The result of the Greater Lincolnshire mayoral race - where Reform UK are bullish about their prospects of winning - is now not expected for at least another hour and a half. One of the largest districts where counting is taking place is said to have only started counting, while elections for local councillors in those areas has also slowed things down. However, there was an alarm call for Labour in one of the other districts, North East Lincolnshire, which has already come through with its results and includes the towns of Grimsby and Cleethorpes. In that district, Reform’s Andrea Jenkyns took 12523 votes, followed by Labour’s Jason Stockwood (6419) and Rob Waltham (6239). Labour’s performance was being watched on account of expectations that Stockwood, a tech investor and former chair of Grimsby Town Football Club, could count on some kind of base there. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has posted on X, saying the party has won in Runcorn and Helsby. “Reform UK have won the Runcorn & Helsby by-election by 4 votes! Labour have demanded a recount. We are very confident we have won.” Votes are currently being recounted in Runcorn and Helsby, with the results expected soon. Reform UK looked on course to take control of Staffordshire County Council, after taking 24 of the 30 seats to be counted overnight, with Conservatives winning the other six, PA reports. It means when counting resumes later on Friday, Reform need to win just eight more seats, which would give Nigel Farage’s party a majority on the council which has 62 seats. Conservative council leader Alan White lost his seat to Reform in one of the first results of the night. His party previously controlled the council with 53 seats, with Labour holding five and independents four. The four district and borough areas returning results overnight were Lichfield, Newcastle, South Staffordshire and Tamworth, and ballots will be counted later on Friday in the Cannock Chase, East Staffordshire, Stafford and Staffordshire Moorlands areas. The Conservatives have controlled the county council since winning in 2009, claiming elections in 2013, 2017 and 2021. Throughout our reporting in Runcorn and Helsby in recent months we encountered voters of all persuasions who said they simply either wouldn’t vote, or would do so very reluctantly. This potential result - splitting Labour and Reform UK by just four votes - shows that every vote truly does count. If the result stands - and we expect a formal declaration in about an hour - it would be hand Reform UK one of the narrowest parliamentary majorities in recent UK political history. Since World War Two, two constituencies have been won by just two votes each, according to the BBC - once by the Liberal Democrats in 1997 and another by the Scottish National Party in 2017. Update from Doncaster: Votes are still being counted in Doncaster, where it is impossible to tell which way things will go. Labour’s Ros Jones, in a burgundy suit, said she was still hopeful but if she didn’t win she would accept the electorate’s decision. “That’s how democracy works,” she said. She has been walking around the floor, with lots of people stopping to speak to her. Meanwhile, no sign of Reform’s candidate Alex Jones. He was visibly nervous speaking to party members at a Reform event when he shared a stage with Nigel Farage a couple of weeks ago, and this evening some are joking that he’s worried he might actually win. This is astonishing. There’s going to be a full recount in the Runcorn and Helsby byelection as Reform UK were ahead by just four votes. The mood in the count centre is one of utter disbelief. If the recount returns the same result, Reform UK will have overturned one of Labour’s safest seats by just four votes. Drama in Runcorn: Candidates in the key Runcorn and Helsby byelection are being gathered because “a couple of doubtful votes” need to be checked, a senior council official has said. That’s an indication of how close this contest will be. The parties are being given provisional results, before Labour and Reform UK decide whether to call a full recount. That’s the territory we’re in. More in from North Lincolnshire: Reform UK candidate Dame Andrea Jenkyns was ahead after the first declaration in the contest to become the first North Lincolnshire mayor. Boston Borough Council, one of the nine authorities that make up the mayoral area, said Dame Andrea had 7,285 votes, ahead of Conservatives (2,695), Lincolnshire Independents (1,193), Labour (897), Green (774) and Liberal Democrat (513). Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice earlier said the party was “absolutely smashing it” in the contest, where Dame Andrea - a former Tory minister - is on course to win. In the 2016 referendum, 75.6% of people in Boston voted to leave the EU - the highest proportion in the UK. The tensions between Andrea Jenkyns, Reform UK’s candidate for the Greater Lincolnshire mayoralty, and her old Conservative colleagues were on display following her arrival at the county centre in Grimsby. After arriving at the count centre, she was seen to embrace her Labour rival, Jason Stockwood, the tech investor and former chair of Grimsby Town Football Club, while she kept her distance from the Conservative candidate, Rob Waltham. Jenkyns, who has been criticised by Waltham for not living in the area and at one stage faced accusations she was not eligible to stand, told the Guardian: “The figures are looking good and while a lot has yet to come hopefully it’s going to go my way.” The former Conservative MP and minister said the results tonight were a key staging post in Reform’s project to win the next general election. “Reform getting into places of power for the first time and we have to show we can deliver. We are going to be under scrutiny and if we can show what we can do then it will be a blueprint for government,” she added. Jenkyns has promised “Doge Lincolnshire” to cut government waste – a reference to Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” in the US – and used the slogan “No to net zero madness” in her campaign. The battle for the Runcorn and Helsby by-election has come down to “within a hundred votes,” according to candidates briefed by local officials. A number of the ballot papers are being recounted because it’s so close. It’s “incredibly tight,” the acting returning officer told the candidates. This is quite a dramatic turn of events after Nigel Farage was planning to make a grand entrance. The Reform UK leader is believed to be waiting in a car outside the count centre, presumably ready to make an appearance if his party wins. The full North Tyneside mayoral result is in: Labour hold Karen Clark (Lab) 16,230 (30.22%) John Falkenstein (Reform) 15,786 (29.39%) Liam Bones (C) 11,017 (20.51%) Chloe-Louise Reilly (Green) 3,980 (7.41%) John Appleby (LD) 3,453 (6.43%) Cath Davis (Ind) 1,780 (3.31%) Martin Uren (Ind) 1,460 (2.72%) Lab maj 444 (0.83%) Electorate 159,717; Turnout 53,706 (33.63%) Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice said there was a “seismic shift” in politics taking place, PA reports. He told Sky News that Reform was “absolutely smashing it” in Lincolnshire, with Dame Andrea Jenkyns on course to win the regional mayoral race and the party set for “very good” results in the county council contest. He said: “There’s no doubt in my mind, I think Andrea Jenkyns has won this race in Greater Lincolnshire for the mayoral and I think we are going to have a very, very good night in terms of the county council.” Mr Tice said the Runcorn and Helsby by-election was “very, very close, nip-and-tuck, way too close to call”. He said there was a “seismic shift going on tonight in British politics, where Reform is is taking huge chunks of votes and seats from both the two main parties”. More from Josh Halliday, who is reporting live from Runcorn: Farage is expected to arrive at the Runcorn and Helsby byelection count imminently. I asked a Reform official whether that means they’ve won, and he replied with a broad grin. Labour figures, meanwhile, are looking pretty grim-faced. There’s still no sign of their candidate. Keep an eye on the all the results as they come in with our live update tracker below. The Doncaster mayoral count has just begun. A total of 32% of the electorate turned out to vote, which is up from 28% in 2021. Postal vote turnout was 61%. This could be an upset for Labour, with Ros Jones, the incumbent who has won three mayoral elections, facing a hefty challenge from Reform. The younger party has a younger candidate in Alex Jones (no relation), an inexperienced politician in his 30s who works as a model and a forex trader. Whoever wins here is likely to take the full council, votes for which are being counted tomorrow, with the result arriving early evening. If Reform take Doncaster council, it will be the first time Labour has not been the largest party here since it was established 50 years ago. In a solid red heartland, such a seismic shift would tell Keir Starmer everything he needs to know about how the public think the prime minister and his cabinet is performing. Nigel Farage is believed to be on his way to the Runcorn and Helsby byelection count - perhaps the strongest signal yet that Reform UK expects a narrow victory over Labour. The result would be a huge blow to Sir Keir Starmer in one of the party’s safest seats. Labour’s Karen Clark won with 30% of the vote, compared to Reform on 29%, with the Conservatives on 21%. The result came ahead of increasing jitters that Nigel Farage’s populist right party would pull off one of the surprises of the night in what would be a major steal from Labour. Nevertheless, Reform’s gains appears to have been largely at the expense of Labour. Reacting on