Keep up to date with latest news from the UK's general election.

The new mayor for Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has denied snubbing the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by not joining him at a rally last night to celebrate his victory.

The former candidate for the Labour leadership told the BBC the party needed to "go back to grassroots and build from there".

He added: 

Theresa May is campaigning in the West Midlands, where she met the new Conservative mayor, Andy Street. She told reporters:

She went on to say she needed a "strong hand" to negotiate on Brexit.

Nicola Sturgeon has dismissed as "ludicrous" any claims that the surge in Tory support in Scotland could derail her bid to hold a second independence referendum. 

The First Minister and SNP leader admitted the Conservatives in Scotland had "a good day by their standards", with the party returning a record number of councillors north of the border. 

But she insisted the SNP had "won this election comfortably" with her party ending up with "more votes, more seats, more councils where we are the largest party, not just compared to every other party but compared to five years ago". 

There has been quite a bit of comment about how the SNP did in Thursday's council elections compared with 2012, when local polls were last held.

Because of boundary changes in most Scottish councils, many 2012 results are "notional" in terms of direct comparisons - in other words they estimate what the 2012 result was using the new 2017 boundaries.

The BBC's Scottish political editor Brian Taylor says on that count, the SNP are notionally down by a fractional seven seats. 

However, in terms of absolute numbers, the nationalists have ended up with more councillors than five years ago.

Low pay and insecurity are like a epidemic under the Tories, Jeremy Corbyn tells supporters, saying Labour wants all jobs to be true jobs. 

The Scottish Greens' co-convener Patrick Harvie has announced that he will be standing as an MP in the general election.

Mr Harvie, who represents Glasgow at Holyrood, will be fighting for the Glasgow North seat at Westminster on 8 June.

He said he wanted voters to "take the fight to the Tories" and elect a Green MP who will vigorously oppose them.

Patrick Grady won the seat in 2015 for the SNP with a majority of 9,295.

He also said he wanted to offer a "positive, hopeful alternative".

The announcement follows the local elections in Scotland where a record seven councillors were elected across the city, including Hillhead in the heart of Glasgow North, where the Greens came out top. Read more

Jerermy Corbyn tells supporters in Leicester that local election results were disappointing and that too many councillors who had worked tirelessly for their communities had lost their seats.

He said the gap between Labour and the Conservatives was "not as great as many pundits are saying" and that millions of people were sceptical and undecided. 

The Labour leader is on his feet now in Leicester. 

To loud applause, he says he wants a Labour government that empowered the whole community so that everyone could reach their potential and not be held back by sexism or racism. 

Iain Watson
Political correspondent

At the Labour rally in Leicester, supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have been saying the Labour leader should "keep calm and carry on".

Political correspondent Iain Watson says the message has been that Jeremy Corbyn has had a hard time from the media and that we need to see more of him.

• As the dust begins to settle on the local election results, the party leaders are on the road campaigning for the General Election. 
• Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has acknowledged that the party faces a challenge on an "historic scale" to win. 
• The party lost nearly 400 council seats in the local elections in England, Wales and Scotland while the Conservatives gained more than 500. It was the biggest gain by a governing party in a local election for more than 40 years.    
• Mr Corbyn is campaigning in Leicester and is expected to speak shortly. 
• The new Greater Manchester mayor, Labour's Andy Burnham, says there is a crisis in politics.
• Lib Dem leader Tim Farron told Sky News the local elections "proved that the Labour Party is finished and the Conservative Party is heading for a landslide".
• UKIP leader Paul Nuttall says the local elections were not a disaster for the party and that supporters will come back when Theresa May begins "back-sliding" on Brexit.

Labour's newly elected Greater Manchester "metro mayor", Andy Burnham, has appointed two deputies.

Mr Burnham, 47, was elected on Friday with 63% of the vote to lead the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

He named Sir Richard Leese as deputy for business and economy while Baroness Beverley Hughes will oversee policing and crime.

Councillor Rishi Shori‏, Bury Council's Labour leader, will take responsibility for young people and social cohesion.

Mr Burnham, who served in governments under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, will control transport, housing and police budgets.

He will be paid £110,000 a year and takes over the powers of the region's elected Police and Crime Commissioner, Tony Lloyd.

Read more

Image source, AFP/Getty

New "metro mayor" for Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has said "these are difficult times" and that there is "something of a crisis in politics".

Appearing in Manchester this morning after his election victory, he said he had been "overwhelmed" by people's support and vowed to put his "heart and soul" into repaying that trust.

He went on to say he had left behind "the Westminster point-scoring world", and wanted to make a real difference for the people of Manchester.

He said:

The UKIP leader went on to say the party had been "caught in a Tory tidal wave in the local elections, but would come back when people realised that Theresa May could 'talk the talk' but not 'walk the walk'". 

Mr Nuttall said: 

The UKIP leader Paul Nuttall has told reporters the local elections "were not a disaster" for the party, despite it losing all of its 145 existing council seats.

On a walkabout in Skegness, he said: