Result especially damaging for Ukip but also worrying for Labour as it suggests that its voters who went to Ukip may vote Tory in general election

Voters in England and Wales are waking up to a dominant Conservative party reaping the rewards of a tough position on Brexit and sweeping Ukip into obscurity as opposition parties run for cover from Theresa May’s election juggernaut.

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, may well fear that this could become the central electoral theme of 2017.

The results are especially damaging for Paul Nuttall’s Ukip, which on Friday morning saw its councillors lose across large parts of the country including in the Brexit capital of Lincolnshire, where he is standing to become an MP, and other key councils such as Essex.



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The verdict is also frightening for a Labour party that knows it has shed votes to Ukip in heartland seats in recent years, which now look like an increasingly ripe prospect for Conservative candidates.

The overnight results further support the notion of Ukip as a “gateway drug” through which former Labour voters progressed to the Conservative hard stuff. Figures from Matthew Goodwin, a senior fellow at Chatham House, have suggested that of those who supported the party led by Nigel Farage in 2015, only 49% would back it again, while 33% could switch to the Tories and only would 3% turn to Labour.

All of which explains why the prime minister wanted a photograph of herself standing at a lectern outside Downing Street, accusing the EU of meddling in British affairs, to be on the front page of every newspaper on Thursday morning.

That was the image that Tory strategists wanted people to have in their minds as they headed for the polling stations.

Corbyn may have branded himself as “Monsieur Zen”, but those around him will be feeling anything but calm. They privately concede that a Ukip collapse could be calamitous on 8 June, when voters return to the polling stations for the general election.

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After all, there are dozens of seats across the country where the Conservatives are eyeing up a 2015 Ukip vote that is twice the size of the majority held by Labour – and many others where it is at least as big.

Moreover, these overnight results also show Labour losing ground directly to May’s candidates in what is shaping up to be the best performance for a governing party in local elections since 1974.

For the Conservatives, it looks set to be their best night since 2008 when they made gains against a Labour party struggling after more than a decade in control and in the midst of the financial crisis.

For Labour it could be the first time a party of opposition has seen net seat losses in local elections for three years in a row.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrat fightback is, as yet, failing to cut through.

The irony for David Cameron is that the EU referendum that ultimately destroyed his political career appears to be achieving the two key results he had hoped for: uniting a Conservative party that had been racked with division over Europe for years, and shooting the Ukip fox.



Not that the strategy being pursued by May is without its longer-term risks. The perceived shift to the right to sweep up Ukip votes will ultimately leave space to her left for parties to mine progressive and liberal votes that may have previously gone to the Tories.



It is telling, for example, that while the Conservatives have done well in the Welsh valleys – taking control of Bridgend, for instance, where May visited recently in an attempt to help a Tory candidate challenge a local parliamentary seat – Labour has performed better in the cities.

The fact that Labour held on to Cardiff and increased its majority in Swansea shows that May’s message is not necessarily going to resonate in all parts of the country,and particularly in the cities. However, Labour knows that any recovery must go far beyond these urban centres, with significant gains in towns as well.

Many will now be questioning if the way forward for those on the centre-left of British politics must involve some form of progressive alliance between parties such as Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and the Scottish National Party.

Inside Corbyn’s party, there will be inevitable resistance to such a notion, not least given the bitter electoral battles that have taken place between Labour and its potential bedfellows. Critics of the leader will hope that a different politician could emerge to drive the party back into contention by itself.

Meanwhile, Corbyn’s team and supporters will argue that it is Brexit that has caused Labour’s problems, tearing its coalition apart, and leaving a dire situation that any leader would find difficult to fix.

Moreover, they warn about drawing too many lessons from a seat count in “difficult and complicated” local elections, with much more counting to come and with many factors at play. In Scotland, for example, they believe Friday will see a continuation of a Labour collapse to the SNP that long predates Corbyn.



One senior source made clear that the key figure to watch is the estimated vote share that will emerge later in the afternoon. That, Labour strategists insist, will be the best indicator of what may happen in the general election.