Local elections 2024 live: Labour notches early gains

One feature of this time of night is that the political parties try to mark their own homework, making claims about what the ‘real test’ in these elections are, or what a reasonable yardstick for success is. (Surprise surprise, the ‘real test’ tends to be one the parties think they are guaranteed to pass, and the ‘reasonable yardstick’ is one they are happy to be measured by.)

The Labour party are claiming that the most important result that will happen in these elections is the Blackpool South by-election, because it is the only election in which voters will have had a direct chance to pass judgment on Rishi Sunak’s record as prime minister.

This is true: the Blackpool South by-election is the least ‘noisy’ of the election results: the local elections are driven by a combination of local factors and the national mood. It is the least complicated election being counted tonight and indeed the least complicated election of this whole set.

But while what it tells us will be straightforward, it won’t tell us a whole lot about the Conservative-Labour battle, because Blackpool South is right at the foothills of the Labour party’s target list. On a uniform swing, if Blackpool South were the safest Tory seat to fall in a general election, Labour would have gained a little over 20 seats. A Labour party on course for a pretty disappointing general election would still be winning Blackpool South. The results from Blackpool South should inform how we think about the rest of these elections: but on their own they don’t tell us much.