Rolling coverage of the London mayor, Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly, Northern Ireland assembly and English councils results
Scottish Labour facing third place after Tory surge
Senior London Tory attacks Goldsmith’s campaign
Welsh Labour might need other parties’ support to govern
Labour wins byelections in Sheffield Brightside and Ogmore
Live results tracker
4.59am BST
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, has just won her seat in Glasgow Southside, with 61.4% of the vote.
She thanks the people of Scotland for placing their trust in her.
We in the SNP will always stand up for Scotland. And tonight Scotland has stood up for us.
4.55am BST
Peter Hain, the Labour former cabinet minister, has told the BBC that his party should be winning seats, not losing them, and that Jeremy Corbyn has not shown “anything like an ability to ... win the centre ground”.
Frankly, for us to be on course and confident of winning the next general election, we should be gaining seats at this stage in the cycle, not losing them.
The leadership has to show that it can win the centre ground, as well as doing what Jeremy has done very effectively in bringing the left back into the party.
What he hasn’t shown anything like an ability to do is win the centre ground votes that we need to win a general election.
4.48am BST
These tweets are from the academic Rob Ford. They suggest the Conservatives and Lib Dems have done particularly well in Scotland in constituencies where they are the main opposition to the SNP.
Scottish Cons up 8 points overall, but by 13.5 points in seats where they started as the local opposition to the SNP
Scottish Lib Dems up 2 points overall, but 11 points in the 4 seats where they started as the local opposition to the SNP
4.33am BST
In Scotland David Mundell, the Conservative Scottish secretary, has said that he expects the Tories to come second.
I think it will be a seismic change in Scottish politics that the Scottish Conservatives are the second party in the Scottish parliament.
I was a candidate back in those first elections in 1999, it would have been incredible to think the Scottish Conservatives could have finished ahead of Labour and be the official opposition.
4.28am BST
And here is the latest state of play from Wales, from the Press Association.
After ten first-past-the-post results out of 40 in the Welsh Assembly election the state of the parties is:
Labour nine seats.
4.26am BST
Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, has just been elected in the Edinburgh Central constituency.
This is from the BBC’s Nick Eardley.
Kezia Dugdale likely to be the only leader among big four parties that fails to win constituency
4.23am BST
Here is the latest state of play from Scotland, from the Press Association.
After 40 results out of 73 in the Scottish Parliament election the state of parties is:
SNP 33 seats, including four gains and two losses.
4.21am BST
The Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has failed in her bid to win the Edinburgh
Eastern constituency from the SNP.
4.20am BST
My colleague John Harris has sent me this from the Plymouth count.
All Labour holds so far. The Tories looking downcast, Labour upbeat. It’s more about consolidation than advance, but the Conservatives said Corbyn’s stance on Trident and anthemgate would harm Labour here, and it doesn’t seem to have happened. There’s no Ukip surge so far either. Lesson: as with Oldham East, these excited media predictions of Labour meltdown aren’t materialising in England.
4.11am BST
The BBC have just broadcast the latest figures they have for what they think is happening to the share of the vote in Wales. Here they are.
Labour: -8
4.02am BST
John Curtice has just told the BBC that the first results have come in from the Scottish regional lists. He said it was still not clear whether or not the Conservatives would come second in Scotland, but he said that if he were a Tory spokesman, he would not be too confident about predicting reaching second place. It was “by no means a done deal”, he said.
He also said that he expected the SNP to have an overall majority, but that it could be smaller than it was in 2011.
3.55am BST
Jack McConnell, the Labour former first minister of Scotland, is on the BBC’s election programme. Asked to explain what is happening in Scotland, he tries to explain it with an anecdote. There is a man in his local garage who for years has had a go at him about Labour, he says. But he says recently he has started making critical comments about the SNP. McConnell says he thinks that, after nine years, the SNP are now being held to account for their record.
3.52am BST
This is what the Labour MP John Mann, who was been an outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn, told the BBC earlier about not wanting to see a leadership challenge.
Let me say that this speculation about a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, it was my view a month ago and a day ago that shouldn’t be one. It’s my view today that there shouldn’t be one. What we need is him to get on top of the big issues and start broadening our appeal.
We should have been winning by a landslide across the country with the way this Tory government’s been acting and the way they’ve dealt with the country, the collapse in economic confidence. We’re doing okay, not bad results, we’re holding our own, but we should be doing dramatically better than this.
3.44am BST
According to the Press Association, the latest forecast is that suggests the SNP will end up with 61 constituency seats in Scotland, the Tories six, Labour three and Lib Dems three.
After 30 first-past-the-post results out of 73 in the Scottish Parliament election the state of parties is:
SNP 24 seats, including three gains and one loss.