BBC, Science Minister Peter, said: “A win is a win. We understand these are parts of the country that have real desperate need for change.” “This is a good result for Labour. It shows that Labour is still in contention in parts of the country where we keep on being told that we are not.” We think a result might be fairly close in the closely watched seat of Runcorn and also in Helsby. “It’s very close,” says a Reform UK official, although they definitely look the happier of any of the contenders right now. Candidates have just been summoned to examine some of the spoiled ballots - those which haven’t been counted as a valid vote - and one observer notes: “I’ve seen more drawings of penises than I’ve ever seen in my life”. Another said there was a lot of “four letter words” directed at the parties. Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice says he has ‘no doubt’ his party’s candidate has ‘convincingly won’ one of the biggest prizes of the night - the mayoralty of the newly created Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority. Reform’s candidate, Andrea Jenkyns, has yet to arrive at the count centre here in the town of Grimsby. He was much less bullish about the Runcorn by-election, saying he was “hearing some encouraging things.” To be clear, we don’t yet have results from Greater Lincolnshire or Runcorn. Hertfordshire County results: Votes for six of Hertfordshire County Council’s 78 seats were counted overnight by Broxbourne Borough Council, which traditionally is one of the earliest to announce general election results. Conservatives won four of the seats and Reform UK the other two, on a turnout of 27.64%. The full results for Hertfordshire are not expected until late on Friday afternoon. The Conservatives previously controlled the council with 43 seats. Reform UK has won three of the first five wards declared at Northumberland County Council, with Labour and the Conservatives picking up one each, PA reports. There are 67 seats on the council, with the Conservatives defending 33, Labour 18, the Liberal Democrats four and Greens two, while there were 10 independent councillors. Guardian reporter Ben Quinn is at Grimsby town hall where the ballot boxes are arriving. Another key prize of the night is the mayoralty of the Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority, a newly created entity that brings together a demographically diverse land mass. Traditionally Labour-leaning industrial towns such as Scunthorpe in the north are welded together with farmland and prosperous market towns to the south including Grantham, popular with London commuters. As well as local issues, different national policies are also playing out. In the area around the industrial town of Scunthorpe for example, some expected that Britain’s governing Labour Party could get a bounce from the move by the government to take control of a Chinese-owned British steel mill last month. As I also reported from southern Lincolnshire, anger among some rural communities towards solar farms has also been seized on by the populist Reform Party where its anti Net Zero policies have found receptive ears. Labour and Reform UK officials appeared tense as votes were counted through the night at DCBL stadium, the home of Widnes Vikings rugby league club, just across the mouth of the River Mersey from Runcorn. The battle for Runcorn and Helsby has been billed as the first key test of Reform UK’s ability to topple Britain’s historic two-party system at the next general election. As many as 153 Labour MPs in England and Wales risk losing their seats to Nigel Farage’s party if it continues its surge in popularity, a recent poll suggested. Campaigners from both parties repeatedly said the result was “too close to call”, downplaying talk of a decisive victory for either side. There was no sign of either Labour or Reform UK candidate with almost an hour to go before the expected result, although the Reform UK chair, Zia Yusuf, did make an appearance for a brief television interview. Turnout in the contest was a higher-than-expected 46.33%, which some on the count floor attributed to the “Farage factor” – a reference to the Reform UK leader’s ability to provoke strong opinion on either side. Fifteen candidates are contesting this by-election but in reality it is a two-horse race between Labour and Reform UK, although there had been little enthusiasm from many voters for either party. One independent candidate said the race had been “defined by who people don’t want to vote for - not who people do want to vote for”. What’s at stake? These elections are being seen as the first full-scale electoral test for Keir Starmer since the general election, with likely notable repercussions for Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch, and to a lesser extent the Liberal Democrats and Greens. Up for grabs are more than 1,600 council seats in 23 