The dramatic local elections are over – what did we learn and what comes next?

Keir Starmer spent yesterday meeting Labour election winners around the country, including new East Midlands mayor Claire Ward (Picture: Jacob King/PA Wire)

It’s hard to imagine that Sir Keir Starmer has had many better Saturdays in his life.

At 2.30pm yesterday, the Labour leader’s beloved Arsenal beat Bournemouth 3-0 to keep their Premiere League title hopes alive.

An hour and a half after that, it was confirmed that Sadiq Khan had won a third term as London Mayor – the first person ever to do so.

And a few hours after that, the most stunning result of all: Richard Parker narrowly pipped incumbent Andy Street of the Conservatives to become Mayor of the West Midlands.

The previous day, things hadn’t looked so peachy. Ben Houchen, the Tory Mayor of Tees Valley, was voted in for another term, and anonymous sources were briefing that Labour had lost Birmingham due to a pro-Gaza independent candidate and that London was looking closer than expected.

In the end, those mistaken forecasts represented the high point of the results for the Conservatives. Now all is said and done, we know the Tories have lost 474 councillors and were overtaken by the Lib Dems in terms of total seats won at Thursday’s vote.

Arguably the best news for Labour this weekend didn’t even have anything to do with the local elections. But this is an article about the local elections, so I’ll leave that until the end.

What are the main local election result takeaways?

The main thing to take away from the local elections is that Labour did well. Very well.

Some commentators have suggested the party should have done better, and lost left-wing votes to others like the Greens. However, there’s no denying that winning 10 out of 11 mayor races and bagging 186 more councillors is a result.

That’s not to say there are no lessons for Labour to learn. Criticism of the party’s position on the war in Gaza seem to have cost its candidates a significant number of votes – especially in areas with a large Muslim population.

This is perhaps most clear in the West Midlands. Tens of thousands in Birmingham alone voted for independent Akhmed Yakoob, who ran a campaign heavily focused on Gaza.

It also seems that Reform UK may be a hefty thorn in the Conservatives’ side when the general election comes. The party may have only won two councillors, but its candidate came within less than 120 votes of beating the Tories into third place at the Blackpool South parliamentary by-election.

Leader Richard Tice told the BBC: ‘What’s rapidly becoming clear… as more people hear about Reform is that we’re becoming the real opposition to the Labour Party in the North, in the Midlands, in Wales.

‘We’re on the way up and it’s quite clear that the Tories are on the way down.’

What could the local election results mean for the general election?

Going into the local elections, it looked most likely that the next general election would be coming in autumn. Coming out, it still looks most likely it’ll be in the autumn.

There’s been some speculation that Rishi Sunak may call the election for June or July in the aftermath of the election in an attempt to cut his losses.

But the predominant thinking among Tories has been to wait until tax cuts are having an effect and asylum seekers are being flown to Rwanda before asking voters to have their say. It may not win them another term in government, but perhaps it would mean they keep seats they might have lost otherwise.

Will Rishi Sunak still be party leader for the election? Probably. The local election results were dire, but Conservative MPs know that the leadership drama of the past few years is one of the reasons many voters feel a bit fed up. They’ll be reluctant to instigate even more of it.

What do the Conservatives and Labour have to do between now and the general election?

According to ex-home secretary Suella Braverman, the Tories need to urgently change course if they’re going to avoid oblivion at the next election.

Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg this morning, she said Rishi Sunak needs to ‘own’ the poor set of results and veer the party further to the right.

Her argument would be that this is what’s needed to bring back voters who are choosing to back Reform UK – reminiscent, perhaps, of the way David Cameron tried to reach out to Ukip voters ahead of the 2015 election by saying he’d hold a referendum on Brexit.

Suella Braverman thinks she knows what Rishi Sunak needs to do next (Picture: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA Wire)

For Labour, things are more nuanced. The election results appear to have confirmed the party’s strong lead in the polls, but its deputy campaign coordinator said work was needed to ‘rebuild trust’ in Muslim communities.

Ellie Reeves told BBC Breakfast that ‘a lot of listening needs to be done’, and Labour needs to make sure the people ‘understand our position’.

What was the ‘best news for Labour’ you mentioned earlier?

Glad you remembered. For that, we need to look to a place where no elections at all happened this week: Scotland.

It’s been said for a while that the best path to Downing Street for Keir Starmer goes through Scotland. A major factor in Labour’s Westminster woes over the past 15 years or so has been the ascendancy of the SNP, costing the party seats in a country that was once its stronghold.

But the collapse in support for the SNP over the past two or three years has been accompanied by a rise in support for Labour. A Sunday Times poll released this morning showed Scottish Labour – led by Anas Sarwar – with its largest lead over the SNP yet.

If the SNP’s new leader (likely to be John Swinney) isn’t able to reverse that trend, then Labour’s route to power will be an awful lot smoother.

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