Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello. Nearly all the results are in from what Laura Koonsberg christened Mega May. In the English local authority elections, in the areas where there were local authority elections, Reform UK have won more than 1,400 councillors. Labour were the big losers, losing more than 1,300 of them.
The Conservatives also lost 552, but they were big gains for the Greens and smaller gains from the Liberal Democrats. Then if we go to Scotland, the Scottish National Party was re-elected as the government at Holyrood with 57 seats. So that's down six on the last Scottish Parliament election result and crucially leaves them short of a majority. And then if we hop over to Wales...
massive news there. Labour out of power for the first time in the devolution era, which started in 1999, replaced as the government in Cardiff by Plaid Cymru. But they, like the SNP in Scotland, are also short of majority. So how Plaid Cymru will govern in Wales in this new era for that part of the UK, we do not know. So,
Oh, and by the way, there's some rumblings amongst Labour MPs that maybe Keir Starmer should give a timetable for when he will quit Downing Street. So loads and loads to discuss on this second helping of Newscast on Friday the 8th of May, which follows hot on the heels of the elections of Thursday the 7th of May. Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio. It is Chris at Westminster.
And it's James in Edinburgh. And it is 41 minutes past 10 on Friday evening. Notice I did that five live time check style rather than Radio 4, where it would be, it's 19 minutes to 11. James, can I just say, your studio that you've been using outside the Scottish Parliament is fantastic, isn't it?
It's glamorous. All the very talented people in here have made the studio look very nice. We're having a bow from our cameraman. And this was Kirsty Wark's studio, really, though, isn't it? It's not really mine. It's really Kirsty's. But she's gone now. Everyone's gone now, to be honest.
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Chapter 2: What were the results of the Welsh Senedd elections?
And they're elected by, or different regional lists, and they're elected by a system of proportional representation, as we've discussed before. Newscasters will be familiar, I'm sure, with the de Haunt method, as we have discussed it. And we're still waiting for the Highlands. And I'm not entirely sure why we're waiting for the Highlands.
There was some checking of arithmetic to be done, I believe. It's fiendishly complicated, I'm told. De Hont. I don't understand it. Victor. Victor de Hont.
Victor, there you go.
From Ghent. Another great Belgian import. But just talking about England, are there any other notable things in England that we want to talk about?
Chapter 3: What were the significant losses for Labour in England?
I'm thinking about things like... the Greens winning the elected mayor of Hackney in East London, which is not, let's be honest, not a huge job in British politics, but a symbolic victory for them. And also just think about it, another Green spokesperson with a job title that can go on the news. Quite.
Yeah, it was a big breakthrough that. They went on to win the council as well in Hackney, the mayor of Lewisham, the council in Waltham Forest and the council in Hastings off the top of my head, and a substantial increase in green councillors in plenty of other places with a concentration in London, but not exclusively in London as well. So they can point...
to a real bounce and clearly Reform in so, so many places performing very, very well and particularly striking, Adam, how well they've performed in places like Sunderland and Gateshead and South Tyneside and Wakefield and...
Barnsley where you're looking in some instances there at local authorities that have been Labour at Labour majorities at every single election going back to their formation in the 1970s and often earlier than that in in slightly different configurations where broadly speaking in some of them in fact let me pull up I think Sunderland's a good example I'm just going to type this into our little system here so reform previously had no seats they gained 58 and
Labour previously had 54 seats. They lost 49. Just extraordinary.
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Chapter 4: How did the Scottish elections impact the SNP's majority?
The Conservatives also lost nine. So it's where you're seeing, broadly speaking, certainly in seats terms, a straightforward switch from one to the other. You know, you take Barnsley, where perhaps the most successful and longstanding Labour leader is. in Britain, Sir Steve Houghton, who had been the council leader there since John Major was Prime Minister. He became council leader in 1996.
He'd been on the council, I think, since the late 80s. He held his seat, I think, by 23... votes today. But Labour lost Barnsley and reform have gained it again with substantial numbers. So you look at those and you think, wow, that is quite a thing.
