THERESA ON THE MARCH!

Historic Tory poll triumph as Ukip wiped out and Labour buried in their own back yard

THERESA May is on course for a general election landslide after pummelling Labour and crushing Ukip at the local polls.

The Tories recorded a stunning series of results yesterday, picking up 560 seats in every part of the country – including Labour marginals in the North, the Welsh valleys and even Scotland.

ukip was routed, with voters deserting to the Tories in their droves in an emphatic endorsement of the Prime Minister’s approach to Brexit. Labour lost more than 380 seats and its misery was compounded when the Conservatives won the mayoral contests in the West Midlands and the Tees Valley, in what was described as a ‘political earthquake’.

With votes still being counted last night, the Conservatives had gained control of 11 councils, and they were on target to record the

best local election results by a governing party since 1973.

Overall, the Tories’ share of the vote was 13 points up from when the seats were contested in 2013, with Labour down four points, the Liberal Democrats down four and Ukip down an incredible 18.

Election experts said the results suggested the Tories could gain a Commons majority of more than 100, matching the landslide victories achieved by Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and 1987.

But Mrs May warned her party against complacency, saying she was ‘ taking nothing for granted’. On an extraordinary day: Labour candidates turned on leader Jeremy Corbyn as they realised the party was on course to record a national vote share of just 27 per cent – the lowest figure for the opposition since the BBC began calculating the figures in 1982;

Humiliated Ukip leader Paul Nuttall threw in the towel, saying the decline of his party was ‘a price Ukip is prepared to pay’ for securing Brexit;

Hapless shadow home secretary Diane Abbott got her maths wrong again as she dramatically underestimated the scale of Labour’s losses;

Liberal Democrat hopes of a ‘fightback’ in the West Country stumbled at the first hurdle when they lost seats and failed to gain control of Somerset County Council;

The Conservatives pushed Labour into third place in Scotland, as voters rejected Nicola Sturgeon’s call for a second independence referendum;

The Conservatives missed out on control of Northumberland council by a whisker after the final seat came down to the drawing of straws.

Mrs May said last night she was determined to ‘earn the support of the British people’ in the next five weeks.

‘I think if we look at what’s happened in the local elections, we have taken votes from across the political spectrum,’ she said. ‘It’s encouraging... but I will not be taking anything for granted and neither will the team I lead, because there is too much at stake.’ Pundits had predicted Labour would limit its losses to fewer than 200 seats, but in the event the damage was almost twice that.

Mr Corbyn and his allies appeared to be in denial about the scale of the electoral disaster, with shadow chancellor John McDonnell claiming the results in parts of the country were ‘much better’ than pundits had forecast.

Last night Mr Corbyn admitted it would be a ‘challenge on an historic scale’ for Labour to win on June 8. He described the results as ‘mixed’ but insisted he could still become prime minister next month.

Privately, many senior figures were in despair about the party’s prospects. ‘It’s a catastrophe,’ said one. ‘ These results bear out what we’re hearing on the doorstep – Corbyn is toxic. Nowhere is safe.’

Dave Wilcox, former Labour group leader in Derbyshire, said: ‘Genuine Labour supporters have been saying we can’t vote for this bloke because he doesn’t speak for me. We heard it time and time and time again on the doorstep: “We are not voting for you while you have Jeremy Corbyn as leader”.’

The results suggest Mrs May is succeeding where David Cameron failed in uniting the Right of British politics while reaching out to Labour voters who backed Brexit.

Matthew Goodwin, professor of politics at the University of Kent, predicted Labour could slump from 232 seats in 2015 to just 150 next month. Such a result would hand Mrs May a Commons majority of well over 100 seats – and possibly as many as 150.

Elections expert John Curtice said the Ukip results were so bad, the party would have to ‘think about its future’.

Prof Curtice said the Tories were ‘a long way ahead’ but cautioned they were ‘not as far ahead as they would want to be to secure the landslide Theresa May wants’.