News comes as Labour’s Chris Webb wins back ‘red wall’ Blackpool South Westminster seat held by Tories since 2019

• Local elections 2024: full council results for England
• Analysis: Blackpool verdict looks like electoral death sentence for Tories

The results of the London mayoral contest and London assembly elections are due on Saturday. Labour’s Sadiq Khan is seeking a third term and polls have put him comfortably ahead of Tory Susan Hall, despite jitters in Khan’s campaign team.

Following the closure of the polls tonight, Khan said his campaign and Labour activists “sent out a message of fairness, of equality and of hope”.

Defeat could have spurred Conservative rebels to move against prime minister

• Local and mayoral election results – live updates

The Conservatives have secured victory in one of the most high-profile metro mayoral votes of the local elections after Ben Houchen clung on to his post in Tees Valley, a result that could prove to be a political lifeline for Rishi Sunak.

Houchen was defending a huge majority and was elected despite a 16.5 percentage point swing to Labour. He won 81,930 votes (53.6%) against 63,141 (41.3%) for Labour and 7,679 (5%) for the Liberal Democrats. At the last election he won 73% of the votes.

Pollsters say early results suggest Tories could lose half of council seats contested, putting party on course for as many as 500 losses

• Local and mayoral election results – live updates

Keir Starmer has hailed Labour’s “seismic” win in Blackpool South in a night of local elections that provided further evidence that the party is heading for a large majority at this year’s general election.

The Labour leader called the result in the Blackpool South byelection “truly historic” after the party’s candidate, Chris Webb, won the seat with the third biggest swing from the Conservatives to Labour in postwar history.

Ed Davey says ‘lifelong Conservative voters are backing the Lib Dems’ in constituencies party is targeting

• Local and mayoral election results – live updates

Ed Davey has pointed to strong showings by the Liberal Democrats at council elections in areas they are targeting at the next general election as a sign they can advance into Conservative territory.

The party leader said it was “still too early to see the whole picture in this set of elections, but clearly there are some fantastic results for the Liberal Democrats”.

A ‘seismic’ night at the polls seems to indicate an electorate sending a clear message to the government. What’s the reality?

Looking for a national picture in local council and byelection results always calls to mind the old joke about two drunkards scouring the pavement under a streetlamp. “Are you sure this is where you dropped your keys?” says one. “No,” says the other, “but this is where the light is.”

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Inquiry hears Jarnail Singh ‘sat on’ email highlighting bugs in Horizon system

A former Post Office lawyer has denied “covering up” knowledge of problems with the Horizon IT system after a public inquiry heard that he “sat on” an email highlighting IT bugs, which was not disclosed to the criminal trial of a pregnant post office operative.

Jarnail Singh, the former head of criminal law at the Post Office, was being questioned at the long-running public inquiry into the wrongful prosecution of hundreds of post office operators who were hounded by the Post Office because of financial shortfalls in their branch accounts. It has since emerged that these discrepancies were due to IT bugs in the Post Office’s Horizon computer system.

Environmental campaign groups took joint action against decision to approve carbon budget delivery plan

The UK government’s climate action plan is unlawful, the high court has ruled, as there is not enough evidence that there are sufficient policies in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, will now be expected to draw up a revised plan within 12 months. This must ensure that the UK achieves its legally binding carbon budgets and its pledge to cut emissions by more than two-thirds by 2030, both of which the government is off track to meet.

Post featured compromising image of the broadcaster Narinder Kaur, who said she was left ‘incredibly upset’

Police are investigating a social media post by Laurence Fox in relation to an “upskirting offence”.

The tweet, posted on Tuesday, featured a compromising image of Narinder Kaur, a broadcaster on Good Morning Britain and GB News. The post remained on Fox’s account until it was deleted on Thursday.

Planned works by Network Rail will force more people on to the roads to join bank holiday getaway, with rail strikes to follow the week after

Bank holiday getaway traffic jams will signal the start of a bumpy 10 days on Britain’s roads and railways, as a rainy early May is peppered with engineering works and train drivers’ strikes.

Motoring organisations were expecting late Friday afternoon to bring the longest delays on roads, particularly those heading to the south-west from London.

Russians in separate compound and do not have access to US forces or equipment, says defence secretary

• Ukraine war – live updates

The US secretary of defence, Lloyd Austin, has confirmed Russian security forces have been deployed to the same airbase as American troops in the Nigerien capital, Niamey.

It remains unclear when the Russian troops, who have been in Niger for weeks, were deployed to Airbase 101, which is next to Diori Hamani international airport in Niamey. It is also unclear how many troops are on the ground.