3.40am BST
Edge-of-the-seat news from Witney East where Duncan Enright – sitting Labour councillor and unsuccessful challenger to David Cameron in last year’s general election – first lost then regained his council seat after, as he tweeted, a “bundle of my votes” were found “under a Tory pile”:
Lost by 70 votes or so. Thanks for the opportunity to serve. The fight goes on
Miscount in #Witney East, result now in, I win by 70! THANK YOU!
Actually I won! Bundle of my votes under a Tory pile! Delighted! Thanks Witney! https://t.co/zyxsXceOhL
Three Labour councillors out of three re-elected in #Witney and #Chippy Wahay! pic.twitter.com/7gn9s5kfad
3.38am BST
Labour have increased their majority in the bellwether council of Crawley in West Sussex, a rare southern English council which is highly symbolic.
Mike Pickett snatched Southgate ward from his Conservative rival shortly before 3am, with Labour also holding the marginal seats of Tilgate and Ifield. The most marginal council in the country, Labour now have a two seat majority over the Tories. No other parties won seats.
Chants of 9-4! 9-4! (The number of councillors won in Crawley tonight) pic.twitter.com/ivAjO6vDZO
3.30am BST
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has arrived at the Glasgow count to huge cheers.
She promised to govern the country ‘in the interests of everybody’, saying that her priority would be education.
Asked about whether she would use her victory to push for independence, she said:
The decision on that will always lie where it rightly belongs, in the hands of the Scottish people.
I will govern for every single person in this country and seek to win the trust of those who didn’t vote SNP yesterday,” adding that, on the results so far, that didn’t appear to be many people.
3.28am BST
Willie Rennie, the Lib Dem leader in Scotland, has gained North East Fife from the SNP.
3.25am BST
The Labour MP John Mann is on the BBC now. He rejects the suggestion that his on-air row with Ken Livingstone last week damaged the party’s chances. He says no one has brought this up with him on the doorstep.
But he says tonight’s results show Labour has a problem with Jewish voters. Jeremy Corbyn has to address this, he says.
3.23am BST
On Radio 4, shadow chancellor John McDonnell has admitted that the antisemitism row has “had its effect” on Labour’s results in Scotland. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing, he added:
In some ways I’m pleased it’s happens because it’s exposed an issue in our party we’ve got to address, and we’re addressing it.
In some ways it’ll strengthen us. It’s a tough time at the moment, we’re learning lessons and we’ve got to come through it that much stronger.
3.20am BST
Here’s the Guardian story about the Ogmore byelection.
Related: Ogmore byelection won by Labour's Chris Elmore
3.17am BST
Labour have held Southampton, the party says.
3.15am BST
Chris Grayling, the Conservative leader of the Commons, has just told Radio 5 Live that it is looking as if the Conservatives will end up with more constituency seats in Scotland than Labour. That would be remarkable, he said.
3.15am BST
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is having a good night:
Fascinating: the Conservatives have raised their share of the vote in every Scot Parl seat declared thus far, save for Orkney
Scottish Daily Mail: #sp16 election special pic.twitter.com/xeN3kiJfeF
3.14am BST
On the BBC election programme John Curtice has just said that it is beginning to look as if tomorrow morning will look “not as bad for Jeremy Corbyn as it could have done”. This is because Labour is managing to hold on to councils like Crawley, he said. And partly that is because the Conservative vote seems to be falling away in the southern half of England, he said.
3.09am BST
We’ve had the second byelection result. Labour’s Chris Elmore had hold Ogmore in Wales, where the former MP Huw Irranca-Davies resigned so he could stand for the Welsh assembly.
Here are the Ogmore results in full.
3.03am BST
Neil Hamilton, the former Tory minister who resigned over cash-for-questions and who is now a Ukip candidate in Wales, has just told BBC Radio 5 Live that he expects Ukip to win eight seats in the Welsh assembly. It will be the first time they have been represented there.
2.59am BST
Labour has held Crawley, with an increased majority. It is a Labour council, but Labour had a majority of just one and it was a council where the Tories seemed to have a chance of making gains.
2.58am BST
Now here’s something we haven’t seen in a while: the Liberal Democrats are trending on Twitter:
Rumours of their death etc #LibDems pic.twitter.com/MesEgOwPg3
2.56am BST
In Wales Labour Labour expects to hold Caerphilly but with a significantly reduced majority, according to Labour sources.
2.53am BST
The SNP looks set to take Dumbarton from Labour, according to SNP sources.
2.53am BST
In Wales Carwyn Jones, the Labour first minister, has acknowledged that his party may need to do a deal with Plaid Cymru or the Lib Dems to form an administration.
We are confident we will be by far the largest party so it will be up to us to look to form a government.