councils. In the last local elections, in May 2021 when Boris Johnson was still prime minister, Conservatives won nearly 1,000 of them. But today, the dynamic is very different . County councils across England are being elected on 1 May, along with four regional mayors. Find out which areas are voting and search for your own in this handy tracker. The right-wing populist Reform UK is bullish about its chances of winning two new mayoral posts that have been created with significant powers in the north east of England and are among the biggest prizes of the night, writes the Guardian’s Ben Quinn. That includes the race to be the new mayor of the Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority, where a former Conservative MP and minister, Andrea Jenkyns, is Reform’s candidate. The race is largely regarded as being between Reform and the traditionally dominant party of the right, the Conservative Party, and success there for Reform would mark a major moment in its project to displace its rival on the right. However, sources in Reform were also expressing confidence that Luke Campbell, a former Olympic boxer with zero political experience, would also win the mayoralty of the Hull and East Yorkshire Combined Authority. Polls in advance of the election had suggested the race was too close to call. The party has been talking up its prospects in the contest based on what it says were early tallies – informal scores – of voting in Lincolnshire, where County Council elections were also held. “Based on what we’ve seen, we are outpacing the Conservative candidate at least two to one in the south of Lincolnshire,” said one source, who admitted that it would be “harder” for the party in northern, more urban and traditionally more Labour-leaning, areas. “The north will be different but it’s clear that we are smashing it in Tory heartlands.” Zia Yusuf, chair of Reform UK has spoken to BBC Newsnight from the Runcorn by-election count, saying he thinks it will be a historic night for the party. I think we are going to win hundreds of council seats; we stand a really good chance of taking control of some councils for the first time as Reform UK, and I think that we will win at least one, perhaps even two mayoral races. As I said, I think it is going to be a historic night for Reform, and in the context, I think this is probably the most... important set of council elections in this country’s history because it marks an end to the stranglehold, that duopoly of the two old parties that they have had on British politics for about a century now.” Where we are: Vote counting is underway, with early results starting to trickle in. All eyes are on whether Labour could lose a previously safe Commons seat, and whether the Tories take a blow across the country. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could deal major blows to both Labour and the Conservatives, while the Liberal Democrats and the Greens are also confident of success at the expense of the two biggest Westminster parties, write PA media. Battles to watch include whether Keir Starmer’s Labour party can hold on to the Runcorn and Helsby seat in the Commons, with Reform hoping to take a seat the governing party won convincingly at the 2024 general election. Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch faces her first test as Tory leader as the party braced for a difficult set of results, with both Reform and the Lib Dems hopeful of stealing council seats last contested in 2021 at the height of Boris Johnson’s popularity with Conservative voters. Good morning and welcome to our blog covering results in 24 English local council elections, six mayoral races and the byelection in Runcorn and Helsby. Reform have mounted a fierce challenge to try to overturn the near-15,000 Labour majority in Runcorn. The byelection, the first since last year’s general election, was triggered when Mike Amesbury resigned after being given a suspended prison sentence for punching a constituent, an incident captured on video. Reform are also predicted to do well in some of the mayoral contests, which would be worrying for Labour. Meanwhile the council results are forecast to be grim for the Conservatives. Their leader, Kemi Badenoch, has already ruled out resigning, and has said that the party’s current unpopularity “just has to be got through”. In an interview on Tuesday, she said: This is something that we have said has to be got through. We’ve got to get through this initial period where the public rejected Conservatism. Last year [at the general election], they voted whatever they could to get Conservatives out. We have a job to do to fix the brand. Anyone who thinks that this is an overnight task and that changing leader yet again is the solution is not paying attention. The public are quite tired of watching us change leader. Follow along with us for all the news.
Author: Kate Lamb