Votes are still being tallied in thousands of local races across Britain, but hundreds of candidates from Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party have already lost their council seats.

Votes in both Scottish and UK elections have traditionally been counted overnight, beginning after polls close at 22:00 on election day.

But that’s not the case in Scotland this time. Instead, the count is due to begin at 09:00 BST.

Ballot boxes are stacked up at venues across the country, including at the Emirates Arena in Glasgow.

The first results are expected around midday and it’s hoped that the full picture will be known by this evening

Scotland’s voters went to the polls yesterday to elect 129 members to the Scottish Parliament.

The Electoral Commission says polling day went smoothly, according to its initial assessment, but notes candidates faced abuse during the campaign.

Why the council seat results may look different to other mediapublished at 11:3011:30

Peter Barnes
Senior elections analyst

The council seat change figures you’ll see on the are calculated by looking back at who won the seats the last time they were contested at a scheduled election and comparing those results with the winners this time around.

For most of the seats being contested this year that means going back to the results in 2022. We ignore by-elections and changes of party allegiance – when a councillor defects from one party to another.

That’s the same approach as we take when reporting the results of general elections and many experts think it’s the best way to gauge how the parties have performed from one election to another.

Some media organisations calculate change differently – they look at what party each councillor represented just before this year’s elections.

The difference between the two approaches is going to be unusually big this year. Lots of councillors have switched from one party to another or have left the party they were originally elected for to sit as independents.

In particular, many Conservative councillors have defected to Reform UK and lots of Labour councillors have switched to the Greens or independents. Reform have also won a lot of seats in by-elections.

So, the is likely to show a higher number of seat losses for Labour and the Conservatives, and a higher number of gains for Reform UK and the Greens, than you might see elsewhere.

Some areas where Labour has done worst represented by leading figures

One dynamic worth watching as Labour MPs digest these results is which MPs’ seats correspond to different council areas.

What may prove particularly painful psychologically for Labour is that some of the areas they have done worst are areas represented in Westminster by their most prominent figures.

In Tameside, the patch of former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, Labour was defending 17 seats, and lost 16 of them all to Reform meaning the party lost overall control.

In Wigan, where the MP is Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, Labour lost all 22 of the seats it was defending to Reform.

What the early results tell us so far

First things first, the headlines you are waking up to are only an emerging picture.

The morning after a general election, the result is pretty much complete by breakfast time – but that is not the case in this patchwork of elections around Britain.

So far, we have a chunk of the results around the parts of England that have had contests and no results yet from Scotland or Wales.

But nonetheless, there are trends that we can take a look at.

Reform are ahead, winning the most votes, as they did in last year’s local elections. And behind them there is the trailing pack of Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party of England and Wales.

The much talked about fracturing of our politics is there to see, with none of the parties managing a runaway popularity, but votes splintering in five or more different directions.

So far, Reform can point to substantial success. They have been winning about a third of the seats that have been declared.

Labour have lost a little under half of the seats they have been trying to defend – and they are defending the most seats in this set of elections.

The parties’ spin operations are up and running. At the core of Labour’s argument is that elections are often challenging for governments mid term and are poor predictors of what might happen at the next general election.

This is true, up to a point – although the governing party didn’t go backwards in terms of seats in 2011, 2015, 2017 or 2021 for example. And Labour are going backwards big time.

Wife of a former Tory council leader elected as Reform councillor

The wife of the former Tory leader of Plymouth City Council has been elected as a Reform councillor.

Helen Kelly took the Compton ward in a successful night in Plymouth, which saw Reform take 14 out of 19 seats available.

Kelly’s husband, Nick Kelly, was the leader of the Conservative group on the city council until 2022 – but today, was wearing a Reform rosette at the count and cheering on his wife.

Helen Kelly said: “Hopefully with the passion of the Reform team now in Plymouth, we can take some real challenge to Labour as an effective opposition which they haven’t had for a few years.”