Stunning UK Council Results - UKIP Wiped Out

As expected, now that Brexit is a fact of British life and the right-wing Ukip has a leadership problem, its voters returned to PM May’s Conservative party. Ukip plunged to just 5%, an historic low compared to pre-Brexit referendum.

○ Mayoral and local elections 2017: live results tracker

Local elections: Tories gain 500 seats as Labour and Ukip votes plunge | The Guardian |

Theresa May’s Conservatives gained more than 500 council seats and swept to shock victories in mayoralty contests in the West Midlands and Tees Valley in results that placed her party on track to secure a thumping majority in the general election.

The prime minister insisted she was not taking “anything for granted” but the Tories enjoyed a stunning day that was matched by a dramatic decline for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, which lost more than 300 seats.

The results forced Labour to hand over control of a series of English councils including Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Northumberland, while in Scotland the party lost its grip on Glasgow for the first time in 40 years. Paul Nuttall’s Ukip was crushed as every single councillor facing election suffered defeat.

The results were turned into a projected national vote share of 38% for the Tories, 27% for Labour and 18% for the Lib Dems, with Ukip plunging to just 5%.

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Corbyn issued a statement acknowledging some of the problems Labour faced: “The results were mixed. We lost seats but we are closing the gap on the Conservatives.” He insisted that Labour could still win the general election, though admitted it was an “challenge on an historic scale“.

He said he was “utterly determined” to use every hour of the next four weeks to get his message across. “We’ve now got five weeks to get a message out there.”

Labour’s consolation was two convincing victories in the north-west in which Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram were elected as metro mayors for Manchester and Liverpool.

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Siôn Simon, Labour’s losing candidate in the West Midlands, said: “We can’t duck the reality of what we heard in the places we won on the streets of cities and towns like Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton and Sandwell.

“Traditional working-class voters, who we were born to serve, quite simply want to hear a clearer, stronger message about traditional values like patriotism, hard work and a defence of decency, law and order.”

West Midlands mayoral candidate seeks to tell a different Labour story