More than potholes and planning at stake in local elections

Good morning. My thanks to Georgina, Lucy, George, Jen and Miranda for filling in while I was away.

Westminster is awash with speculation about the date of the next election, speculation about who will replace Humza Yousaf as first minister this week, and speculation about the local elections on Thursday.

As all of those are very much in flux, I’m going to run through the local election results that will come in overnight on Thursday and what ought to be done if the national opinion polls are about right.

Votes and counting

10pm: Close of polls. Sleep until 1:30am, when . . . 

1.30am: Hartlepool, Rochford and Sunderland declare. These councils, like most of the local authorities that will declare overnight, elect on the “thirds” model (so they have elections three years out of every four to elect their councillors and then an off-year).

Rochford used to be your classic safe Conservative local authority where the party largely competes with local residents’ associations and independent localist parties for seats. In recent years, the Liberal Democrats have made gains here and the Greens have one councillor, and you’d expect on a good night for the Lib Dems that they would pick up some more here.

Sunderland used to be a site of regular Labour underperformance compared with the national picture owing to a variety of local factors, and although the local authority can reasonably be said to have turned a corner, it often takes a while for that improvement to lead to electoral misfortune. (In general, local election results happen at a bit of a lag: it took some time before Sunderland’s local issues were felt at the ballot box and it will be some time before voters get over it, too.)

Basically, at some point this will go from being a council with results that don’t reflect very much because Labour always does worse than the national picture, to being one where the reverse is true as the party reverts to the mean. Don’t read anything into this result, basically.

Hartlepool is a mixture of Labour, Conservatives and independents. The Conservatives did very well here when these seats were last fought in 2021, winning the Hartlepool by-election on the same night. They did well in 2022 but very poorly in 2023: Labour needs to make one gain overall to take control of the council.

In Cumbria, Mike Johnson, the incumbent deputy police and crime commissioner, will hope to retain the role for the Conservatives. Given that the Conservatives fight the Labour party in one part of the area and the Liberal Democrats in another and these contests are now decided by first past the post and not the supplementary vote, Johnson ought to be fine unless there are even more remarkable levels of tactical voting than we have seen thus far in local elections.

At this point in the evening it really will be far too early to draw any conclusions about how things are going.

2am: Ipswich and Bolton, two fairly straightforward Conservative-Labour marginals, both currently run by Labour in local government, as well as three safe Labour local authorities, South Tyneside, Newcastle upon Tyne and Wigan, all declare.

Conservative-run North East Lincolnshire. There are not enough seats up for grabs for any other party to take full control, but Labour will be expecting (and on current polling ought to) be able to take enough Tory wards for the council to go into no overall control.

Gosport, which elects in halves (half the council up for grabs every two years, and unless otherwise stated, assume all councils mentioned are electing in thirds) where the Liberal Democrats will be looking to further entrench their control of the council.

It will still be too early to make any claims about how the election is going at this point, but it will be possible to make hypotheses, and the desire to do so will in any case be irresistible.

2.30am: Not a good time of night for fans of suspense: the Liberal Democrats will continue to do very well in Eastleigh, Labour will do well in Oldham and Chorley, while Fareham has remained strongly Conservative even in very bad years.

But a fun time for people who like coalitions involving independent and local councillors: Hart, which is run by the Liberal Democrats in coalition with Community Campaign (Hart), will declare, as will Southend-on-Sea, where the Conservatives compete with independents and Labour.

Conservative-held Rushmoor is a straight Conservative (defending 11) vs Labour (defending three) fight. It is a tall order for Labour to win control, as it would need to make six gains, but having done very badly here in 2021 and very well in 2023, it ought to be able to further reduce the Tory majority.

In Avon & Somerset, the Conservatives’ Mark Shelford is seeking re-election as police and crime commissioner and will probably succeed.

2.45am: Here’s a fun one: Labour-run Exeter, where a third of council seats are up for grabs. The Greens have made gains here at every subsequent election since making their first one back in 2019, and they will hope to continue that, though there is no prospect of the council being anything but Labour-run at the end of the day.

By this point I think we will reasonably make hypotheses about how the evening is going and what it says about the strength of the parties at the moment.

3am: Lincolnshire ought to be a shoo-in in normal times for Marc Jones, the Conservative incumbent, who is running again as police and crime commissioner. But it is worth keeping an eye on because it has two candidates standing to his right, from the English Democrats and the Reform party.

This is one of just two police and crime commissioner elections where Reform is standing (the other being Derbyshire), and Ukip got 22 per cent of the vote here in 2016, when it was polling about 15 per cent nationwide. Reform ought to be getting at least 25 per cent if its better polling is anything close to correct. This is a contest that could cause panic in the Conservative party.

Hull has, in recent years, seen Liberal Democrat gains on the back of local disaffection with the council, and the Liberal Democrats will hope to further strengthen their control over the council. Two safe Labour local authorities, Sefton and Tameside, will declare. Labour will hope to win control of Conservative-held Thurrock, and it will have plenty of opportunities to do so in another local authority where it did very poorly when these seats were last up in 2021 but have done much better since.

3:30am: Reading, which is marginal at a Westminster level but where Labour is already pretty dominant at a local level, will declare. Both the Liberal Democrats and Labour will hope to make gains at Conservative expense in Liberal Democrat-run Colchester, and will compete with each other for control of Liberal Democrat-run Stockport. It’s a bit of a stretch for anyone but the Liberal Democrats to win a majority in Stockport, but it might end up in no overall control.

Conservative-Labour marginal watch: Labour will hope to win control of Redditch, and to make further gains in Harlow, where it cannot win control but can aim to deprive the Conservatives of their majority.

Labour-held Gateshead will declare.

4am: Labour will hope to make further gains in Plymouth, which it runs locally and hopes to gain nationally. In Peterborough, only the Conservatives can win a majority (they won’t) of a local authority currently run by the Peterborough First independents. Labour will hope to make gains but cannot win control as there aren’t enough seats up for grabs for it to do so.

The election that will probably define how the night is talked about when sensible people who don’t stay up on election nights wake up to the morning news will be the Blackpool by-election, which should declare at about this time. Labour ought to win it comfortably if the polls are right, which every previous by-election suggests they are.

4:30am: Labour, having won control of Southampton last year, will hope to increase its majority.

5am-8:30am: Power nap while waiting for the declaration from . . . 

8.30am: Winchester is no longer quite as much of a gimme for the Liberal Democrats at the next general election as it was before the boundary changes, but they are still heavily favoured to win it at Westminster and they will hope to make further gains locally, which they already control.

Now try this

I listened to Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department on the flight to New York and to St Vincent’s All Born Screaming on the way back.

I listened to the 16-track Tortured Poets and not the 31-track “Let’s torture the listeners” bloated version that had been kept secret from essentially everybody. I agree strongly with Ludo Hunter-Tilney’s positive review of the 16-track version, and with his verdict on the 31-track one on the FT’s Life and Art podcast that it is “a monster”. All Born Screaming was terrific, I thought, and you can read Ludo on that here.

Don’t miss our live election special Q&A on May 8, a collaboration between Inside Politics and Political Fix, where Stephen Bush, George Parker, Lucy Fisher and Camilla Cavendish will break down the local election results and tackle reader questions. Register here to watch online for free and submit your questions. 

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Below is the Financial Times’ live-updating UK poll-of-polls, which combines voting intention surveys published by major British pollsters. Visit the FT poll-tracker page to discover our methodology and explore polling data by demographic including age, gender, region and more.