Laura Kuenssberg

And hello, it's Laura in the newscast studio.

I'll be here for 10 minutes.

Marvellous 10 minutes that let's hope they will be.

Yes, we are going to be on air, not me all the time, but me much of the time for 21 hours on BBC One.

Almost like there's a big contest on.

That's right.

More than 5,000 councillors, as you said, 136 town halls up for grabs.

They are dotted around the country, not everywhere.

But all the boroughs in London, some other big councils like Manchester and Birmingham have got elections, too.

But also lots of smaller councils, too, in all sorts of bits of England.

So, yes.

So there's England, then there's Scotland and there's Wales.

And there's hugely vital national contests for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Parliament, otherwise known as the Senate.

It's both, actually.

So if I can say it's both, it is both because first and foremost, local elections and elections for Holyrood and for the Senedd.

are always primarily about who are the people going to be who are going to make decisions that genuinely make a difference to the quality of our lives.

That's the most important thing.

That's what they're all about.

However, given that there is a government with a very tricky position, given that there is a government who have been very unpopular, given that there is a leader who has long been seen by many in his party as not the right person for the job,

Without question, the second part of this story, which is probably what will develop more kind of late Friday and into Saturday and Sunday, is whether or not this could be the moment when Keir Starmer's rivals for the job actually have the bottle to do something about it.