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Hello and welcome to Coffey shots. My name is Lucy Dunn and today I'm joined

by the Spectators political correspondent James Heel and former advisor to Tony Blair John

McTernan. We're in the middle of a big political week just now awaiting

an anticipation of the outcome of local elections taking place across England and Wales.

James, you've written a fantastic guide to the 2024 local elections for Coffee House.

Can you tell us a little bit more about what's going on this week?

Yeah, absolutely. So you've got about 2,500 councilors up up for grabs you've got 11 mayor

tease you got a parliamentary by election so all different levels you've got the

policing crowd commission elections in England and Wales as well but really done a

sort of blog looking at you know about 15 or so key battlegrounds and this is what the different parties are looking at so some are important for labour to see how they're going and trying to win back parliamentary

constituencies when it comes to a general so places like Canick Chase where they've done very badly in Staffordshire over the past decade,

but that's got a lot better in the last 12 months.

Also places like Harlow, where the MP there Rob Halphin's standing down, but Essex, that's important

traditional Bellwether Council.

Then of course in the south of England more there's

a lot of time where the Lib Dems who I think have actually been pretty quiet this year,

partly because I've had Davies own woes, are going to be looking to make big gains in places like

Wokingham for instance where they've got probably

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