Main takeaways from election results so far

• Labour has regained the seat of Blackpool South in Thursday’s parliamentary byelection, in a fresh blow to Rishi Sunak’s leadership. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, called it a “seismic win”. The local and firm favourite Chris Webb won with 10,825 votes, followed by David Jones, the Conservative candidate, with a distant 3,218 votes. He finished narrowly ahead of the Reform candidate, Mark Butcher, on 3,101 votes.
• Labour won control of Thurrock (which had been under no overall control) after starting the night as the second biggest party, prompting members of the shadow cabinet to say that the result showed the party was on course to win the general election.
• Labour officially gained Hartlepool council, which is of symbolic importance to the party’s leader Keir Starmer after Labour lost the parliamentary byelection there in 2021. This council had also been under no overall control. Labour won nine of the 12 seats up for grabs, with independents winning two and the Conservatives one.
• A Liberal Democrat source said the party has already been “hearing of Lib Dem gains in former Conservative heartlands”. “Lib Dems expecting to move forward overnight in Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Hertfordshire,” the source added.
• The Conservatives won the first police and crime commissioner election to be declared, in Lincolnshire.
• Prof John Curtice, the polling expert, has said that, according to the early results, Labour are not making the sort of “dramatic” gains the party did under Tony Blair before its landslide 1997 general election victory. They are doing more or less the same as they did in last year’s elections, Curtice said, while noting that early local election results “don’t look as though they’re going to provide that much solace to 10 Downing Street”. “It is not looking very good for the Conservatives, I think one has to say,” he told BBC Politics.
• The Green party has had some impressive gains in some councils in England, with the party winning its first ever council seats on Newcastle city council.
• Before even the first result was declared, transport secretary Mark Harper said the evening could be very “difficult” for the Conservatives. His fears were later echoed by Tory councillors who warned that some voters were likely to vote in protest against the government, even if they supported the actions and policies of their local Conservative councillors.

You can continue to read all the council results live on our tracker here.