What do the unfolding local election results mean? Our panel responds

Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski have reason to celebrate – but what next for Labour and the Tories now that the two-party system has been demolished? While Reform UK sweeps through small-town England, the Greens are outperforming their expectations in their target urban communities. For two decades, Labour won Hackney’s mayoralty by at least a 25-percentage-point margin: the Greens took it by 12 percentage points. They’re now bullish about other inner London communities, such as Lewisham and Haringey. In Manchester, they hoped to take six council seats – instead they won 17. They made sweeping gains in Sheffield, ousting the Labour leader, and in Newcastle. They even increased their vote share in my hometown of Stockport, as well as Oxford and Exeter. Labour’s high command gambled that a vicious smear campaign against the Greens would lower their vote. Yet Zack Polanski’s insurgents look well positioned to replace Labour in large swathes of its urban heartland. Keir Starmer believed that if he could crush the left within Labour, he would be able to expel it from politics for ever. The Greens have proved him wrong. So far, on the right, the results seem clear enough: an excellent nig