• <a href="2026" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="tp-feedurl" title="" >https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2026/may/07/local-elections-2026-may-full-results-england-scotland-wales">2026 election results: latest from local, Scottish and Welsh votes

We’re getting statements from some of the political parties now as we wait for results.

For the Conservatives, party chairman Kevin Hollinrake said:

We have run an energetic and positive campaign, showcasing that we have a clear plan to get Britain working again and that we have the team to deliver it... We know that so soon after a historic general election defeat and contesting wards won during the Party’s polling highs, that this will be a difficult set of elections for us. But we will continue to rebuild and to show the public that we have changed, to demonstrate that only this new Conservative party is a credible alternative.

People are deeply disappointed with a Labour government that has been too timid to fix the country, but they are also appalled by the rise of Reform and Nigel Farage’s Trump-style politics. While those on the extremes of the right and the left want to burn everything down, Liberal Democrats want to fix what’s broken. Every Liberal Democrat local champion elected today will fight tirelessly for the communities they serve.

I’ve travelled across England and Wales and I’m hearing the same everywhere I go – confidence that we will win more councillors than ever before. The news from the doorstep is that we will be taking seats from not just Labour but the Tories and Lib Dems too, from all across the country. Voters are responding to the fact that Greens are the only party taking the cost-of-living crisis seriously, with real plans to cut bills, reduce rents and provide genuinely affordable homes, as well as tackling the climate and nature crisis.

Throughout this election, we have heard a clear appetite for change. People want a government that will stand up for Wales and focus relentlessly on the key issues affecting their lives. People have told us they have been inspired by Rhun ap Iorwerth’s leadership and driven by a desire for a positive alternative to Reform UK’s chaos and division.

• <a href="Election" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="tp-feedurl" title="" >https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/may/07/elections-2026-local-scotland-wales-reform-green-labour-conservatives-live-news-updates">Election 2026 live: latest news updates

• <a href="Full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="tp-feedurl" title="" >https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2026/may/07/local-elections-2026-may-full-results-england-scotland-wales">Full results from England, Scotland and Wales

Hartlepool once nearly triggered Keir Starmer’s resignation; local election results overnight mean it may yet do so in the coming days.

Five years ago, Labour crashed to <a href="a" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="tp-feedurl" title="" >https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/07/hartlepool-byelection-result-labour-starmer-conservatives">a humiliating defeat in a byelection for the city’s Westminster seat, prompting Starmer to <a href="consider" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="tp-feedurl" title="" >https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/17/keir-starmer-reportedly-wanted-to-quit-after-2021-byelection-defeat">consider resigning as opposition leader.

Every now and then, a strange forgotten chapter of life during Covid will interrupt my thoughts. Remember when we used to fake happy hour merriment on the <a href="Houseparty" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="tp-feedurl" title="" >https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/10/houseparty-is-over-video-app-that-boomed-in-lockdown-meets-its-end">Houseparty app? Or when Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor made <a href="an" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="tp-feedurl" title="" >https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/13/locked-down-review-anne-hathaway-and-chiwetel-ejiofor-pandemic-stinker">an unwatchably awful film about stealing diamonds from Harrods during lockdown? Or how about when people developed an unhealthy obsession with <a href="a" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="tp-feedurl" title="" >https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/24/octopus-love-story-netflix">a Netflix documentary about a man with an unhealthy obsession with an octopus?

The unavoidability of My Octopus Teacher led to everything from a creepy spike in people googling “did octopus teacher sex with octopus” (time-saver: he didn’t) to an unforgivably undeserved Oscar win for best documentary (<a href="Collective," target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="tp-feedurl" title="" >https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/19/collective-review-alexander-nanau-catalin-tolontan">Collective, you were robbed) and then, while not a direct on-record inspiration, it at least paved the way for the success of Shelby Van Pelt’s best-selling novel Remarkably Bright Creatures in 2022. The book, which hinges on the bond between an elderly cleaner and a grumpy octopus, gave those still yearning for more octopus teaching a gentle summer read with no weird questions needing to be asked and now, inevitably, the adaptation lands on Netflix to be filed in the growing “inspiring octopus movie” section.

When Guillermo del Toro goes to the cinema, he buys three seats. “I’m an expansive fellow,” he says, occupying one end of the sofa in the library of a London hotel. “Between the popcorn and my elbows and my girth, I need more than one seat. But I also like the feeling of being in company and yet alone. Everyone says how great the cinema is as a collective experience, and I agree. At the same time, I enjoy it the most when it’s not packed. I like being semi-alone.”

Those vacant seats must come in handy, too, if there are any ghosts in the vicinity. Ghosts and Del Toro go way back. The multi-Oscar-winning director was 11 when he first sensed a spectral presence at his family home in Guadalajara, Mexico. He insists this was his late uncle, who, before his death, had promised the young horror buff that he would pop back and tip him off if there were anything on the other side. Del Toro later heard a persistent sighing in his dead uncle’s room – a detail that inspired Santi, the sighing ghost-boy in The Devil’s Backbone, his 2001 horror set during the Spanish civil war. Decades later, when Del Toro was in New Zealand scouting locations for The Hobbit (which he co-wrote), his hotel room was filled with the cacophonous uproar of a murder in full swing, audible in a kind of surround-sound. And though there was no ghost as such when he stayed in an early-19th-century hotel in Aberdeen while filming Frankenstein two years ago, he felt “an oppressive vibe” about which he duly live-tweeted to his two-million-plus followers. Currently, he is looking to buy a haunted house in the UK. Presumably via Frightmove.