A massive night to the Tories and a huge headache for Starmer

After the overnight results in the Hartlepool by-election and several local council elections, things look very good for the Tories in the first set of elections since the general election.

The Hartlepool by-election outcome had been widely predicted by the polling but the gap was even bigger. Survation’s final poll had the Tories winning by 17% while the actual result had the party winning by a 23.2% margin.

In the council elections we had with the overnight results a divide between the big cities and the smaller local council areas. In the former Labour haven’t done badly while in the other areas the party has done appallingly.

So far just two cities, Manchester and Newcastle have declared but we should expect the pattern there to be seen in the other big urban authorities. In the rest of England the Tories looks set to make big gains. This exactly the divide we saw over Brexit.