Labour are making headway in the South – but the Tories are falling behind in the North

It’s very hard to take a step back and look at how this deluge of results we’re getting across England will affect the General Election picture in 2015. But as the overnight counts have finished, and the morning counts are just beginning, there are some estimations that we can make already.

Firstly – we can’t ignore that UKIP have already vastly outperformed many people’s expectations. Most seat projections for the party had them gaining 40-50 seats. They have already gained 42. Is this a swing to the right? A protest? Anti-politics? Too early to say, but as Laura Wilkes notes on our rolling liveblog, they will now be hoping for at the very least 100-150 gains across the country. That’s huge.

That’s dreadful for the Tories, but the question is how damaging will that be for Labour? Will it stop us from gaining some of the councils like Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lancashire that we were hoping to pick up? We won’t know that for a few hours.

The second thing that seems fairly clear though is that Labour’s gains in the South and Midlands are clustered in the kind of areas that we need to win in 2015 – with huge performances in places like Hastings, Stevenage, Cannock Chase, Lincoln and Basildon. These seats – rather than the true blue shires where Labour never wins – are the Southern bellwethers for Labour.

Meanwhile, in the North, the rise of UKIP could spell real trouble for the Tories. Whilst we need to win seats in the Midlands and South to gain a 2015 majority, the same goes for the Tories in the North. And yet their vote share halved in South Shields, and – much worse for the Tories – they lost one of their few significant North East positions, that of North Tyneside Mayor, to Labour.

So whilst it’s far too early to say whether or not these results are good for Labour, they’re pretty dreadful for the Tories. And they’re spectacular for UKIP. As for the Lib Dems, in huge parts of the country they’re being wiped out. 7th in South Shields tells its own story.

I’ll be on our live blog all day – follow that for updates and analysis from across the country.