Mayor says Government must listen after election battering

LABOUR'S North East mayor has urged the Government to listen to “concerns we're hearing repeatedly on the doorsteps” after a bruising local election day.

- DANIEL HOLLAND

The party took a battering in County Durham, where Reform UK swept to a dominant victory by claiming 65 of the council's 98 seats.

Durham Labour won just four a remarkably low total in a heartland area that the party had controlled for 100 years until 2021.

Mayor Kim McGuinness said she was “disappointed” by the results there and in Northumberland, where her party was overtaken by Reform and slipped into third place, while Labour only just clung on to the North Tyneside mayoralty.