We have worked with Plaid and the Lib Dems before, so that’s something we know has happened in the past, but let’s wait and see what the final figures show.
Whenever a politician in London says something unhelpful we don’t welcome that, of course we don’t. I certainly didn’t welcome Ken Livingstone’s comments.
2.51am BST
As Severin Carrell pointed out, the shift in Glasgow’s Eastwood constituency – which has fallen to the Tories having been a Labour stronghold in all previous Holyrood elections – could be a casualty of the antisemitism row that has bedevilled Labour.
Former Labour MP for West Dunbartonshire Gemma Doyle seems to think so:
Tories win Eastwood,very tight three way. Did Labour's anti-semitism row make the difference.
Almost certainly https://t.co/oaxPknLC6M
2.48am BST
The Lib Dems say they have gained two seats in Hull, and held every seat in Southport.
2.46am BST
This is from Jamie Ross, BuzzFeed’s Scotland correspondent.
Unless something extraordinary happens in the next few hours, I understand Labour now expect to come third tonight.
2.43am BST
There were jubilant scenes as co-conveyor of the Scottish Greens Patrick Harvie and candidate Zara Kitson, both believed to have a very strong chance of winning two Glasgow list seats, arrived at the Emirates. It is also believed that Harvie had come second in the Glasgow Kelvin constituency, where he was standing for the first time, beating Labour into third place.
The Greens, who enjoyed a five-fold increase in membership after the independence referendum, during which they campaigned for a yes vote alongside the SNP, hoped to consolidate this rise in profile and the early signs are good.
Harvie said that the influx of new activists had allowed the party to reach voters in a way that was previously impossible.
2.41am BST
There is a significant Jewish community in Eastwood, and my colleague Severin Carrell says it is possible that the Ken Livingstone/antisemitism row may have contributed to Labour’s defeat there.
Is Ken Macintosh defeat the most tangible damage from Ken Livingstone antisemitism row? Quite likely #Holyrood2016 https://t.co/7UPUiiNHFL
2.36am BST
In Scotland the Conservatives have just won Eastwood, the Holyrood seat that overlaps with the Westminster seat that used to be represented by Jim Murphy, the Labour leader in Scotland, until 2015. There was a swing from Labour to the Conservatives of 5.7%.
2.30am BST
Labour has easily held on to Rochdale, despite Lib Dem boasts of a comeback and talk that Simon Danczuk’s name was mud on the doorstep. “Some comeback that was,” said Danczuk, who is now sitting as the town’s Independent MP after being suspended by the Labour party. Labour lost one seat to the Lib Dems and gained one from the Tories, retaining 48 of the council’s 60 seats. It looks as though the drama in Greater Manchester tonight is in Stockport, where the Liberal Democrat leader, Sue Derbyshire, has been ousted by a Labour candidate. That means all ten leaders of the Greater Manchester councils are almost certainly going to be men from tomorrow.
2.25am BST
This is from Philip Cowley, an academic.
45 councils declared thus far in England. Not a single one changed control yet. The action is all at the councillor level.
2.23am BST
We’ve had the first byelection result of the night. Labour’s Gill Furniss has been elected in Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, where her late husband Harry Harpham was MP. Ukip came second.
Labour’s share of the vote went up 5.8%. Ukip came second, but their share of the vote was down 2.2%. And the Conservatives, who came fourth behind the Lib Dems, saw their share of the vote fall by 5.4%.
Related: Antisemitism row makes no mark in Sheffield as voters focus on cuts
2.18am BST
This is from the Mark Reckless, the former Ukip MP who is standing as a candidate for the party in Wales.
I think we have got a quarter of the vote in Newport East
2.14am BST
In the tradition of H’Angus the Monkey – aka former Hartlepool mayor Stuart Drummond – the voters of Cannock Chase have rewarded the man behind a local team’s mascot.
Paul Woodhead, beloved of fans of Hednesford as ‘Pitman Pete’, has made a breakthrough for the Green party in elections for Cannock Chase district council, beating a former Ukip general election candidate in the process.
Paul Woodhead (Hednesford Town's "Pitman Pete") wins a Cannock seat for the Greens (beating UKIP's 2015 Westmin cand pic.twitter.com/iTUAbZ9iUQ
New ground / new model for Green Party local election campaigns? Paul Woodhead on his successful Cannock campaignhttps://t.co/XKfV2eVLRu
2.11am BST
This is from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
Labour has lost a ward in Bury with a high Jewish population, swing away from the party more than 20 percent it sounds like
2.03am BST
This is from the BBC’s Tim Hammond.
