LIVE: Greens beat Labour to Hackney mayoralty as Reform win in Essex

Take a look at our live-updating maps and charts produced by the Daily Mail’s Deep Dive team for the latest election results across England, Wales and Scotland.

Zack Polanski, Leader of the Green Party, congratulates Zoe Garbett as she is elected as the new Mayor for Hackney during the count for the local elections.

It marks a significant win for the Greens ahead of more results in London this afternoon.

Defeated former Labour mayor of Hackney Caroline Woodley said the Labour government ‘has got a lot of work to do’ after she lost to the Green Party.

Speaking after Zoe Garbutt was won with 35,720 votes, Ms Woodley congratulated the new Green Party mayor on her victory.

‘To Zoe, you’ve shown great determination and resilience, and I know you have the support of the council to continue the good work we have done as a liberal administration,’ Ms Woodley said.

Labour got 26,685 votes, losing the mayoralty which it has held since the directly-elected position was created in 2002.

Ms Woodley added: ‘To my Labour government, you’ve got a lot of work to do, but thank you for the investment in housing.’

The Labour leader of Barnsley’s council said Reform had turned the local election campaign into ‘a Keir Starmer referendum’.

Sir Stephen Houghton told the Press Association:

This is the local election that never was. It’s about national issues.Reform have campaigned, not about Barnsley, because they’d struggle to find criticism.

They’ve campaigned about Keir Starmer, and turned it into a Keir Starmer referendum. And that’s what they’ve been trying to do the whole way through.

And that has made it difficult for us. So some people who never vote have turned up because they want to make their protest against the Government and Keir Starmer.

Asked if the Prime Minster should resign, Sir Stephen said:

I think this goes deeper than the Prime Minister.

The Green Party’s Zoe Garbett has been elected mayor of Hackney, ousting Labour.

Speaking after she ousted Labour, which has held the mayoralty since the directly-elected position was created in 2002, Ms Garbutt said:

Today we start a fightback.

In this election, over and over, people kept telling me that they felt let down. People kept saying, ‘it’s hard for me and it’s hard for us’. Council services are failing those who need them most and people are struggling to make ends meet.

To everyone who voted for me, I truly thank you for putting your trust in me today.

Reform UK has won control of Essex County Council from the Conservatives after securing at least 40 of the 78 seats up for election.

The Conservatives had held control of the council since 2001.

Reform UK member Russell Quirk told the BBC voters had vented their ‘disquiet’.

He said:

It’s proven by the results that [Labour, Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats] haven’t covered themselves in glory. This is a litmus test. A barometer of feeling nationally and locally.

After taking a battering in England, it appears Labour is heading for a crushing defeat in Wales.

The party has been the largest in Wales for more than a century and had won the most seats in the Welsh Parliament since its creation more than two decades ago.

But Labour is bracing itself for a brutal set of results in its former heartlands.

Sir Keir Starmer has already said he takes responsibility for a ‘tough’ set of local election results in England, where hundreds of Labour councillors have been voted out.

In Wales, a Labour source indicated the party’s vote had collapsed in Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni and said it would be a ‘struggle’ to hold on to one seat – out of a total of six – in the constituency, which includes some of its South Wales strongholds.

Baroness Eluned Morgan (pictured), the First Minister and leader of Welsh Labour, has previously said she is at risk of losing her seat in this election, where she stood in the Ceredigion Penfro constituency.

by Claire Ellicott, Whitehall Editor

Angela Rayner suffered a major blow to her expected run at the Labour leadership after she failed to even hold her local council.

Labour lost its majority on Tameside council, the authority which includes the former deputy prime minister’s Greater Manchester constituency.

The party lost control of the council after an uninterrupted run of 47 years as Reform took all but one of the seats up for election

Sir Keir Starmer’s party lost 16 councillors while Reform UK gained 18 while the Conservatives lost two and the number of independents stayed the same.

It is likely to raise questions about whether Ms Rayner is popular enough to turn around Labour’s fortunes in the event there is a leadership contest.

Kemi Badenoch said she can ‘signs of renewal’ as she told reporters she is ‘very proud of how we have done’.

Speaking outside Westminster City Hall, the Conservative leader said:

I said that we were going to rebuild after our worst defeat ever and we can see those signs of renewal everywhere that we are standing.

Just two years ago, people were writing us off, saying that we were completely finished, and now we are winning Westminster.

Mrs Badenoch continued:

I’m very proud of how we have done. I’m not saying that we’re there yet. I’m not saying that the results are perfect. There are loads of councillors, Conservative councillors, who have lost their seat, but they can see that our strategy is working good.

Strategy takes time. It doesn’t all happen overnight.

The spread of Reform UK’s local election wins across the country so far is ‘highly significant’ as a sign of potential performance at a future general election, a polling expert has said.

Keiran Pedley, politics director at Ipsos, noted that Nigel Farage’s party had gained council seats across the north of England and in places including Dudley, Southampton and Plymouth.

He told the Press Association:

Reform has only been a national party for a couple of years, and so we’re always looking for evidence that they’re the real deal in terms of a potential governing party in the UK.

I think what we’re seeing in these results is because they’re winning support across the country, that is the activist base that forms the campaigning base for when you’re trying to win parliamentary seats in a future general election.

Mail on Sunday columnist Dan Hodges says it’s ‘impossible’ to give an accurate assessment of politics in Britain because of Sir Keir Starmer’s unpopularity.

Dan says:

The head of a union affiliated to Labour has called for a leadership election in the wake of the local election results.

Transport Salaried Staffs Association general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust likened Sir Keir Starmer to former US President Joe Biden in paving the way for a hard right government.

She said:

At the last general election, the country didn’t vote simply to repaint the front bench red. People voted for meaningful change they could actually feel in their lives.

That’s why Labour urgently needs a leadership election to allow members to pick a candidate who is much more responsive to the needs of working people and who can stop the very real danger of a far-right government coming to power in this country.