The New Statesman.

Results from the local elections in England have been flowing in overnight and throughout today, as counting is underway of the votes in the Holyrood and Senate elections too.

It's been, as many expected, a bleak result for the Labour Party so far in the most significant indicator yet of

how far the government has fallen in voters' esteem since its general election landslide victory

in 2024. Meanwhile, the insurgent parties, the Green Party, to an extent in what we know so

far, but especially Reform UK, have delivered on the momentum we've seen in the polls

for so long. This is the politics show from the New Statesman, and I'm Anusha Kellyan. In the first

half of today's show, I'm joined by our senior data journalist Ben Walker to run through the results

we've had so far at the time of recording on Friday morning. Then later in the day I'll be joined by our editor-in-chief, Tom McTague,

and political editor Alvaree to get their insight into the effect of these results on the already

fracturing Labour Party.

Hello, Ben. Thanks for joining us.

Hello, thanks for having me.

How are you doing? Have you been up all night, as is customary?

Yes. Yes. This is called sleep deprivation. Well, you're always impressively coherent when you've been up all night, so let's hope that you continue that tradition, even as the world around us is changing.

Literally falling apart. Yeah, so we are recording at around 11.

So at the time of recording, we've not had that many of the results through.

So our listeners may know more than we do at the current time of recording.

But let's kick off with which results have most struck you so far, Ben.

We've had quite a few of the English council seats

come in. So we've had about a fifth quarter of the seats in so far. And listen, look,

what comes in overnight isn't always representative for what comes in over the day. We always

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