Welcome to F.T. Politics, the Financial Times Podcast on all things British politics.

I'm Sebastian Payne and in this week's episode we'll be dissecting the local election results and trying to figure out what if anything this tells us about the upcoming general election.

I'm delighted by George Parker, the F.T political editor, political commentator Miranda Green, and Matt Singh from Number

Crunch Politics. Thank you all for joining.

So Britain has been to the polls this week and what would have been the most exciting political

event of the year had it not been for June's general election.

The results are still filtering through as a Friday afternoon, but the trends are clear.

Labour is doing pretty badly in its provincial heartlands.

UKIP's vote has completely collapsed.

The Liberal Democrats come back as yet to arrive

and the toys are sweeping up, well, everywhere.

Even in Scotland, they are winning in places they have never won before.

So George Parker, let's begin by looking at the overall picture

and the Conservatives expected to do pretty well, but they seem to be doing very well indeed.

Yeah, and since this is the last big electoral test before the general election on June the 8th, we're all looking

for Harbingers of what's going to happen there.

It's an incredible night for Theresa May, in particular.

I think we are probably right in this case to personalize this. This is her triumph. It's a great night for the Conservative Party and a bad night in varying degrees for everyone else and the only conclusion I think you can draw from this is that Theresa May is heading for a very large House Commons

majority on June the 8th, possibly into a landslide territory of more than 100 seats.

So Matting, can you just begin my telling us where we are at the numbers?

The time of recording it looks as if there's about a 7% swing to the Conservatives which for a party in government

is quite extraordinary normally it's opposition parties they gain at local elections and I think

...