Spread of Tory losses leads former minister to say there’s ‘no such thing as a safe seat any more’

The Conservatives are facing one of their worst local election results in 40 years, with striking Labour gains across England and Wales in key battlegrounds they need to secure victory at the general election.

The spread of the Conservative losses led one former minister to claim there was “no such thing really as a safe Tory seat any more”, but the prime minister appeared committed to clinging on until polling day, with rebels in his own party lacking the support to oust him.

As party narrowly misses out on overall majority, co-leader says it has won spread of urban and rural seats

The Greens are celebrating a spectacular win in Bristol, where it became by far the largest party, as it headed for a record number of councillors in local elections across England.

Party officials said they believed they were on track to finish with more than 800 members on more than 170 councils.

Tactical voting delivers only a near-victory for party in council election in the traditionally Conservative Berkshire stronghold

In true-blue Berkshire, the skies were a prophetic grey on Friday as the Liberal Democrats were a whisker away from winning Wokingham.

The district, where the veteran Tory MP John Redwood and the former prime minister Theresa May hold their parliamentary seats, has long been a Conservative stronghold. Redwood’s constituency has returned a Tory MP since its creation in 1885.

Tory council representation has imploded, but Labour’s gains have not been seismic. These charts show what this may signal for a general election

• Full 2024 council results for England
• UK general election opinion poll tracker

Conservative representation has collapsed to its lowest level since 1998 in the areas that voted in Thursday’s local elections, according to a Guardian analysis.

The Tories now control 19% of seats in the 98 council areas that had announced results by 20:40 on 3 May – their lowest level since Labour’s Tony Blair swept to power in the late 1990s.

The leader and his chancellor look like incumbents. That will make voters even more impatient for solutions to Britain’s ills

It was not an opinion poll. These were local elections about local issues. The results tell you only about where we are now, not where we might be come the autumn, or whenever it is that Rishi Sunak finally submits himself to the judgment of the country.

You know all the caveats, to which we can add one more: some of the biggest results, namely the mayoral contests in London, Manchester and the West Midlands, won’t come until Saturday. And yet, taken together, the votes cast on Thursday form an increasingly clear picture. It is a bleak one for the Conservatives – while for Labour it contains both cheer and a perhaps unexpected warning.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

National Pharmacy Association says some family doctors refusing to refer patients with minor ailments

GPs have been accused of scuppering Rishi Sunak’s flagship plan to cut the time it takes to see them by refusing to refer patients with minor ailments to a pharmacist instead.

Pharmacists claim many GPs in England are not sending patients to them to be treated – and that some are refusing to participate at all in the “groundbreaking” Pharmacy First scheme.

Survey by NAHT union finds funding shortages mean pupils are losing out on vital support

Shortages and funding cuts are causing a “full-blown crisis” in special needs education for children and young people in England, according to school leaders who say they are struggling to give pupils the support they require.

Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the school leaders’ union the NAHT, accused the government of treating schools as a “sideline” compared with headline-grabbing issues such as immigration.

Ex-president’s former communications director says Access Hollywood tape ‘was a crisis’ for his campaign

Hope Hicks, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary, broke into tears on Friday while testifying in the ex-president’s New York criminal hush-money trial, hours after she described his complete control over the campaign.

Hicks, who cut a skittish figure in Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom, is a key prosecution witness. She described Trump campaign staffers’ panic when a recording emerged in which Trump bragged about groping women. “This was a crisis” for his presidential bid, she said, describing the sentiment among the campaign staff.

New York police say about 29% of those detained ‘not affiliated’ with university as more are arrested at NYU and New School

New York’s police department has declared that approximately 29% of the people it arrested at pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University were “not affiliated” with the institution, as the city’s mayor continues to face scrutiny over his claims that the hardline police response was due to the actions of “outside agitators”.

The NYPD also said 60% of arrestees at City College of New York (CCNY) on Tuesday night were unaffiliated with the college, though a CCNY spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that these arrest figures applied to protesters both on and off the college’s grounds.

Glossy promotional leaflet handed out to asylum seekers detained under Rishi Sunak’s deportation policy

Asylum seekers who have been detained under Rishi Sunak’s deportation policy are being handed a colourful promotional document entitled: “I’m being relocated to Rwanda. What does it mean to me?”

The news came as the government faced a second legal challenge over the prime minister’s £500m policy and it emerged that dozens of asylum seekers were being forcibly taken to detention centres.