Labour’s Claire Ward elected first mayor of East Midlands as Sunak gets boost in Tees Valley after Tory losses – live

Labour has officially gained Hartlepool council, according to our live election tracker. It was under no overall control, with Labour two councillors away from a majority. Now the polls have been counted, Labour won nine of the 12 seats up for grabs, with independents winning two and the Conservatives one.

Brenda Harrison is set to become the council’s first ever female council leader. In a celebratory tweet, she said the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has changed the Labour party, as she vowed to reverse the damage done by the Conservatives in the area.

Hartlepool has a symbolic importance for Starmer, who, according to polls is likely to be the next UK prime minister, after Labour lost the parliamentary byelection there in 2021.

Starmer considered resigning as Labour party leader after the defeat in the Hartlepool byelection three years ago, according to a biography.

The loss of the County Durham constituency to the Conservatives was a blow to Starmer as the party had held the seat since it was created in 1974.

The polling expert Prof John Curtice has said it is the size of the swing that will be significant in the Blackpool South byelection result, not the fact that Labour are the party likely to win the seat.

We reported earlier (see post at 23.00) that the Tories “do not expect” to win the Blackpool South byelection.

Labour sources are confident of victory in Blackpool South, with activists said to have reported large numbers of former Tory voters saying they would back Labour for the first time.

Curtice told Times Radio:

The Labour party are saying ‘gosh, we might win Blackpool South’. Going on to say well, of course, we’ll forget the fact that we won this constituency from 1997 to 2019.

And then if the Labour party is going to have any chance of winning an overall majority Blackpool South should be a home banker.

What will be interesting about Blackpool South is not whether labour win, but whether or not they can record something like the 20% swings from the conservatives that they achieved in places like Tamworth and Wellingborough and Selby where really big swings were needed.

But it’s the size of the swing that will matter not whether or not labour the simple fact that Labour are likely to win the seat.

We are expecting the result some time between 3 and 4am this morning.

Labour retained control of Newcastle upon Tyne after winning 12 of the first 19 seats to be declared early on Friday morning.

The party held 46 of the 78 council seats going in to polling day and needed to win 10 of the 27 being contested to retain control.

The Liberal Democrats had won four, Greens two and independents one, with eight seats still to declare.

Labour retained control of South Tyneside, but lost at least seven seats to independents.

The party needed to win four seats of the 14 seats it held going in to polling day, and while it achieved that, its majority will be reduced.

Labour has held Newcastle upon Tyne, with 15 out of 27 wards declared, according to partial results reported by BBC News.

Alison McGovern, the Labour MP for Wirral South, has told Times Radio that Labour losses to the Greens in Newcastle are worrying.

“Early Green performances look v strong with a couple of striking gains in Newcastle. Overall Greens are averaging 11% where they are contesting wards, and are up a little on 2019 – their best ever year in local elections,” Politics professor Rob Ford tweeted.

“Big Labour declines in two Newcastle wards with c.40% Muslim population – one lost to Greens, other narrowly held off independent challenge.”

Labour officially holds Sunderland city council, according to our live tracker. We reported the result earlier (see post at 01.10) but this was based off a partial count compiled by the BBC.

The final result in Sunderland was Labour 18, Liberal Democrats four and Conservatives three, with Reform UK beating the Tories in 16 of the 25 seats being contested.

So the new council’s make up is:

• Labour: 53

• Liberal Democrats: 12

• Conservatives: 10

Helen Catt, a political correspondent from the BBC, has said the result from the Blackpool South byelection vote is not expected to be in until at least 3am this morning. Sky News is reporting the result should be in somewhere between 3 and 4am.

My colleague, Morgan Ofori, has been to Blackpool South to speak to voters about how they feel about Scott Benton, the former Tory MP who quit parliament before the conclusion of a recall petition among his constituents.

You can read his feature here:

The former Blackpool South MP was facing likely ejection from the Commons after he was suspended for 35 days over his role in a lobbying scandal, triggering a process whereby local people could force a byelection if at least 10% of registered voters signed the petition.

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Benton took his seat from Labour in the 2019 election with a majority of just under 3,700, and Labour will be seen as firm favourites to take it back in a byelection.

Benton lost the Tory whip in April 2023 after suggesting to undercover reporters at the Times that he would be willing to break lobbying rules for money. The MP had offered to lobby ministers on behalf of the gambling industry and leak a confidential policy document for up to £4,000 a month.

The results in our live tracker are provided by PA Media newswire (PA).

Numbers for change in seats are calculated against the state of the council just before this election. Other organisations calculate using the previous election, and this can lead to discrepancies.

PA release results for each council only when its full count is complete. PA collates results only for elections that were due in this electoral cycle, meaning there may be council byelection results in other parts of the country that are not included.

There are frequent changes in ward boundaries, sometimes accompanied by changes in the number of councillors overall.

The Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said the results in the Sunderland area, where partial results show a Labour hold of the council seat (see post at 01.10), show “if you vote Reform, you get Labour”.

He told BBC News:

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.

The Conservatives have retained control of Broxbourne, in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. This has not come as much of a surprise to commentators as the Tories held 27 of the 30 seats, and only 10 are being contested (9 were won by the Tories and one by Labour). You can follow all the results live on our tracker here.

The Labour party has said it has gained control of Hartlepool, according to Sky News, in a symbolic electoral victory the party has reportedly called a “groundbreaking moment”.

This result is not official. The Guardian uses data compiled from the Press Association which waits until all seats are counted to gives us a comprehensive result.

A Labour spokesperson said of the reported Hartlepool gain: “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 2021 Hartlepool byelection will be best remembered with pictures of a 30ft Boris Johnson balloon bobbing above the real Johnson’s head as he beamed at the victory.

Tory candidate Jill Mortimer – who defeated Labour rival Paul Williams by nearly 7,000 votes – hailed the result as a “truly historic” moment.