The World at One
BBC Radio 4

Labour has lost more than 300 seats and control of five councils, including Glasgow, but have won some mayoral contests, in the UK local elections.

Explaining his party's "mixed results" to the World at One, Labour's Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald rejected the suggestion people had rejected the Labour because they did not like Jeremy Corbyn, saying "if we have the opportunity to get our message across... then people say they will support us".

BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg says there are parts of the country where the Conservatives have been "out of fashion for many many years".

David Cameron said he did not want there to be "no-go areas" for his party but that did not come to pass, whereas "Theresa May may be on the verge of making a Tory dream come true".

But for Labour the picture is very different, she says. 

"Opposition parties traditionally do well in local elections but that hasn't happened, with one Labour source describing it as 'catastrophic'."

Prof John Curtice sums up how the parties are faring, starting with UKIP, who are "doing very badly and are going to have to think what is their future as a party after 8 June". 

Conservatives are "a long way ahead but not as far ahead as they would want to be to secure the landslide Theresa May wants". 

He says Andy Burnham's clear victory as Greater Manchester mayor was Labour's standout moment of the day, but instances where the party outperformed expectations were "rare".

"Lib Dems have made progress" but are not doing as well as they did locally before the coalition, according to Prof Curtice. 

BBC News Channel

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell reiterates his position that Labour has been "a mixed bag of results". 

He stresses "we haven't been wiped out in Wales as people predicted" and that the party had won important mayoral victories in Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region.

"It's all to fight for" over the next few weeks, he says. 

Labour's Steve Rotheram becomes Liverpool City Region's first "metro mayor".

The Conservatives have strengthened their political control of Worcestershire.

The Tories won 11 seats and lost one, leaving them with 40 out of 57 after gaining 46.8% of the vote.

Labour has 10 seats after losing two and the Lib Dems have three after winning one and losing one.

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Peter Saull
BBC Radio Nottingham Political Reporter

The outgoing Labour leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, Alan Rhodes, says: "There was a reasonable amount of concern on the doorstep about whether Jeremy Corbyn was the right person to lead the Labour Party.

"I don't want to get into the blame game, during a general election it's a distraction. In the fullness of time we'll have a discussion about the outcome of this election, possibly the general election - and then maybe we can talk about leadership and whether or not that needs to change.

"I'm hoping that Jeremy Corbyn is prepared to review the party's position and his policies and the direction he's taking the party in...if he doesn't we may find ourselves in a difficult position for a long time to come."

He also said he had a text message from Jeremy Corbyn wishing him luck on polling day, observing: "It says a lot about the man, he's a kind and sincere individual."

The Tories gained five seats for a total of 36 with Labour winning six seats which was a loss of three.

The SNP has become the largest in 18 of Scotland's 32 council areas.

No party gained majority control in any council but the SNP overthrew Labour to become the largest party in...

• Glasgow
• Aberdeen
• Fife
• North Lanarkshire
• Renfrewshire
• South Lanarkshire
• West Dunbartonshire 
• West Lothian

Conservative James Palmer has been elected mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, seeing off  a Lib Dem challenge. 

One election in Greater Manchester was determined by the drawing of playing card.

At Horwich Town Council, the initial count for the Church ward found there was only one vote between the Labour and Liberal Democrat candidates.

Two subsequent recounts put them dead level.

The candidates then agreed to decide the result by drawing cards.

Lib Dem Gordon Stone drew a Queen while Labour's Richard Silvester pulled out a Jack - meaning the former takes the seat.

Iain Watson
Political correspondent

The mayoral candidate in the West Midlands, Sion Simon – close to Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson – chose to focus not on the party leader to explain his defeat. 

Instead he said he got "the sense that some of our voters don’t have confidence anymore that we share their core Labour values".

Mr Corbyn's allies blame a collapse in the UKIP vote, as well as previous attempts by some of his own MPs to undermine him, for the poor results.

Their strategy now is four-fold.

First, to redouble their efforts to get younger non-voters registered as they believe they will be more sympathetic to a radical Labour party; 

Second - as the shadow chancellor John Mcdonnell made clear in his media appearances today - to make Jeremy Corbyn more, and not less prominent, in the campaign.  He believes the leader’s image has been "distorted" by a hostile press and people need to see him as a decent man.

Third, to bolster doorstep campaigning. Jeremy Corbyn’s office are keen to find out just how much of this had been carried out in areas where council results were poor.

And finally, what the late Tony Benn would have referred to as "policies, not personalities". The Labour leadership believe that when their manifesto is unveiled in ten days' time, popular policies will boost their poll ratings.

But Labour’s private polling also suggested that many of the party's individual policies in 2015 were popular - and that didn't guarantee success at the ballot box.

Iain Watson
Political correspondent

The official line from the Labour leadership is that the council elections were disappointing, not disastrous.

But privately some of Jeremy Corbyn's allies have indeed used the word "disaster" to describe the results, and some now fear another attempted putsch by his internal opponents.

That doesn't seem likely though - because many of those who are sceptical of his leadership say there is no obvious mechanism to remove him and he would use any evidence of a plot to excuse a defeat - if it happens - in the general election.

The former Labour group leader in Derbyshire, Dave Wilcox, saw control of his council pass to the Conservatives.

He told the BBC he wouldn’t be calling for Jeremy Corbyn's  resignation now, but if Labour were to suffer a similar defeat nationally on 8 June, the party leader should go. 

He told me: "Genuine Labour supporters have been saying we can’t vote for this bloke because he doesn’t speak for me. 

"We heard it time and time and time again on the doorstep. We are not voting for you while you have Jeremy Corbyn as leader."

BBC News Channel

Labour's mayoral candidate in the West Midlands, Sion Simon, says he thinks voters thought "we don't share their core Labour values with the strength we should". 

He says the message he heard on the doorstep was: "We're not confident that you're strong enough in Labour values".  

But he says he doesn't want to "personalise" the blame - "it's our responsibility, the party's responsibility". 

BBC News Channel

Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon says it has been "a clear and emphatic victory" for the SNP in the local elections. 

She told BBC News: "In very simple terms, the SNP is going to emerge from this election with more votes than any other party by some distance, with more seats than any other party, and in the driving seat of more councils than any other party.

"By anybody's standards, in anybody's language, that is a pretty clear, emphatic win for the SNP in this election."

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says: "We have got councillors elected all over the country - we came within 5,000 votes in the West of England, where nobody thought we could win. 

"We've had very disappointing results in other parts of the country."

"We have to get out there over the next four weeks and get a message out about the kind of country we could be, where pensioners are not frightened about what's going to happen to their pension, where people are not on zero-hours contracts."

Asked if he was the right person to lead Labour, he says he's "proud" to have been elected twice. He adds "this is my third summer on the road and I'm loving every minute of it".