John Curtice on Hamilton - 9% swing from LAB to CON which if replicated elsewhere would put parties neck and neck in Scotland #SP16
2.00am BST
Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has been at the byelection count for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough. Asked by the Guardian whether he thought it would be fair to use tonight’s results to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of Corbyn’s leadership, he said that you couldn’t draw “deep conclusions” about a person’s leadership from election results.
I mean, yes, it’s a snap shot of public opinion and, yes, you have to hear what people are telling you on the doorstep, but I don’t think that eight months in you can reasonably think that these set of results are solely down to Jeremy Corbyn.
I think people see that for what it is.
What I’m trying to do as deputy leader is bring people with very different views of the world, who represent many different traditions within the Labour party – be it the social democratic tradition or the classically socialist tradition – bring them together in a culture of mutual respect where their ideas can be shared, where people’s differing views are respected and that difference understood. And I just say to people, if you display intolerance and disrespect for each other, then that just has the worst effect.
1.54am BST
We’re at the Life Centre in Plymouth for the city council count. In this rare Labour redoubt in the south-west, it’s unbelievably close: Labour run the council with 28 seats to the Tories’ 26 (with Ukip on 3), so if a single seat changes hands, they’re in trouble.
The council leader is Tudor Evans, who was recently voted council leader of the year (as well as being awarded the OBE). He’s a highly-rated and very creative politician in charge of a “co-operative council” who have parried austerity by growing social enterprises and overseeing ambitious regeneration – and he’s much admired by national Labour figures. But though he won’t be drawn on whether Labour’s recent national travails recently are going to be a problem, he’s very open about how nervous he is tonight.
1.54am BST
Plenty of whispers and possible-verging-on-confident predictions for Scottish seats on Twitter right now; of course, for many parties expectations were not particularly high. The Lib Dems are already celebrating the first Holyrood win of the night, in Orkney – could they see more?
Liberal Democrats confident of winning Shetland.
Liberal Democrats are saying they have... GAINED North East Fife constituency from the SNP.
Lib Dems think Willie Rennie may have the beating of the SNP in North East Fife. Would be extraordinary if true.
Looks like it's going to be a night of recovery for the LibDems. #sp16
Labour source says they are 95 per cent confident they will win Edinburgh Southern #jpvote
1/2 We're hearing things are looking good for Greens list-wise in Glasgow...
1.51am BST
David Mundell, the Conservative Scottish secretary, has just told the BBC that he is “very confident” of his party coming second in the Scottish elections.
1.51am BST
My colleague Steven Morris has more on the contests in Cardiff.
It’s too close to the call in Cardiff North and Cardiff Central. Both were held by Labour going into this election, North by Julie Morgan, wife of former first minister Rhodri Morgan, and South by Jenny Rathbone. The Tories have their sights set on Cardiff North following a good victory in the constituency at last year’s general election.
Cardiff Central is the most marginal seat in Wales won by a majority of just 38 last time. The Lib Dems hope this could be one ray of sunshine in what is likely to be a miserable night in Wales for them.
1.45am BST
In Cardiff Julie Morgan, the former MP and wife of Rhodri, the former Welsh first minister, says she is not confident of holding her Cardiff North assembly seat. She said:
I’m not confident. I’m prepared for whatever the result will be. The Cardiff North constituency has changed hands a few times between Labour and the Conservatives in both assembly and parliamentary elections.
1.43am BST
The Lib Dems say they have held Shetland in Scotland.
1.42am BST
With Labour now facing the loss of its 15 Holyrood constituency seats, Thomas Docherty, the Blairite former MP for Dunfermline and West Fife and is expected to win a Holyrood seat on the Mid Scotland and Fife regional list, attacked Dugdale’s campaign, accusing her of taking the party too far to the left.
He told BBC Scotland there was “a direct correlation” between Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and Scottish Labour’s performance, which he predicted could leave the party at under 20%.
1.40am BST
Sports halls the length and breadth of the UK are echoing to the sound of ballot papers being flicked and index fingers being licked (or perhaps they have those miniature sponges):
1.37am BST
Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt (name sounds familiar) reveals on the BBC’s election blog that he has seen a copy of Labour’s speaking note for party spokespeople tonight.
Leaked: How Labour will explain election results https://t.co/NSs4o8vErY via @BBCNews
It’s never been a realistic target to talk about hundreds of gains given that the last time these elections were fought, in 2012, Labour’s performance was a high water mark. The results then were Labour’s best in the local elections since those that took place in 2001 on the same day as Blair’s second landslide election. At the end of the day, we should be looking for Labour to advance on the 2015 election results, where we finished almost seven per cent behind the Conservatives.
