Hello, it's lunchtime on Friday.

Results are still coming in, but Labour have taken a hammering, reformer on the march,

the Greens are up, and the Tories have suffered heavy council losses, but clinched several wins in London.

I'm Lucy Fisher and this is Political Fix from the Financial Times.

Let's get straight to it with our panel. Jim Picard, who's been up since 4 a.m. Hi, Jim. Lucy, how dare you? It was 3 a.m. How dare I minimise your sacrifice of sleep? Stephen Bush, who eclipses you, Jim. He's been up all night, haven't you, Stephen? I have, yep, so I might start to sundown during the pod. Halfway through. And down the line from Manchester, it's Jen Williams. Hi, Jen. Did you get much sleep? I worked through for midnight, and then I did try and get to sleep. Then the doorbell rang after about an hour. So, yeah, I don't know what that was, but it didn't make me very happy and I'm not very awake. Okay, well, you're all slightly showing me up. I feel a bit embarrassed because I had

40 winks and I woke up at 7am to check in on all the results, dash to the office and get on it.

So I wish I could pretend I'm as frazzled and over-caffeinated as I presume you guys are.

As I mentioned, vote counts are happening as we speak,

but there are some clear themes emerging, Jim. Give us a snapshot of where we stand.

So the theme is pretty much what we've been anticipating for months, but seeing it crystallised

in front of our eyes is obviously fascinating. As of lunchtime on Friday, reform is over 400 seats up, Conservatives

around 200 down, labour down somewhere over 250, and the Greens have got modest gains,

but then the Greens are still waiting for the inner city London seats to come through,

and the Lib Dems have had a sort of okayish performance.

But what this basically is, it is the reality on the ground and local government catching

up with opinion polls, which have been telling us for over a year that reform is relatively

much more popular than the other political parties.

And therefore, it's come from almost nowhere.

Remember, Nigel Farage only set the party up

five years ago. It's coming from nowhere. It's going to end the week, I suspect, a couple of

thousand seats up. Now, the only glimmer of hopes for the Labour Party, and of course,

attention is already turning to what is the mood in the parliamentary Labour Party. Are they going to try and depose Sarkir Stama?

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