The ‘unfathomable’ fall of Labour’s Greater Manchester

What’s the right word for it? A humbling? That doesn’t feel strong enough. A pasting? Are we allowed to reach for that wonderful word beloved of American journalists surveying a lopsided election: a shellacking?

The scale of the beating handed to Labour in these local elections is difficult to convey just in words. You need to see numbers and maps, showing seas of red replaced by turquoise and green and yellow; you perhaps need to see the tears and feel the desolation longtime servants of the party are feeling this evening. That this defeat has been suffered in the heartland of the modern Labour Party — the stronghold atop which names like Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Lisa Nandy and Lucy Powell have built their reputations — is all the more harrowing.

Yes, we knew Reform would pick up seats in the outer boroughs, but did we think they would win 24 of the 25 on offer in Wigan? 18 of the 19 up for grabs in Tameside? 13 of 21 in Salford and 13 of 20 in Oldham? The scale of the Labour wipeout in places they have dominated for decades is something to behold, with 108 Labour councillors in Greater Manchester losing their seats. The only saving grace for Labour was that only a third of seats were up for election this year. Had these elections been ‘all outs’, the destruction would have been catastrophic.

The map below shows Greater Manchester’s election results in technicolour, with Reform rampant across the board and Stockport mostly yellow, where the Lib Dems picked up a couple of seats to become the largest party. But today’s biggest surprise arguably took place in Manchester itself, where Labour’s dominance was dismantled in a dramatic few hours straddling lunchtime.

‘Unfathomable’

A group of Green Party candidates and activists are sitting in a quiet corner of a café at Manchester Central, between the rooms where the counts are taking place. We’re a few hours into the count and they are cautiously optimistic.