1.31am BST
I’m told that Ukip has taken at least two seats from Labour in Hartlepool – one of them by just two votes. The results are yet to be announced but the two Ukip wins would double overnight their presence on the Labour-dominated council. Labour will say that only two swings to Ukip is not a great return, given the party’s very public pledge to throw everything at the north-east coastal town and take it completely from Labour by 2020. However, I’m told that Ukip has run Labour very close – within 20 votes – in one of its top target seats. “It’s not a win, but it’s a moral victory,” said a Ukip source.
1.28am BST
The Local Government Information Unit is providing very detail results coverage on its blog. Jonathan Carr-West, the LGiU chief executive, has put out this statement about the picture so far:
The main focus so far tonight continues to be the Labour vote and what it tells us about Corbyn’s leadership. Many Labour councils who have very different political outlooks from the national leadership may feel aggrieved by this relentless focus on the national: especially if, as is likely, it is costing them votes. This will exacerbate the rift that already exists between a radical leadership and a pragmatic local government base.
So far, Labour are holding safe councils (Newcastle, Liverpool, Sunderland and Halton) – but we expect to see them losing significant numbers of seats as the night progresses. To put this in context, the last time these councils were contested Labour gained 823 seats.
1.23am BST
John Curtice is doing the number crunching for the BBC. He told the election programme a few minutes ago that, on the basis of the voting pattern that has emerged so far in Scotland, Labour will lose all its constituency seats. Labour MSPs will only get elected to the Scottish parliament through the regional list system.
1.17am BST
The Liberal Democrats were the first party to win a Holyrood seat, when sitting MSP Liam McArthur held one of its only two constituencies in Orkney with a substantial 4,500 vote majority over the SNP.
1.16am BST
John Ferrett, the Labour leader on Portsmouth council, has said that Jeremy Corbyn has been a “disaster” for the party, according to the BBC’s Peter Henley.
Portsmouth Labour Leader John Ferret "Jeremy Corbyn is a disaster for us, he is incompetent, incapable of giving the leadership we need"
Surely in the history of the Labour Party it has never looked so weak and broken as it does right now #PMQs
What is clear here in Portsmouth is that the #UKIP threat to Labour has not gone away #corbyneffect
Labour vote is collapsing to UKIP in Portsmouth #corbyneffect
1.09am BST
Hearing that UKIP has taken a Labour seat by just *two* votes in Hartlepool (cc @AndrewSparrow)
1.07am BST
On Sky News Michael Thrasher, the election specialist who is in charge of their number crunching tonight, said it looked as if Labour could become the first opposition to lose council seats in an election like this for 30 years. He said:
Their vote share is not doing at all well. If you look in the detail, their vote has fallen quite markedly in some strong Labour areas. And although they have taken seats from the Liberal Democrats in Newcastle the performance of Ukip in Labour wards was pretty impressive. So this is not really the performance of an opposition party which has recovered from its defeat in 2015. It doesn’t show very much sense in which it is able to recover that ground. And we may well be looking at the end of the day at a party that has lost ground in terms of local council seats, which would be the first time that has happened to an opposition party in 30 years.
12.56am BST
The Ukip leader Nigel Farage says his party is eating into the Labour vote tonight.
Strong performances for UKIP in the North East, hearing we could breakthrough in Hartlepool.
It's clear tonight that we in UKIP are eating into the Old Labour vote in a big way.https://t.co/pM6fPdd9A6
12.49am BST
The Lib Dems have held the Orkney Island constituency in Scotland, with a 16% swing from the SNP to the Lib Dems, the BBC reports.
12.48am BST
Simon Danczuk is in a bullish mood at the Rochdale count. Though no longer officially representing the Labour party, he is in team colours, wearing a red tie and accompanied by a new aide in a slinky red dress (not his ex wife Karen, who he re-employed, to some controversy, a few weeks back).
The currently Independent MP has been the subject of many a Liberal Democrat leaflet in the Greater Manchester town in recent weeks, with Lib Dems talking up their chances of winning back seats in the local election. They ran the town hall until 2010 but now have just one councillor. That’s Andy Kelly, who says he will be lonely no more after one of his comrades looks to have won the Milnrow and Newhey ward from Labour.
12.45am BST
On Twitter the Labour MP Mike Gapes says that for Labour to be losing seats tonight in the council elections would be “very bad”.
Labour losing seats in first year of opposition after Tory fiasco of recent weeks is very bad where is Straight talking, honest politics ?
12.41am BST
On the BBC’s election programme Huw Edwards asked John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, how he would respond to the claim that Labour should be gaining council seats in these elections, not losing them. McDonnell claimed it was not as simple as that. He said:
I think it’s more complex. Scotland is really complex. We’re at the early stages of Labour rebuilding. We got wiped out in the general election. We’ve only got one parliamentary seat left. So Scotland is extremely complex. I think the SNP is still in the honeymoon post-referendum where they took a clear position and the other parties were divided.
