No bubbly, no banners as Tories play down local election results

The local elections have comprehensively proven that all politics, is, well, not local.

Major constitutional convulsions in Scotland and with Europe have been the inescapable backdrop to a set of local results that have more to do with Barnier than bin collection.

It is stunning to see an incumbent Government putting on seats and entire councils.

It is frankly extraordinary that the Conservatives mayoral candidate Andy Street won in the Labour stronghold of the West Midlands, but we had begun to expect it.

It is pushing political absurdity for Labour to lose the Tees Valley to a Tory who promised to use mayoral funds to buy the local airport.

And yet the job at hand all day for the men and women in blue, has been to play down the results. No banners and no bubbly.

A practically funereal PM toured a Brentford factory to try to argue that the results meant nothing as regards the General Election.

But it does, it really does. Most importantly because it clearly reveals the fundamental axis of the upcoming General Election.

The absolute collapse of the UKIP vote in the aftermath of Article 50 is one thing. The fact that the bulk of it is going to the Conservatives is something that seemed apparent from the polls.

:: The results in full

Today, it became very real. It is now highly realistic to suggest the Conservatives are on course to gain between two and three million votes from UKIP 2015 voters.

In Labour council seats in Warwickshire, Cumbria, and especially Derbyshire, the UKIP vote halved or more, and the Conservatives hoovered them up.

Derbyshire, despite having no UKIP seats before or after the election, saw the collapse in the UKIP vote contribute to an incredible 19-seat swing from Labour to the Conservatives.