1. Labour has fared surprisingly badly with results showing the party is nowhere near winning a general election

Jeremy Corbyn’s party would have wanted to make gains at a time when Theresa May’s government is struggling with Brexit. In fact, after early results, the party was down about 108 seats, and in some places was losing ground in head-to-head battles with the Conservatives.

What do the local elections tell Labour? There are no easy Brexit solutions | Owen Jones Read more

Labour lost five seats in Stoke-on-Trent, a city with three battleground parliamentary seats, and the Conservatives gained eight, leaving the city council with no overall control. Winning Trafford council, an area that voted remain in 2016, was an absolute minimum, and it did so.

In Darlington, Labour lost nine seats and control, while the Tories gained five to become the largest party, in results that will unnerve the local Labour MP, Jenny Chapman. The party went backwards in Swindon, where the party won Westminster seats when it was in government, losing one ward where it had put up its parliamentary candidate for North Swindon.

Oppositions usually need to show mid-term momentum if they are to win elections, and the party is struggling to find it; at 28% its projected national vote left it down 7 points from a year ago and level pegging with the Tories.

2. The Conservatives did predictably badly, but it could have been worse because hard Brexiters had few places to go

After it was unable to conclude a Brexit deal, nobody expected the party to do well. Losing 937 councillors by teatime was in line with most people’s expectations, but the surprise was that the losses came principally to the Liberal Democrats as well as independents.

As graphs from the analyst Steve Fisher show, seat losses were particularly marked in councils where there was a strong remain vote in 2016 and an existing or historical Lib Dem presence. The Tories lost 23 seats and Vale of White Horse council, the Oxfordshire area around Abingdon, and Bath and North East Somerset, both majority remain areas.

Nigel Farage’s Brexit party was not competing in these elections, and with Ukip discredited after its lurch to the Islamophobic far right and a series of candidate scandals, there were few places for hard Brexit supporters to go. Polling suggests May’s party will fare far worse in the European elections, given the failure to get a Brexit deal over the line; at 28% tied with Labour its projected national vote share already takes it to levels last seen at the time of the Ukip surge of 2013 and 2014.

3. The Brexit impasse has hurt Labour too. The party is undamaged by the Change UK split in metropolitan areas, but is struggling in leave-voting working-class areas

Labour comfortably maintained control in pro-remain university cities such as Cambridge and Exeter, remaining unchanged in the former and losing one seat in the latter. Despite criticism from Ben Bradshaw, the pro-second-referendum Exeter MP, that the party’s Brexit message was “unclear”, there was no sign that Labour could be outflanked in its metropolitan heartlands by Change UK.

This round of elections has come too soon for the newly formed anti-Brexit Change UK party to be on ballot papers and running a campaign, but there is no sign its presence was felt at all.

Where Labour struggled was in working-class areas, particularly in the north-east and to a lesser extent the east Midlands, where voters want Britain to leave the EU. Labour lost 14 seats in Bolsover, Derbyshire, which went to no overall control; and lost five in Hartlepool – a parliamentary seat once considered a Ukip target – and control of the council. No wonder, then, that John McDonnell declared the message from the electorate was: “Brexit – sort it.”

4. The Lib Dems had their best local election night for a quarter of a century, in terms of the number of councillors gained, and are finally shedding the memory of the coalition years

The party was understandably energised by results that showed it gaining 530 councillors by teatime, with a string of notable council wins from the Conservatives, suggesting the party was reviving itself as an anti-Tory party of protest, particularly in areas where it has some presence.

One of the most notable council wins for the pro-EU party was Chelmsford in Essex, where it gained 26 seats and the Tories lost 31, despite the fact that 53% there voted leave. The party made significant gains in Surrey Heath, where Michael Gove is the MP, and won 15 seats and gained control of North Norfolk, where the Lib Dem Norman Lamb is MP.

Meanwhile, a string of council wins and seat gains in the west of England, including North Devon council and Winchester, as well as Bath and North East Somerset, revived memories of the 2005 and 2010 elections, where the party won a number of parliamentary seats in the region. The party’s headline vote share was 19%, its highest level since the pre-coalition period, although scores in the mid-20s were typical in the last decade.

5. This was a particularly unusual set of council elections, making interpretation even more fraught than usual

Local elections this time next year are likely to be fought after Brexit (a second referendum is still unlikely, despite the impasse at Westminster) and with a new Tory leader at the helm.

What will matter in the next set of contests is the nature of the Brexit deal, whether the Conservatives can unite around it, and whether Labour can develop a popular political critique in a way it has not yet managed to do.