Jen Williams

And for Labour in many places, I think that then led to further jitters because what reform have proved very good at doing previously is turnout voters who don't habitually vote, people who may be sat on their hands in 2024, in some cases haven't voted since the EU referendum.

And there is some suggestion that is partly what was going on here, but it's a little bit early until you know how that played out in different places to actually know what turnout was driving what in what location.

But certainly Professor John Curtis was saying last night that there was every reason to think, certainly in some places, as a result of that knack that reform have got to get

non-voters to turn out to vote for them that should be good for them but that's not to say that in places with different makeups that it couldn't benefit the Greens for example or that there may be a sort of in some places a sort of stop reform vote going on as well and there were definitely kind of differing views I think among experts overnight as to exactly what it is that's going on

I think a lot of the psychologically important results he had to come through today, certainly up here,

In the cities where, as in London, they are trying to take Labour's vote in middle-class areas, in Muslim areas, in young professional areas, just from younger areas in general, those results are really going to start to serve us today.

And I mentioned Manchester earlier on, where what has traditionally been an extremely effective party machine is fighting on both fronts.

There were signs last night in some of those Salford wards that the Greens have made progress.

And that was one of the immediate concerns that came out of the Gorton, the Denton by-election result, was that councils in this neck of the woods, in the sort of urban councils in that kind of general vicinity, looked at the result there and thought there could be implications here.

for us.

Sheffield, worth watching today.

Leeds, worth watching for similar reasons.

So I think the green picture will probably crystallise later on Friday.

Yeah, I think the speech that he was supposed to be giving Friday morning, and that cancellation might be more

cock up than conspiracy, to be honest.

Never underestimate the kind of sort of background vibes of chaos around what is not really a particularly big machine, if you can even call it machine, right?

So, I mean, I don't know.

Maybe there was something more complicated going on there, but I don't get the impression that there was.

My sense is actually that the Burnham plan has been to largely keep his head down over this weekend.

And clearly there may then be outriders like Dave Watts who are going to go out and say like, oh, it's terrible, isn't it?