And it's not just in places like that, which were Labour leaning previously, but also places like Essex and Suffolk and others besides which were previously Conservative leaning. So fascinating to see how they've performed in England. That's before we get to the Welsh and Scottish
for reform as well. And also reform and control in Havering, which is in East London, Far East London. Far East London, you know what I mean. And actually, reform's position is that Havering should be removed from Greater London and join up with Essex. So we could have a leave-remain referendum in Havering.
So outskirts of Tokyo.
Far, far East London. Because I'm an East Londoner and I think that's way further than me.
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Chapter 5: What does Labour's loss in Wales mean for the party's future?
It is on the edges of greater London or however you want to define it. Yes, and you're right. There is a keen argument in Havering about their geographical affinity with some arguing that they're their instinct, their gut, their heart lies with Essex rather than with London. And this idea that you might have a, yeah, there might be a referendum.
I think Reform have said that were they to win a UK general election, they would offer Havering a referendum on leaving London. There's other examples of it elsewhere.
But also it sort of tells you something about the Reform mindset, doesn't it? Like, oh, I don't want to be part of that London.
Yes, and I think not exclusively a reform mindset. An argument, a view articulated by some within Havering who might have come to their reform affiliations or maybe even have other affiliations. You see occasionally in other places, there's been an argument in a part of West Yorkshire about whether Ilkley in West Yorkshire should be part of Bradford. council.
So these things do occasionally happen where you might have a community that doesn't really regard itself as having an affinity, a political affinity with the bigger entity to which it's been sort of glued politically.
Right, let's carry on our tour around Great Britain. James, so Scotland, well, kind of as predicted, the SNP did the, what do we call it? What's the doing the double but when it's five? Doing the quintuple?
Yeah, fifth election victory in a row. Yes. The fifth election victory. There have only been seven elections in the devolution era. Seven elections since 1999. And the SNP have won five of them. I suppose if you take a step back and think about it, that's pretty remarkable because devolution was a Labour project. It was delivered by a Labour government. It was a project that they thought...
would, in the words it is said of George Robertson, kill the SNP or kill nationalism stone dead. The former Labour Grandi, former Secretary General of NATO.
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Chapter 6: How is Reform UK performing in the local elections?
But it hasn't killed the SNP stone dead and it hasn't killed Scottish nationalism stone dead. Indeed, the SNP have prospered through devolution. They've learned to use it. They've run the government here for a long time. That doesn't mean there haven't been problems. I mean, Adam, there have been, as we know, a lot of difficulties for the SNP. They had a very turbulent period.
They went to two First Ministers. Nicola Sturgeon went. Humza Yousaf went. A power-sharing arrangement with the Greens collapsed. There was a police investigation into the finances. There were a whole series of policy rows. John Swinney came in and said, look, two years ago, I am steadying the ship. And he says now that that work has basically paid off. But... Their share of the vote is down.
Their number of seats is down. They've fallen short of the goal he set and repeatedly talked about of the idea of an outright majority, 65, which, because of that electoral system we've discussed, is very difficult to attain. Minority or coalition government are the norm here. And so he says it's an emphatic victory, but I think you could debate that, to be honest.
Also, with reform, because there was a lot of talk about, oh, reform are actually going to do well in Scotland, considering what the received wisdom over the years about the challenges for them had been. Actually, they didn't win any seats under the first past the post bit of the electoral system. They got their 15 seats on the proportional regional system.
Yeah, but look, we're still waiting for that last count from the Highlands.
Yeah, of course.
Exactly where that's going to land. We don't know for certain, yeah. Exactly where they're going to land and exactly how bad it is for Labour and exactly how well of reform have done isn't clear. But yes, I mean, they had hoped to pick up some or maybe one constituency seat. They were particularly hopeful in Banffshire and Buchan coast.
It was easier when they just called it Banff and Buchan when Alex Salmond was the MP there a long time ago. But they didn't. They didn't win that. But they have picked, I mean, they came from nowhere, Adam. I mean, they didn't exist in any meaningful sense in Scottish politics until today. And now they very much do in a big way.
Malcolm Offord is talking about how he's going to be the leader in Scotland, Lord Offord, how he's going to be shepherding his disparate bunch of MSPs and what they're going to be doing in the Parliament here. One thing they want to do is to campaign for tax cuts. and cuts to welfare spending and cuts to immigration.
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