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

My colleague Helen Pidd points out that a Karl Marx has been elected as a Labour councillor in Stockport.

I want to know more about the Karl Marx of Stockport, who just won a seat for Labour in Stockport’s most deprived ward, Brinnington.

She is referring to this post on X from Stockport council.

Brinnington & Stockport Central results are in🗳️

Karl Peter Marx Wardlaw (Labour) has been elected to represent Brinnington & Stockport Central at the Stockport local elections 2024

In an interview with the BBC, Keir Starmer was asked if he was concerned that his position on Gaza was costing him vote. (It has been cited as the reason, or part of the reason, for Labour losing control of Oldham council.) In response, Starmer did not really engage with the question. He said that he was concerned wherever the party was losing votes. But he went on:

But there’s no denying that across the country, whether is Hartlepool in the north, or Rushmoor in the south [in Hampshire], or Redditch, bellwether seats, we are winning votes across the country. And that, I think, reflects a changed the Labour party with a positive case to take to the country.

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Keir Starmer is in Blackpool South where he told Labour activists a few minutes ago that the byelection result was a clear message to the PM that people want change. He said:

It is incredible to have won by such a swing, a 26% swing. That’s the fifth swing of over 20% to the Labour party in byelections in recent months and years. It is a fantastic result, a really first class result.

And here in Blackpool, a message has been sent directly to the prime minister, because this was a parliamentary vote, to say we’re fed up with your decline, your chaos of your division and we want change. We want to go forward with Labour.

That wasn’t just a little message. That wasn’t just a murmur. That was a shout from Blackpool. We want to change. And Blackpool speaks forthe whole country in saying we’ve had enough now, after 14 years of failure, 14 years of decline.

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Here is the latest summary of councils that have changed control as a result of results counted so far.

Labour gains from Tories: Redditch and Rushmoor

Labour gains from no overall control: Hartlepool and Thurrock

Conservative loss to no overall control: North East Lincolnshire

Labour losss to no overall control: Oldham

And in an interview with Sky News Lee Anderson, the Reform UK MP, said he thought his new party would overtake his old one, the Tories.

He said the 17% Reform UK got in Blackpool South (see 6.10am) was higher than the 15% he was expecting. He went on:

We’re going up and the Conservative Party is coming down.

We’re going to meet at some point. We’ve already met it in places in the north and in the Midlands.

I think with a general election probably four or five months away, then we’re going to surpass them.

Lee Anderson, the former deputy chair of the Conservative party who is now a Reform UK MP, told the Today programme this morning that the result in Blackpool South showed that his party was “here to stay” and “making in-roads”.

And he said the election results were very bad for his old party.

It was a good night for Labour, let’s be honest. It was a very, very poor night for the Conservative party.

Only two Conservative MPs are so far on the record as saying that Rishi Sunak should be replaced before the general election. They are Dame Andrea Jenkyns, who said in November she was calling for a no confidence vote, and Sir Simon Clarke, the former levelling up secretary, who wrote a Telegraph article in January saying Sunak should go.

But Jenkins now accepts that a no confidence vote is “unlikely”. She told the Today programe a few minutes ago:

I’m not sure that colleagues are going to be putting the letters in, so we’re working with what we’ve got.

I think we shouldn’t have got rid of Boris [Johnson] in the first place. But we are where we are. And it’s looking unlikely that the MPs are going to put the letters in. So we’ve got to pull together.

Jenkyns was referring to the 52 letters that need to be sent to the chair of the Conservative 1922 Committee for a no confidence vote to be held. Letters are submitted in secret, and so only the chair, Sir Graham Brady, knows how many have already gone in. But it is thought the rebels are not remotely close to getting the 52 letters they need.

In an interview with Sky News this morning Richard Holden, the Conservative party chair, played down the results of the Blackpool South byelection, pointing out that it was held “in particular circumstances of not only the previous MP [Scott Benton] having been forced to stand down but also during the campaign in the neighbouring seat a former Conservative MP [Mark Menzies] had to have the whip withdrawn.”

Prof Sir John Curtice, the elections expert, gave a rather different assessment on the Today programme this morning. Speaking about the byelection result, he said:

The honest truth is the result in Blackpool South was spectacular. It was the third biggest swing from Conservative to Labour in post-war in postwar byelection history. And it’s the third biggest drop in the Conservative vote in postwar byelection history.

The trouble is, we’ve rather used to the spectacular in parliamentary byelections in this parliament. This is now the fifth by election in which the swing has been over 20%. There have haven’t been much more than a dozen of those in the whole of the post war period.

When was the last time that such swings occurred as more than a rare event? Well, it was the parliament of 1992 to 1997 which ended with Tony Blair winnning a landslide victory.

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Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, told BBC Breakfast this morning that he did think Gaza might be costing the party votes in some places. “I don’t think there’s any point in denying that,” he said. But he said he did not think it was the only reason for Labour losing control of Oldham council. (See 7.19am.) He said:

In addition to the Middle East issue which you mentioned there are specific very local factors in Oldham which have knocked it out of line with the Labour gains we’ve been seeing in local elections.

Yesterday, as well as voting for councillors and metro mayors, everyone in England and Wales had the chance to vote for a police and crime commissioner. These posts are some of the more obscure in local government – turnout in these elections has historically been very low, and most PCCs are not well known – but they have been a Conservative stronghold. Some 30 of the 37 PCC posts being contested have been held by the Tories.

But that could change. Three results are in already, and Labour has gained two of them.

In Avon and Somerset Labour’s Clare Moody won with 32% over the Conservative incumbent Mark Shelford (31%). In 2021 the Tories won with 35% of the vote over Labour’s 24%.

And in Cumbria Labour’s David Allen beat the Tory incumbent by 47% to 30%. In 2021 the Conservatives won with 54% of the vote, more than double Labour’s share.

But the Conservative did retain the PCC post in Lincolnshire.

UPDATE: Some readers have been in touch to say they did not get a PCC vote. But they will have had a metro mayor vote, and metro mayors generally perform the role of a PCC.