Wales, 17 years, it is inevitable we will fall back a bit, as long as we retain control.
12.21am BST
It was headline news last year when Shane Moore, then deputy leader of the local Conservative group in Hartlepool, defected to Ukip. Tonight he’s trying to unseat a Labour councillor in an all-Labour ward, in what would be a huge win for the Eurosceptic party and usher one of its key local lieutenants on to Hartlepool council.
Moore said he quit the Tories because “the leadership locally weren’t Conservatives as far as I was concerned and they weren’t acting in the best interests of the Conservatives”. He also said he’s fighting to change a mindset in the north-east of “I’m voting Labour because my dad did”. Listen to the full interview here.
Audio: Ukip's Shane Moore in Hartlepool https://t.co/PaadLQmuGW via @audioBoom
12.17am BST
I’ve just had my first election night brush-off from a Ukip candidate.
If the predictions are correct, Gareth Bennett will be among the first intake of Ukip members in the Welsh assembly. He attracted headlines during the campaign for criticising the multiracial character of Cardiff and blamed “unhygienic” eastern Europeans for rubbish problems in the capital.
12.14am BST
Labour are saying the Tories have left the count in Delyn, a Labour/Tory marginal which Labour say the Tories had been hoping to win.
12.13am BST
You can read the results as they come in here, on our results tracker.
12.09am BST
On Newsnight Andrew Boff, the Conservative leader on the Greater London assembly, also said that the Zac Goldsmith’s mayoral campaign had “done real damage” and had “blown up” bridges the Conservative party had built with London’s Muslim communities.
I mentioned that I thought this was a mistake for future integration in London. If you are a London politician this is just a bizarre thing to do.
12.06am BST
The electoral fate of two Scottish party leaders, Kez Dugdale for Labour and Ruth Davidson for the Tories, will be decided in Edinburgh, where the first ballot papers for the city’s six constituency seats are now being counted at the Royal Highland Showground. Edinburgh is where several of the most interesting Scottish contests take place.
Dugdale is bidding to regain Edinburgh Eastern for Labour and Ruth Davidson to win Edinburgh Central; these contests have extra resonance as the polls suggest Davidson could make history by pushing Labour into third place for the first time in a Scottish election for 100 years.
12.01am BST
Jack Dromey, MP for Birmingham Erdington, has been seeking to dampen down expectations a little, saying that the Labour party is proceeding from a “high watermark”.
Asked if Labour was in for a bad night, he told BBC West Midlands:
I hope not. We have very good candidates. We are proceeding from a high watermark. Four years ago we did very well in these elections.
Now, having said that. At this stage in a parliament we would hope to make further gains and to have what we hold.
11.59pm BST
One of the things that makes election night interesting is that fact that, once the polls close, politicians often feel free to say all the things they have been bottling up during the campaign. As I reported earlier, we have already seen evidence of a Labour inquest into Jeremy Corbyn’s performance getting underway in public. (See 11.48pm.) But the Tories are at it too. This is what Andrew Boff, leader of the Conservative group on the Greater London assembly, told Newsnight about the way Zac Goldsmith’s campaign has been conducted.
Well, I don’t think it was a dog whistle because you can’t hear a dog whistle. Everybody could hear this. It was effectively saying that people of conservative, religious views are not to be trusted and you should not share a platform with them. That’s outrageous.
Leader of Tory GLA #BackZac "I don’t think it’s dog whistle coz you can’t hear a dog whistle. Everyone cd hear this" https://t.co/daKmYDudlF
11.48pm BST
The first council results are starting to trickle in – the Local Government information Unit has very thorough ward-by-ward results coverage here – but already a Labour party inquest is getting underway. On Newsnight Neil Coyle, the Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, said his party was moving “further away from government” and that it “shouldn’t be losing seats, it’s as simple as that”. He told the programme:
The problem we seem to be seeing is we are moving further away from government, and we are moving further away from government, I think, because we seem to be fixated on some issues that are peripheral and we seem to have a team which isn’t projecting either unity within the party or a vision and policies that the voters want.
There is a core team that seem unable to get out of a mindset that ‘They are out to get us’. This isn’t about a coup. I’m here because I want a Labour prime minister and a Labour government and these results look like they are setting us back from that.
There need to be more people in that team who don’t share exactly one vision on unilateralism or whatever. We need more people there who are able to say what the platform needs to be on housing, for example, and who are able to say we can’t just have an anti-Tory agenda which says we are not for the rich, we are only for a certain group in society.
Labour MP @coyleneil tells #Newsnight Lab top team needs more diversity so they don't all share one vision. https://t.co/apssi8Lzii
11.36pm BST
Crawley council is a red speck in a sea of blue in the south-east, and Labour are fighting to keep control of the council tonight, where they have a majority of just one seat.
