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.

by Quentin Letts, Parliamentary Sketchwriter

Sir Keir Starmer, open-collared, stony-eyed, insisted he was ‘not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos’. Four times he said it as the extent of Labour’s losses became horribly clear.

Interviewer Beth Rigby from Sky News was too kind to say the country was already in chaotic decline thanks to Sir Keir’s ineptitude.

The Prime Minister, up before 9am to get his media torture out of the way early, was doing that computer-speak thing where he keeps repeating a message, no matter what the question. In addition to the ‘I’m not going to walk away’ line he kept saying the results were ‘tough’, as if they were a slice of bad beef.

Reporter Rigby pressed quite hard on whether or not the PM understood how stinkingly unpopular he was. The AI-programmed premier did not recognise this scenario. ‘I’m not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos,’ repeated Sir Keir.

Read Quentin’s full sketch here:

We’ve now had declarations from a third of councils in England.

With 45 councils in England having fully declared their results, Labour has won 54 per cent of the seats it was defending while the Conservatives have won 69 per cent of the seats they were defending, according to Press Association analysis.

Reform has so far won 32 per cent of the seats it contested.

Let’s take a look at the current state of play:

Nigel Farage’s party has so far won 339 seats plus council wins in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Havering, Essex

Lost 208 seats and control of Blackburn and Darwen, Exeter, Hartlepool, Oxford, Redditch, Southampton, Tameside, Tamworth, Wandsworth, Westminster

• Conservatives

Lost 103 seats and control of Essex and Newcastl-under-Lyme but gains Westminster from Labour

• Liberal Democrats

Gained 30 seats and won control of Portsmouth and Stockport councils

Gained 22 seats Won Hackney mayoralty

The leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council, under Labour control since 2011, said Keir Starmer ‘has to go’.

As Labour lost multiple seats with counting continuing in the Lancashire town, Councillor Phil Riley told the Press Association:

I heard David Lammy on Radio 4 this morning saying that he (Starmer) is not coming up on the doorsteps. I don’t know what doorsteps he has been on but it was certainly coming up on the doorsteps I have been on. Keir Starmer has a very poor reputation with people out there.

His poll rating of minus 40, whatever it is, I think accurately reflects what people at the moment in this country think about him and that’s a real challenge. Getting back from that position, I think, is virtually impossible.

He has clearly done a very good job in terms of foreign affairs but I think the party lacks political direction. I believe he has to go.

Green leader Zack Polanski has said ‘my message to Keir Starmer is it’s time to go’ and ‘the country has clearly rejected you’ in the local elections.

Mr Polanski was speaking to reporters in Hackney, where the Greens won a decisive victory in the contest for the directly-elected mayor of the borough.

He said:

My message to Keir Starmer is it’s time to go. The country has clearly rejected you. I think he’d been rejected before these elections even started.

We had 14 years of Conservative austerity. Keir Starmer was voted in on a promise of change and, actually, what we’ve seen is very little change, and in many ways things have got worse.

Labour grandee Diane Abbott has warned replacing Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister won’t avert Labour from a disaster in the next general election.

Ms Abbott, a staunch critic of Sir Keir, told her followers that while the PM is ‘very unpopular’ it is Labour policies that is driving people away.

Here’s what she had to say:

Labour have lost control of Blackburn Council after Reform and Independents won enough seats to take the authority into no overall control.

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.

Writing on X, Mr Polanski said:

The Greens win our first ever directly elected Mayor – a huge historic victory. Huge congratulations to Zoë and the entire team.

Two party politics isn’t dying. It’s dead and it’s buried. And we’re making hope normal again.

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 Garbett 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.