Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a weekly podcast from Politics Home.

I'm your host, Eleanor Langford, and each week I'll be taking an in-depth look at the week's biggest political stories,

with fellow Politics Home reporters and special guests from across Westminster.

As we're recording on Thursday,

voters are heading to polling stations in thousands of councils across the UK to elect their local

representatives. These elections have been tipped as a political test for both the Prime Minister,

Boris Johnson and Labour leader Kirstama. So could the Conservatives be hit by month of speculation

over Downing Street parties and

corn-watching MPs? Can Labour finally capitalise on the cost of living crisis to win more seats?

To unpack what these elections mean, I'm joined by our political editor, Adam Payne,

and leading elections analyst Lord Robert Hayward, who is also a Conservative peer.

So there's been varying reports about how many seats the Tories could actually lose.

I've seen everything from like 100, up to 800 in the last few weeks.

What do you think is the result that we can expect?

Is it actually going to be a bad night for the Tories?

The range this year is absolutely incredible.

And it's all about management expectations.

The Labour Party are trying to talk down, how many they're going to gain. That's normal. The T Party are trying to talk down how many they're going to gain. That's normal.

The Tories are trying to exaggerate how many they might lose. And you've just covered a good range.

I think Tories will lose somewhere around three to 400 seeds. I've put the figure at 325.

And I hope I'm right. And if it is 325 or in that region, would you characterize that as a bad night for the

Conservatives?

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