Between 2017-20 M McSweeney was not only battling to retake Lab from the Corbynite Left but also to kill off formal plans for a new “radical centrist” party from Blairite right. Read about the new party and McS’s promise to blow it out of the water here👇 unherd.com/2024/05/the-mc…

Sunak’s councillors suffered worse casualties last week than the Charge of the Light Brigade - and it comes on top of heavy losses in 2022 and 2023. The Tories are down 2000 councillors in just 2 years. My column is on the impact that will have: trib.al/I3BLS3R

'Half an hour before the vote, the No 10 machine decided they were going to interfere.'

Former whip The Rt. Hon. Craig Whittaker MP reveals what really happened on the night a fracking vote became a confidence motion in Liz Truss.

💼 The Exit Interviews
🎧 shorturl.at/cyHMY

Matt Chorley

Interesting voter breakdown in our splash today on North Yorkshire mayoral election

York:

🔴 Lab: 25,639
🔵 Con: 7,173

North Yorkshire:

🔴 Lab: 41,122
🔵 Con: 44,794

Labour almost neck-and-neck in the area it won no seats in 2019

Big change in Kirklees - where Labour have lost five seats and overall control of the council.

Independent candidates have gained 5 seats.

Back in 2019, Boris Johnson said the risk of having a single Yorkshire mayor was 'it might not be a Conservative'.
Now Yorkshire has three Labour mayors - and probably a fourth next year in Hull and East Yorkshire.

I'm not sure what extrapolating the declared results of some of England's council elections tells you, but it doesn't tell you what is going to happen at the general election

news.sky.com/story/sky-news…

BRITANNIA HOTELS HOLD YORK AND NORTH YORKSHIRE

Unsurprisingly low turnout for the North Yorkshire mayoral.

There are a lot of Tory voters in this part of the country, covering very big Con majorities, but if they're not coming out to vote the party could be in for a bad result.

Tories sounding gloomy about prospects for winning North Yorkshire mayoralty - sounds like Rishi Sunak could soon be represented by a Labour mayor

HOUCHEN HOLDS TEES VALLEY with reduced majority

Ben Houchen (Con)81,930 (53.6%)
Chris McEwan (Lab) 63,141 (41.3%)
Simon Thorley (Lib Dem) 7,679 (5%)

Tory plotters throwing in the towel in their bid to replace Rishi Sunak. One source acknowledges he will now 'limp on to the election' as there are not enough Conservative MPs willing to move against him

Ben Houchen comes out top in Hartlepool as it is the first Tees Valley Council to declare.

Houchen (Con) 10074, McEwan (Lab) 8732, Thorley (Lib Dem) 972.

Encouraging result for the Mayor in an area where Conservatives lost six council seats last night and Labour gained eight.