Local elections 2023: Conservatives face up to problem as poll verdict comes in

The night is old, but the long day ahead of counting is still young.

So conclusions drawn must be done so with caution; caution because of the volume of results still to come, and caution because it can be crude to instantly transpose local election results to imagine a general election picture.

But there is often a correlation between performance at local elections and national ones.

It has, without question so far, been a miserable series of results for the Conservatives.

"A wake up call" as one minister put it to us in the middle of the night.

"This is a party problem, not a prime minister problem," a senior party source tells me on the phone.

Note, they are not disputing it is a problem, for them.

The Tories are pinning the blame on three things: a bleak economic picture, the political chaos of their own making over the last year, and a very long stint in national government.

They hope that Rishi Sunak isn't the issue here, assuming they would have performed calamitously worse with either Boris Johnson or Liz Truss.

Labour reckon these results show they are "on track to win the next general election".

"We are confident Labour will have an equivalent vote share lead of at least eight points which would represent our best result since 1997. If Labour had an 8% lead in a general election we would win a majority government, taking into account anticipated recovery in Scotland," a source said.

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They now reckon they could win up to 20 seats in Scotland - an improvement of 19 on their current grand total of one.

But some analysts are sceptical Labour have such solid grounds for optimism - given the colossal mountain they face to get Keir Starmer into Downing Street and the Tories take comfort from that.

"Politics is an art not a science," one senior figure observed rather archly of those analysts, suggesting read acrosses from local elections to a general election can be overdone.

Make no mistake though: the Tories do take comfort from the scale of a bounce back Labour have to make to win a general election; it provides a comfort blanket on an otherwise cold night for them.

The broadest sleep deprived smiles this morning belong to Liberal Democrats.

They reckon they've had a "ground-breaking" night, to use the word of their leader Sir Ed Davey.

"The worst is yet to come for the Conservatives," a party source adds, pointing out counting is about to get going in Surrey, Hertfordshire and Sussex where Lib Dems are feeling chipper.

And Labour, for their part, have been claiming for weeks the better results for them would be later today, rather than overnight. And they are still saying that this morning.

Let's see.

There has been plenty to chew over so far. There is plenty more to come.