Local elections live blog: Turnout figures offer hope for Hall in London  Harry Phibbs “For the strongly Conservative territory of Bexley and Bromley it is up. For Barking and Dagenham, Newham and Tower Hamlets, it is down.” — Our survey. Six in ten Tory members think Sunak should stay – regardless of the local election results.  Henry Hill “Of the rest, one-fifth think he should resign regardless; only 13 per cent of our panel think the local authority and mayoral elections should be the deciding factor.” — The real route to Singapore-on-Thames? Build the Garden Bridge. William Atki ..read more

Sometimes they do make it too easy. The news that one of the many, many Labour councillors so far elected is called Karl Peter Marx Wardlaw has been one of the rare sources of amusement from these local election results. Cue various suggestions that Labour haven’t changed. Even if Karl Marx isn’t his real name, that one of Stockport’s newest representatives is a former Green is a sign of how far Keir Starmer has brought Labour in the last four years. He has purged his party’s left, recruited a new army of Starmtroopers, and convinced doubters he is on track for a substantial victory. Yet even ..read more

"We've got to double down and we've got to give people a reason to vote for us" Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen has a message for the Conservative Party after winning a third term Follow live: https://t.co/iZ4JkvfPIf pic.twitter.com/m52543tVkY — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) May 3, 2024 The post “We’ve got to double down and we’ve got to give people a reason to vote for us” – Houchen’s message for Conservatives. appeared first on Conservative Home ..read more

"Obviously it's disappointing to lose good, hard-working Conservative councillors" PM Rishi Sunak reacts to his party's local election results Follow live: https://t.co/iZ4JkvfPIf pic.twitter.com/MIupTueqdG — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) May 3, 2024 The post “Obviously it’s disappointing to lose good, hard-working Conservative councillors” Sunak reacts to the local election results appeared first on Conservative Home ..read more

As research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Policy Exchange has shown, Conservatives are still heavily under-represented when it comes to appointments to public bodies. ConservativeHome has regularly highlighted some of the appointments to these bodies, and encouraged subscribers to apply, and we will continue to do so. As well as checking out the appointments that we highlight, we would also encourage all those subscribers with an interest in offering their expertise to public bodies to sign up to the free Cabinet Office email alert service. Here is the link for the se ..read more

8am Most results are still to come but already there have been substantial Conservative losses. Last night Lord Hayward, the Conservative peer and elections guru, predicted Conservative losses of “upwards of 400 seats.” Others have talked of the Conservatives losing around half of the 919 seats won last time they were contested in 2021. The BBC scoreboard so far suggests a reverse on the scale, the Conservatives are on 116 seats from the Council that declared overnight, down 122. Rallings and Thrasher’s National Equivalent share of the vote will be keenly awaited, especially this year given a ..read more

Georgia L Gilholy is a freelance journalist. Mockery of Christianity, England’s supposed national faith, long ago became a political rite of passage. Despite the more marked religiosity of our Scottish cousins, and their propensity to scorn our trends, Holyrood has fallen into the same well-decorated trap. Kate Forbes, who was once again touted as a future Scottish First Minister in the wake of Humza Yousaf’s welcome resignation, has faced numerous attacks for her Christian beliefs. The approach to Forbes reveals a troubling shift in British politics, but it is hardly a new one. Increasingly ..read more

Lee David Evans is the John Ramsden Fellow at the Mile End Institute, Queen Mary, University of London.  Graham Brady, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, has said out loud what many Conservatives have been saying in private: the party’s leadership rules are not working. The Committee’s longest-serving chairman has directed his ire at the way the people who choose the leader (members) are different from those who have the power to remove him or her (MPs). This division of labour risks producing leaders who lack sufficient support from their colleagues in Parliament. With Conservative MPs ..read more

Roger Taylor is a former councillor on Calderdale Council. The Children’s Social Care system is in many cities and larger towns collapsing, in large part as a disastrous consequence of the broken Immigration system. The public is rightly outraged at the financial burden that vast numbers of legal and illegal immigrants are placing upon the taxpayer in terms of their accommodation, whether it be four-star hotels, luxury barges, flats built for students or military accommodation upgraded for the newcomers to our shores. Whilst there are numerous other very noticeable pressures and problems broug ..read more

Damian Green MP is a former First Secretary of State and is MP for Ashford. Alexander Stafford is the MP for Rother Valley. One of the achievements that Conservatives can be most proud of in government is the free school programme. Like some of the best reforms we have introduced – from the National Living Wage to Universal Credit – is it hard to imagine life without it. Fourteen years ago, education provision in this country was something of a monopoly between local authorities and a few trusted partners. The reforms that Michael Gove introduced breathed new life and dynamism into the sector ..read more