Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has been criticized for a weak response to the anti-Semitism crisis, and who has also been attacked for having previously referred to Hezbollah and Hamas as his friends, tweeted his congratulations to Khan.
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“We made history this evening”, Sturgeon told the audience after her success. “We are optimistic but simply do not believe the big leads we have been getting in the opinion polls”.
With more than half of the results from local government elections in England counted, Labour had lost control of 43 seats.
But despite losses in English councils being less deep than some predicted, frustrations with Mr Corbyn’s leadership bubbled to the surface.
Mr Coyle, the MP for Southwark and Bermondsey, criticised the leadership for focussing on “peripheral” issues and said Labour was “further away from government” than at last year’s general election. “Our councillors put their hearts and souls into representing the area and there really is no place in the Labour Party for bigots like Ken Livingstone”. Labour losing the Rhondda is a huge blow to that party.
The Labour party, the local party in Bury, the Bury South MP Ivan Lewis, and the Scottish Labour party have all been contacted for their responses to this story, but we have yet to hear back.
The SNP won 63 seats, two short of a majority.
But Shadow chancellor John McDonnell was more cautious and said the aim was to reduce the Tory lead from last year’s general election.
The main opposition Labour Party came third in the vote for Scotland’s devolved parliament but its candidate Sadiq Khan is expected to clinch victory in London to become the city’s first Muslim mayor. Britain’s Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives to cast his vote at a polling station in Islington, north London Thursday May 5, 2016. The strength of opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn is particularly under scrutiny, as the races were the first nationwide poll since he took over as leader.
He told Sky: “I think most people would recognise you can’t consolidate your position in only eight months”.
Labour lost Scottish Parliament seats Rutherglen, Greenock & Inverclyde, Cowdenbeath and Edinburgh Northern & Leith to the Scottish National Party and Eastwood to the Conservatives.
Thursday’s elections for local authorities and regional assemblies demonstrated the complexity of British politics in the final weeks before Britons vote on June 23 on whether the country should remain in the European Union.
Commenting on the performance in Scotland, the party veteran said: “Scotland is sad, it will take us years to recover”. Disaster because the party is falling into third place in the Scottish Parliament – and third to the Conservatives, a party it has long teased for being unpopular and unacceptable north of the border.
He said: “It’s all going very well”.
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Pressed on whether Mr Corbyn would still be Labour leader at the next election, Ms Reynolds replied: “That will be up to him to a large extent, it remains to be seen what he wants to do”. But, he added: “We are on a path of improvement”.
