared on Friday. The rest will be revealed on Saturday, with London and the West Midlands expected in the early afternoon.

Police and crime commissioner results will be declared through Friday, Saturday and into Sunday, with Kent set to be the last to announce its result at about 4pm on May 5.

Salford council is due to be the last to declare, with a result expected for about 3pm on Sunday.

Both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are defending almost 1,000 seats in the local authority elections, with the Liberal Democrats defending just over 400.

With a 20-point lead in the national polls, Labour is hoping this translates into local success, while the Conservative Party is braced for “significant losses”, according to Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor.

Polling experts Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher are predicting a “difficult” set of elections for the Tories with many of the seats last fought in 2021 when Boris Johnson, then prime minister, was a popular figure. That set of results included winning the seat of Hartlepool for the first time since its creation in 1974.

These are the last set of elections before the general election, which Rishi Sunak said would go ahead in the second half of this year.

The Blackpool South by-election is a significant test for Reform UK and whether the party’s popularity in national polls translates to the ballot box. Mark Butcher, a local charity worker who founded the Amazing Grace foodbank, is standing for the party led by Richard Tice.

Joey D’Urso visited Blackpool to find out why the Tories are facing the possibility of being pushed into third place.

Constituents in Blackpool South have been voting for their new MP following the resignation of Scott Benton after a lobbying scandal exposed by The Times.

The Conservative politician resigned in March after MPs approved a 35-day suspension from the House of Commons. The committee investigating him said there had been an “extremely serious breach” of the rules.

He was filmed by reporters from The Times offering to table parliamentary questions, leak a confidential policy document and lobby ministers on behalf of gambling industry investors. In return he was offered thousands of pounds per month.

The Conservative Party is defending a majority of just 3,690, with the seat previously a Labour stronghold. The result is expected to be declared in the early hours of Friday morning.

The results in several key battlegrounds in this year’s local elections will give strategists a clearer picture about the state of the parties before the upcoming general election.

A Labour win in the Tees Valley mayoral election could give the party real hope of reclaiming the red wall. In May 2021, Ben Houchen won with 72.8 per cent of the vote. If Labour overturn such a deficit it would be a real coup.

In the West Midlands, the Tory incumbent Andy Street, the former head of John Lewis, is facing a close vote as he seeks a third term. He has tried to distance himself from the national party in an attempt to hold on to his position.

In council elections Labour will be hoping to take overall control of Harlow, Dudley and Hartlepool, where the 2021 Westminster by-election loss almost caused Sir Keir Starmer to resign.

The elections could prove a critical moment for Rishi Sunak. Steven Swinford and Oliver Wright have unpacked the best-case, worst-case and so-so scenarios for the prime minister.

Times Radio will be hosting live coverage of the elections throughout the night with analysis, interviews and the results as they come in.

From 10pm, Matt Chorley will host the coverage alongside the station’s political editor Kate McCann and Calum Macdonald, host of the weekend breakfast programme.

They will have guests from all the main political parties including Jonathan Gullis, deputy chair of the Conservative Party, and Anneliese Dodds, chair of the Labour Party. The polling expert Sir John Curtice will also be on from 11pm.

Other guests will include Bridget Philipson, the shadow education secretary, Rachel Maclean, the Conservative deputy chair, and Munira Wilson, the Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham.