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Ben Quinn
Another key prize of the night is the mayoralty of the Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority, a newly created entity that brings together a demographically diverse land mass.
Traditionally Labour-leaning industrial towns such as Scunthorpe in the north are welded together with farmland and prosperous market towns to the south including Grantham, popular with London commuters.
As well as local issues, different national policies are also playing out.
In the area around the industrial town of Scunthorpe for example, some expected that Britain’s governing Labour Party could get a bounce from the move by the government to take control of a Chinese-owned British steel mill last month.
As I also reported from southern Lincolnshire, anger among some rural communities towards solar farms has also been seized on by the populist Reform Party where its anti Net Zero policies have found receptive ears.
Josh Halliday
Labour and Reform UK officials appeared tense as votes were counted through the night at DCBL stadium, the home of Widnes Vikings rugby league club, just across the mouth of the River Mersey from Runcorn.
The battle for Runcorn and Helsby has been billed as the first key test of Reform UK’s ability to topple Britain’s historic two-party system at the next general election. As many as 153 Labour MPs in England and Wales risk losing their seats to Nigel Farage’s party if it continues its surge in popularity, a recent poll suggested.
Campaigners from both parties repeatedly said the result was “too close to call”, downplaying talk of a decisive victory for either side. There was no sign of either Labour or Reform UK candidate with almost an hour to go before the expected result, although the Reform UK chair, Zia Yusuf, did make an appearance for a brief television interview.
Turnout in the contest was a higher-than-expected 46.33%, which some on the count floor attributed to the “Farage factor” – a reference to the Reform UK leader’s ability to provoke strong opinion on either side.
Fifteen candidates are contesting this by-election but in reality it is a two-horse race between Labour and Reform UK, although there had been little enthusiasm from many voters for either party. One independent candidate said the race had been “defined by who people don’t want to vote for - not who people do want to vote for”.
What’s at stake?
These elections are being seen as the first full-scale electoral test for Keir Starmer since the general election, with likely notable repercussions for Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch, and to a lesser extent the Liberal Democrats and Greens.
Up for grabs are more than 1,600 council seats in 23 councils.
In the last local elections, in May 2021 when Boris Johnson was still prime minister, Conservatives won nearly 1,000 of them.
But today, the dynamic is very different .
England local elections 2025: is your council up for election and what’s at stake?
County councils across England are being elected on 1 May, along with four regional mayors. Find out which areas are voting and search for your own in this handy tracker.
Ben Quinn
The right-wing populist Reform UK is bullish about its chances of winning two new mayoral posts that have been created with significant powers in the north east of England and are among the biggest prizes of the night, writes the Guardian’s Ben Quinn.
That includes the race to be the new mayor of the Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority, where a former Conservative MP and minister, Andrea Jenkyns, is Reform’s candidate.
The race is largely regarded as being between Reform and the traditionally dominant party of the right, the Conservative Party, and success there for Reform would mark a major moment in its project to displace its rival on the right.
However, sources in Reform were also expressing confidence that Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxer with zero political experience, would also win the mayoralty of the Hull and East Yorkshire Combined Authority. Polls in advance of the election had suggested the race was too close to call.
The party has been talking up its prospects in the contest based on what it says were early tallies – informal scores – of voting in Lincolnshire, where County Council elections were also held.
“Based on what we’ve seen, we are outpacing the Conservative candidate at least two to one in the south of Lincolnshire,” said one source, who admitted that it would be “harder” for the party in northern, more urban and traditionally more Labour-leaning, areas.
“The north will be different but it’s clear that we are smashing it in Tory heartlands.”
Zia Yusuf, chair of Reform UK has spoken to BBC Newsnight from the Runcorn by-election count, saying he thinks it will be a historic night for the party.
I think we are going to win hundreds of council seats; we stand a really good chance of taking control of some councils for the first time as Reform UK, and I think that we will win at least one, perhaps even two mayoral races. As I said, I think it is going to be a historic night for Reform, and in the context, I think this is probably the most... important set of council elections in this country’s history because it marks an end to the stranglehold, that duopoly of the two old parties that they have had on British politics for about a century now.”
Where we are:
Vote counting is underway, with early results starting to trickle in.
All eyes are on whether Labour could lose a previously safe Commons seat, and whether the Tories take a blow across the country.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could deal major blows to both Labour and the Conservatives, while the Liberal Democrats and the Greens are also confident of success at the expense of the two biggest Westminster parties, write PA media.
Battles to watch include whether Keir Starmer’s Labour party can hold on to the Runcorn and Helsby seat in the Commons, with Reform hoping to take a seat the governing party won convincingly at the 2024 general election.
Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch faces her first test as Tory leader as the party braced for a difficult set of results, with both Reform and the Lib Dems hopeful of stealing council seats last contested in 2021 at the height of Boris Johnson’s popularity with Conservative voters.
Opening summary
Good morning and welcome to our blog covering results in 24 English local council elections, six mayoral races and the byelection in Runcorn and Helsby.
Reform have mounted a fierce challenge to try to overturn the near-15,000 Labour majority in Runcorn.
The byelection, the first since last year’s general election, was triggered when Mike Amesbury resigned after being given a suspended prison sentence for punching a constituent, an incident captured on video.
Reform are also predicted to do well in some of the mayoral contests, which would be worrying for Labour. Meanwhile the council results are forecast to be grim for the Conservatives. Their leader, Kemi Badenoch, has already ruled out resigning, and has said that the party’s current unpopularity “just has to be got through”.
In an interview on Tuesday, she said:
This is something that we have said has to be got through. We’ve got to get through this initial period where the public rejected Conservatism. Last year [at the general election], they voted whatever they could to get Conservatives out. We have a job to do to fix the brand.
Anyone who thinks that this is an overnight task and that changing leader yet again is the solution is not paying attention. The public are quite tired of watching us change leader.
Follow along with us for all the news.
