First minister says Conservatives only achieved best results in generation by taking votes off Labour, not the SNP

Nicola Sturgeon has played down the threat from the Conservatives in Scotland after Theresa May’s party achieved their best local election results in the country in generations to push Labour into third place.



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The Scottish National party leader said that although the Conservatives did well “by their standards”, they did so by taking votes from Labour, not by eating into SNP support.



The Tories’ share of the vote in Scotland was no better than Labour’s in England, which was regarded as a “disaster” for Jeremy Corbyn, the first minister said.

The general election for Scottish voters would be a straight choice between the Conservatives, who are likely to win power at Westminster on the back of their support in England, and the SNP, who would “stand up for Scotland’s interests,” she said.

Meeting victorious SNP candidates in Glasgow, where Labour lost overall control of the council for the first time since 1980, Sturgeon told Sky News on Saturday: “Yes, by their standards, the Tories did well – and I take nothing away from them – but they did well entirely at the expense of the Labour party.

“As we go into the general election, the people of Scotland have a clear choice. It is pretty clear that Theresa May, on the strength of support in England, is going to win the general election. So for people in Scotland, if they want strong voices standing up for Scotland’s interests and holding the Tories to account in Westminster, that can only come from the SNP.”

Thursday’s council elections saw the Conservatives gain 164 seats in Scotland to achieve a tally of 276. Labour shed 112 councillors to trail in third on 262, losing control of three councils. But both were outstripped by the SNP, which added 31 councillors to win a total of 431 seats.

Nationally, May’s party gained more than 550 council seats and swept to shock victories in mayoralty contests in the West Midlands and Tees Valley. The results put the Tories on track to secure a significant majority in the general election.

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

The results saw Labour lose control of a series of English councils, including Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Northumberland, as well as losing its grip on Glasgow. Paul Nuttall’s Ukip was crushed as every single councillor facing re-election suffered defeat.

It is understood John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, will be at the centre of Labour’s pitch to voters in the next four weeks as the party tries to bounce back for the general election.

Corbyn acknowledged there had been some “difficult” results but quickly switched to Labour’s core campaign message on Friday evening. “We will not be a government that presides over food bank Britain or asks teachers to go on the school gates and collect funds to pay the teachers’ wages,” he said.

Sturgeon said on Saturday: “If you compare north and south of the border, the Tories polled less in Scotland than Jeremy Corbyn did in England, and yet Jeremy Corbyn has been written off as a disaster.”

The election results showed the SNP in the ascendency, with the Tories and Labour “scrapping for second place”, she said. “The day after my party has won by a considerable margin more votes, more seats and more councils than any other party and improved our position on the last council election, I think I’m reasonably entitled to feel quite optimistic as we go into the next contest.”

Sturgeon rejected the suggestion that the SNP’s share of votes indicated it would struggle to achieve a majority in a future independence referendum, insisting the two contests were not comparable.

“The Tories put an independence referendum at the heart of their campaign. It was the only thing they spoke about,” she said. “And yet they lost the election yesterday. It was the Tories who tried to make it a referendum on an independence referendum and they came quite a distant second. If there’s a message at all on that issue, it’s a message for the Conservatives.”

Meanwhile, Nuttall said his party was “caught in a Tory tidal wave” after losing all its 145 councillors in the local elections. Ukip’s sole win was a gain from Labour in Lancashire, as its vote share collapsed nationally from from 22% to less than 5%.

On a campaign stop in Skegness on Saturday, Nuttall claimed the results were not a disaster. “It was expected. We dust ourselves down and go on,” he said. “Ukip does have a great future. It just has to stay on the pitch, hold its ground and people will come back to us.

“It is very easy for [Theresa May] to talk the talk and act tough, but when she’s asked to walk the walk, I think there’s going to be problems,” he told the BBC.

Nuttall said he expected a revival of the Eurosceptic party’s fortunes when the hard realities of the Brexit negotiations become clear and May was forced to make concessions over the terms of the UK’s departure from the EU.

“She will buckle,” Nuttall said. “She will start to barter things away. Fisheries will go, there will be movement on immigration, on freedom of movement – she will buckle on that. When people are angry and feel they did not get the Brexit they voted for, they will come back to us. Ukip could be bigger than it ever was before.”