[denphone]

Some initial thoughts by Professor Sir John Curtice.

It looks as though the key message from the voters to the Conservatives and Labour is "a plague on both of your houses", as both of them find themselves losing both votes and seats on an extensive basis.

Even though the Labour Party is defending a relatively poor result in 2015, the party is not doing even as well as it did then.

So far the party has made a net loss of nearly 80 seats, while its vote is down on average by one point compared with 2015 in a collection of wards where the BBC has been collecting the detailed results, and by seven points as compared with last year's local election results.

The party lost control of Bolsover, Wirral, and Hartlepool... with only the capture of Trafford in compensation.

Meanwhile, although the results for the Conservatives so far are perhaps not as bad as they might have feared, their vote is down on average by six points compared with 2015