UK Conservative lead stays strong ahead of June election: Opinium poll

Speaking after the final votes were anounced, leader of Ashfield District Council, Councillor Cheryl Butler, said: “I think Brexit has had something to do with it, going under the radar”.

In West Norfolk – the Conservatives cntinued the county and national trend – winning all but two of the borough’s 14 seats. The party is now in charge of Warwickshire, Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire, the Isle of Wight and Monmouthshire, all of which were previously under no overall control.

With the results in from all 88 local authorities being contested, the Conservatives won 1,900 seats, up 558; Labour won 1,151, down 320; and the pro-EU Liberal Democrats won 441, down 37. Nationalist party Plaid Cymru gained 33 seats for a total of 202 with control of one council.

Opinion polls suggest May has a runaway lead in the national election of around 20 percentage points, which could give her over a 100 more seats in parliament.

He said: “These results tell a clear and stark message”.

Most of Thursday’s gains for the Conservatives came at the expense of Labour.

The Liberal Democrats don’t appear to be making any breakthroughs.

.

Labour’s prospective MP was selected for the general election ahead of local health and homelessness campaigner Rachel Holliday, who also failed to gain a county council seat for the party.

“If the Labour, Lib Dem and Green vote is split then Conservatives will win”, he warned. And the party has made unprecedented inroads in Scotland, where it is already the main opposition in Holyrood. Notably, 50% is the mark at which Copeland – a Labour seat since 1935 that the Conservatives won in a by-election in February – would have switched based on the 2015 vote.

Labour also lost control of Glasgow City Council, which it has controlled since 1980, and the SNP is expected to become the biggest party there.

At Conservatives taking 50% of UKIP’s votes, Labour would be set to lose around 36 seats due to this effect alone.

Sunday Telegraph columnist Liam Halligan told CNN that while UKIP’s success had effectively pushed former Prime Minister David Cameron into calling the referendum, it now struggled to seem relevant.

They’d got what they wanted after all, and never really got into the mind-numbing business of council agendas and meetings and responsibility. This is more serious.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, in an exclusive Evening Standard interview, said his leader had “a mountain to climb” if he was to win on June 8.

As Conservatives know well, you can’t rely on the voters to do everything you want.