Reform UK’s early gains have heightened the focus on several other key results to come later on Friday.
Nigel Farage’s party has secured its fifth MP after it clinched the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by just six votes. Thursday’s elections have also delivered the rightwing party’s first mayor, after Dame Andrea Jenkyns won the race in Lincolnshire with 42 per cent of the vote against the second-placed Tories’ 26.1 per cent.
The next key Reform contests to look out for are Durham Council at 1pm, and the Hull and East Yorkshire Mayoralty at 2:30pm.
The West of England mayoralty, which was among the most unpredictable contests, viewed by pollsters as a genuine five-way contest, was won by Labour.
The Tories are expected to face the heaviest losses over the course of the day, with party figures and pollsters predicting the loss of hundreds of councillors in seats that the party last won in 2021 when then-prime minister Boris Johnson was at the height of his popularity.
It will be a game of two halves with many of the competitions between Conservatives and Reform UK announced overnight and in the first half of the day, and most of the major contests between the Tories and the Lib Dems announced in the later part of Friday.
Look out for Buckinghamshire, at around 3pm, Oxfordshire at 5pm, and Cornwall, Devon and Wiltshire at 6pm.