How bad? Worse than Ramsay MacDonald

It is worth recapping on just how terrible this round of elections has been for Labour.

– Labour is now the third party of local government in England, with fewer councillors than the Liberal Democrats for the first time since the First World War

– Labour secured the lowest vote share ever recorded by a serving government in both elections

– Labour fell under 20 per cent vote share for the first time since 1910, when the party was four years old

– Labour controls no county councils

– Labour lost a poll Wales for the first time since the First World War

– Labour have no MEPs in the South West region for the first time ever

– Labour were beaten by four parties in two regions of the country

– Labour recorded an 8 per cent vote share in the South East

UPDATE: Rob Hayward has just pointed out to me that Labour lost 60 per cent of the council seats they were defending on Thursday

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on the UK political scene

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Jim Pickard joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the Financial Times since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.

Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.

Contributors

Elizabeth Rigby, the FT's chief political correspondent, joined the lobby team in September 2010. Elizabeth has worked at the FT for more than a decade and was most recently its consumer industries editor.

Helen Warrell is the FT's UK reporter, covering home affairs, crime and policing. She joined the FT in 2008 and has spent time as a reporter in the Brussels bureau and more recently, editing the paper's Asia coverage on the world news desk.

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