The New Statesman.

This week, the UK is gearing up for local and devolved elections on Thursday.

As Kirstarmer looks increasingly isolated as Prime Minister,

much is being made of a potentially disastrous few days for the Labour Party.

If results go as badly for Labour as some are

predicting, this could even be the end for the PM. Meanwhile, the insurgent reform and green parties

are looking to continue their momentum. This is politics from the news statement, and I'm Anish

Kenyon. I'm joined by our senior data journalist Ben Ben Walker, to talk through what we think might

happen in these elections. And for those of you who don't know, who haven't been listening

to the podcast for long or haven't been following our coverage, Ben has this amazing model that

he brings out for every election where he tries to predict what might happen. Let's just give our listeners an insight into what's going on in each of the main parts of the country that are up for election on Thursday.

Let's start with London.

We've had some brilliant reporting from London by our colleagues, places like Barnett and Hackney. What do you think is going to be

the main story of London once we start getting those results through? And this is the London

councils. It's not the London mayoralty. Quite, yeah. Now, this is, you could say it's a bit of a

bonfire of all things you know as London has an inner ring and an outer an outer ring and the outer ring could do two things one a complete surprise for kemi bade knock and we'll

talk about the also ranns first uh it could be the seat the the boroughs where we will see

tory games uh harrow um maybe even Barnett as well, and indeed,

Wandsworth, more in a more inner city.

You know, the Conservative nationally are on course to lose hundreds of seats, I wouldn't

say a thousand, but they're on course to lose a significant portion as they are relegated

into third or fourth position in the polls by Reform and the Greens. And yet in London,

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