[Politics] Local election 2023: Prof Sir John Curtice on what the results mean for the parties

[BirSaNN]

Hopeful for Labour, encouraging for the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, but only a little short of calamitous for the Conservatives. These are the key messages to have emerged from the ballot boxes.

After all but 40 of the results were declared, Labour had made a net gain of nearly 450 seats, the Liberal Democrats well over 250, and the Greens more than 180.

The Conservatives, in contrast, had lost more than 800 seats and seem at serious risk of losing 1,000 seats in the final tally.

Meanwhile, Labour had gained control of 17 councils, and the Liberal Democrats seven.

Labour had particular reason to be pleased with its successes in Middlesbrough, Medway, Plymouth, Stoke-on-Trent, and Swindon, all of which were by far from guaranteed to fall into Labour's lap.

Among the Liberal Democrats' gains were Windsor and Maidenhead, and three councils in Devon - in the middle of their traditional former heartlands in the South West.

What could it mean for a general election?
However, these gains only tell us who is up and who is down since the last time most of the seats were contested.

That was in May 2019, when both the Conservatives and Labour were low in the polls in the wake of splits over Brexit.

They do not address the big question which politicians, commentators and the public want answered - namely, is Labour on course for a potential general election victory next year, as the polls suggest?

To answer that we need to take an in-depth look at votes cast.

The BBC has collected the detailed ward by ward voting figures in 45 of the 230 councils where elections were held on Thursday and used these to estimate the projected national share.

This represents an estimate of what the outcome would have been if all of Britain had had the chance to vote on Thursday, and those places that did not vote had followed the example of those that did.

link: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65475817