The ruling Conservative Party seems to be gaining local council seats according to preliminary resul.
Theresa May will be returned to power with a large Tory majority in the general election on June 8 but she is likely to head a very Right-wing government, political analysts said today on the basis of local government and mayoral polls which were held yesterday in large tracts of England, Wales and Scotland.
The results are still partial, with only about 2,500 of the 4,851 seats declared. Party spokesman John McDonnell described the results as tough, but "it hasn't been the wipe-out that some people predicted or the polls predicted".
Labour had 954 seats - a net loss of 290 - while the smaller, pro-EU Liberal Democrats, who had been hoping to pick up some momentum ahead of June's parliamentary election, had 388 seats, a net loss of 32. The party looked set on Friday night emerge with fewer council seats than before the election.
Speaking outside her Downing Street office, May accused Brussels of toughening its stance in statements "deliberately timed to affect the result of the general election".
With nearly all the results in, May's party had gained control of 11 new councils, added more than 500 new councilors and taken a plum mayoral post in the Birmingham area of central England, once strong Labour Party territory.
And those polls slight improvement for Labour since April, when another YouGov/Times poll put them a massive 24 points behind the Conservatives.
"That is why I'm not taking anything for granted", she said.
Britain's Labour to guarantee EU citizens' rights if wins election
Labour MP Chuka Umunna has also made it clear that he thinks the "blank cheque" could work as an election message for Labour. The opposition Labour Party is trying to turn Britain's election into a tale of two Brexits.
Defending Mr Corbyn's leadership, he said he was a "honest, decent and principled" man but acknowledged that Labour needed to do more to communicate his strengths and its policies which he said were popular with the public.
The Conservatives made sweeping advances across the United Kingdom, gaining more than 500 councillors, winning tightly-fought battles for elected mayors in the West Midlands and Tees Valley and forcing Labour into third place in its former stronghold of Scotland.
They won tightly-fought battles for elected mayors in the West Midlands and Tees Valley and forced Labour into third place in its former stronghold of Scotland.
The former SNP leader said: "I think most people would have said that was a bad decision for the Prime Minister to break her word on the election, but as my dad always says you play the ball as it lies, and where the ball lies is we're fighting an election campaign and we intend to fight it and to win it".
The Lib Dems lost seats but increased their projected national share of vote to 18 per cent from 15 per cent in 2016.
In Lincolnshire, where Ukip leader Paul Nuttall is standing in the general election in Boston and Skegness, the party went from being the official Opposition to having no seats at all as the Tories gained 23 seats.
But he insisted that the gap separating Labour from the Conservatives is "not as great as the pundits are saying", as he urged supporters to campaign hard to win over millions of voters who he said were still "sceptical and undecided, not sure which way to turn".
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