The balance has swung between the two main parties over the past 10 years, with the Tories taking the council for the first time in more than three decades in 2006, and strengthening their lead until the Tory win at national level.
#Crawley count is at the K2 leisure centre, though won't get underway for a couple of hours. Result expected at 3ish pic.twitter.com/EhwlhMAjKC
11.34pm BST
Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, told Sky News a few minutes ago that Jeremy Corbyn should be given more time to allow the party to recover:
I think this game of trying to predict whether it is a success or a failure on whether you win 100 seats or lose 100 seats is slightly unnecessary tonight. Jeremy has only been the leader of the Labour party for eight months. He has taken his party back from a very low base, one of our worst every election defeats a year ago this month. He was 14 points behind the Tories when he took over as leader. So we’ve got a long way to go. And I think most people would recognise you can’t consolidate your position in only eight months.
11.26pm BST
This is from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
interesting nugget, in one key ward in Sunderland, UKIP vote was 29%
11.22pm BST
A Lib Dem councillor on Stockport council has defected to Labour, Labour HQ is saying.
11.22pm BST
If the ITV poll proves accurate it won’t be a terrible night for Labour in Wales – but would be an excellent one for Ukip.
Labour, which has governed since the first assembly in 1999, went into the election holding 30 of the assembly’s 60 seats. If it does end up with 27 this time it may well form a minority government, probably making deals with Plaid Cymru, which is projected to win 12 seats, to get its budget and programme through.
11.19pm BST
A Labour source in Wales points out that the party has been running a minority administration in the assembly and says that, if the ITV poll turns out to be accurate, that would constitute “a decent result for us and certainly one that any or all of the other parties would give their hind teeth for”.
11.11pm BST
Could low turnout spell bad news for Labour in the ‘bellwether’ district council elections of Cannock Chase?
The ballot boxes have arrived and verification is underway here at the count centre, where 13 of the District Council’s 41 seats are up for grabs.
11.09pm BST
Labour is not expecting to win any constituency seats in Glasgow, it has emerged. This is from the BBC’s Nick Eardley.
Reports Labour do not expect to hold on to any constituencies in Glasgow tonight
11.00pm BST
As my colleague Heather Stewart writes in her election results preview story, different factions in the Labour party have different views as to what would constitute a good result for the party. Here’s an extract:
Corbyn’s team insist that the vote share in the 2015 general election is the right baseline from which to judge whether they are making progress, arguing that the last time these council seats were contested, under Ed Miliband’s leadership in 2012, was a “high-water mark”. But the leader’s critics say he should be getting hundreds of gains.
Alison McGovern, chair of the Blairite Progress group of MPs, said: “We shouldn’t be losing any councils. Labour is providing real leadership in the face of grim Tory incompetence and austerity. We can’t afford to start losing that.”
10.53pm BST
In Hartlepool, the Labour-dominated council is said to be feeling the heat from a resurgent campaign by Ukip. The Eurosceptic party has had the north-east coastal town in its crosshairs for years, and in last year’s general election was just 3,000 votes away from unseating the incumbent Labour MP, Iain Wright.
Tonight Ukip is looking to add to its two councillors on the ward, currently dominated by 22 Labour seats. It has fielded candidates in each of tonight’s 11 wards up for contention – a first in Hartlepool, possibly in the north-east – but one seat in particular is said to be firmly in its sights: that of Christopher Akers-Belcher, the council leader (whose partner, Stephen, could also lose his seat tonight).
Audio: Hartlepool council leader in UKIP's crosshairs https://t.co/ZPusJm6xsN via @audioBoom
10.47pm BST
The ITV Wales poll is out. Here are the figures.
10.38pm BST
And this is what John McDonnell on Sky News said about Labour’s challenge in today’s elections. He is saying that, as long as Labour narrow the gap that existed between them and the Tories at the general election (seven points), they will be making progress.
We were virtually seven points behind the Tories literally only 10 months ago in the general election. And if we can narrow that gap, which I think we will, we will demonstrate steady progress. We’ve got four years before the next general election. I think what we will do is move steadily towards a victory in 2020, and this could be narrowing that gap.
10.34pm BST
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, told Sky News a few minutes ago that he hoped Andy Burnham would stay on in the shadow cabinet and become home secretary in a Labour government rather than stand for mayor in Greater Manchester. But he said he could see why Burnham was tempted by the job.
10.31pm BST
And while we’re on the subject of managing expectations, here is an extract from the note the Lib Dems have just sent out to journalists setting out their take on today’s elections:
The task of turning things around after last year is gargantuan, but it’s under way and we are hoping to see some progress. We are realistic though, the loss last year was so catastrophic it will be incredibly difficult.
