Thread by @FromSteveHowell

1/4 Labour ended with a net loss of 63 seats (Tories 1,269). The pattern of Labour losses/gains is key. The 248 Councils where seats were contested split roughly 3 ways: in just over a third Labour made gains, in under a third we made losses - of these, 21 saw losses of 5+ seats.

2/4 Labour losses were geographically very concentrated: the 21 councils where we made losses of 5 seats or more were ALL in Midlands and Northern Brexit-voting areas, with the north east/Cumbria and former mining areas (Barnsley, NE Derbyshire and Bolsover) to the fore.

3/4 Labour gains - there were hundreds! - were spread fairly evenly across nearly 100 Council districts. Half of the 14 where Labour gained 5 or more seats were in the South. But there was also a handful of Brexit-voting Northern/Midlands councils where Labour gained 5+ seats.

4/4 The LibDems? Their big gains were mostly from Tories and as geographically concentrated as Labour's but in a different part of England - Bath, Somerset, Devon, Chelmsford, Bournemouth, Oxon, Berkshire, Dorset, Surrey, Hampshire.. Chesterfield was an exception (7 from Lab).

1/2 Conclusions?

The S West/Southern Tory-LibDem battlegrounds re-emerged.

But the Tories also lost seats to 200+ 'independents'.

Labour made gains or held its own in well over half the districts in which it had seats. Its losses were concentrated in 21 Brexit-voting areas.

2/2 My conclusions:

The results confirm the obvious - voters are deeply divided over Brexit in a geographically toxic way.

Labour has largely done well to hold its support base together.

That would be jeopardised if we moved to unconditional support for a second referendum.