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.

Scottish Labour is ‘hurting’ after the party ‘didn’t win the argument’ in the Holyrood election, the party’s leader Anas Sarwar has said.

Speaking as he entered the Emirates Arena in Glasgow for the election count, the party leader claimed ‘those who seek to divide us and use people with frustrations to divide us are going to win the day today’.

But Mr Sarwar hinted that he would not step down from his post, telling journalists: ‘My party is hurting – we’re disappointed, we advocate for change, we didn’t win that argument, but it’s my job to hold us together and that’s a job I intend to do’.

Reform MP and business spokesman Richard Tice visited the Birmingham City Council count and said the party had ‘absolutely smashed it’ in other areas of the West Midlands, including Newcastle-under-Lyme and Tamworth.

The Boston and Skegness MP said it was too early to gauge the extent of his party’s success in Birmingham.

Citing Reform UK’s strong showing in parts of Staffordshire, a year after it won control of the county council, he added: ‘Voters are doubling down and saying thank you very much Reform councils for what you’ve done so far.’

He added that the results already in in the region amounted to voters saying ‘yes, we are going to give you an extra chance to do even better’.

In the last hour, Reform are now in control of Suffolk County Council, their fourth win in the local elections.

Here’s the current state of play at 2pm:

Nigel Farage’s party has so far 380 seats plus council wins in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Havering, Essex and Suffolk

Lost 232 seats and control of Blackburn and Darwen, Exeter, Hartlepool, Oxford, Redditch, Southampton, Tameside, Tamworth, Wandsworth, Westminster

• Conservatives

Lost 118 seats and control of Essex and Newcastl-under-Lyme but gains Westminster from Labour

• Liberal Democrats

Gained 28 seats and won control of Portsmouth and Stockport councils

Gained 19 seats Won Hackney mayoralty

Baroness Eluned Morgan, the Welsh First Minister, is expected to lose her seat in Ceredigion Penfro, sources have told the BBC.

The Welsh Labour leader has led the party in Wales since 2024.

Welsh Labour expect to be reduced from 30 to around 10 members in the Senedd, with a party spokesperson saying they are ‘deeply disappointed’ they will not lead the government.

Reform UK have taken control of Suffolk County Council from the Tories.

A Green candidate in the Hackney council election has said his party is hopeful it will get a majority on the local authority, which has historically been a Labour stronghold.

Jacob Cable, standing for the Greens in Stoke Newington, said Zoe Garbett’s decisive victory over the Labour mayor in Hackney has ‘given us an indication that change is on its way’.

‘We have a wonderful, diverse borough that is calling out for change, that needs better action on housing, on child poverty and on community space, and I think it’s going to come,’ Mr Cable told the Press Association.

Asked whether he thought a Green majority was on the cards for Hackney council, which has been a Labour-led since 2002, Mr Cable said: ‘We’re taking nothing for granted. Every vote counts. But I think given the decisive victory for Zoe today, we’re really hopeful that we’ll have a majority.’

A Labour source said they feared speculation that it faced a ‘bin fire’ in its battle to retain a significant number of seats on Birmingham City Council would prove to be accurate.

The source tipped Reform UK, Green and independent candidates to prosper.

As the first three seats to declare resulted in a Tory hold and Green and Reform UK gains, both from Labour, the Labour source said:

Let’s just say I haven’t seen anyone looking even remotely happy. The mood is worse than bad. It’s bleak.

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.