This is a test for Corbyn regardless of what they brief. Labour have been crowing about the thousands of people flocking to their new movement and this is their first test. If they go backwards, the voters will have seen them for the ineffectual opposition they are
10.29pm BST
Political parties spend a lot of time before elections like tonight’s trying to manage expectations. In this candid and amusing blog, Theo Bertram, who was a Labour adviser under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, explains how it’s done.
10.28pm BST
My colleague Severin Carrell is at the Royal Highland showground at Ingliston, where the Edinburgh constituencies and the Lothian regional seats are being counted. Here’s the scene.
For live #Holyrood2016 count updates tonight from #Glasgow and #Edinburgh, follow @libby_brooks and @severincarrell pic.twitter.com/p1UnNEik5T
10.25pm BST
Labour is nervous about how it will do in the local elections because the seats being contested today were last up for election in 2012, when the party under Ed Miliband was polling particularly well. The 2012 local elections took place shortly after George Osborne’s disastrous “omnishambles” budget and at the time Labour was ahead of the Tories in national opinion polls by almost 10 points.
Current polls give a mixed picture but generally they have been showing the Tories ahead, and on that basis there are predictions that Labour will lose seats tonight. I’m aware of two academic forecasts that are worth flagging up.
10.22pm BST
Many people have written “what to expect” preview guides ahead of tonight’s elections. One of the best ones is this one by John Curtice, the psephologist who was in charge of the team that produced the BBC’s highly successful general election exit poll, for the IPPR magazine Juncture. Here’s an extract:
There are then two crucial features to the political backdrop to this year’s elections. First, most of the contests were previously held when Labour was doing reasonably well in the polls – and indeed, with the exception of the London mayoral and Scottish parliament elections, this was broadly reflected in the party’s performance at the ballot box. This was especially true of the local elections in 2012. The BBC’s projection of these results into a Britain-wide election vote suggested that Labour’s performance was worth 38% of the vote, enough to put the party 7 points ahead of the Conservatives. It was easily the party’s best performance in any of the annual rounds of local elections held during the last parliament.
Consequently, Jeremy Corbyn faces a relatively demanding electoral test at a time when many are looking to see if he ‘fails’. Even if Labour were to enjoy some recovery from its position a year ago, the party would still suffer net losses. Indeed, simply repeating its performance locally in last year’s local elections would see the party lose control of Dudley, Cannock Chase, Crawley, Redditch, Rossendale and Southampton. This set of losses would undoubtedly be regarded by Corbyn’s critics as evidence that he had lost the plot in middle England – but in fact they may simply be an indication that the party was previously just treading water.
10.21pm BST
Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary and at one time the favourite to win the Labour leadership contest last summer, has announced that he is considering standing for mayor of Greater Manchester next year. The Press Association has filed this:
The shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, is considering standing to be the mayor of Greater Manchester.
The former Labour leadership contender has yet to decide whether to seek the role when it comes up for election in 2017, his spokesman said.
10.09pm BST
Polls have closed. Unusually for “local” election night we’ve got an exit poll - in Wales.
POLLS ARE CLOSED. There is a Welsh on-the-day poll by YouGov for ITV and the University of Cardiff expected at around 10:30
Labour: 27 seats (25 constituency seats + 2 list seats)
Plaid Cymru: 12 seats (6 constituency seats + 6 list seats)
9.54pm BST
The #SuperThursday hashtag never did quite take off, but nevertheless polls are closing in a quite remarkable cluster of elections. We’ve had devolved parliament/assembly elections four times before, and London mayor elections four times before, but we’ve never had them taking place in the same year. Given that London is on a four-year cycle and the devolved bodies have moved to a five-year cycle, we may not get another overlap until 2036.
On top of that we’ve also got English council elections, police and crime commissioner election, and assorted other electoral contests. For reference, here is a full list of the elections taking place:
Related: What time will Thursday's election results be announced?
In spite of the fact that Labour has always had a more nationalist stance in Wales than in Scotland, the party is in historic decline in Wales too. It may lose seats, though not on a Scottish scale. A Labour-led coalition or Labour minority government seems a likely outcome.
Yet this would not be a solid guide to politics in other parts of the UK either. Scottish politics, like those in Northern Ireland, now bear no relation to politics elsewhere. Welsh politics is neither a west British version of what is happening in England nor a minor key variation of the nationalist mood in Scotland. Even English politics is fractured, most obviously between London and elsewhere, but also in other ways. Post-industrial Britain is a disunited kingdom. And it increasingly has politics to match.
Related: UK elections 2016: last hours of voting – live updates
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