Voters punish May, Corbyn in local polls

Bloomberg

Voters in England punished both Theresa May’s Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour opposition in local elections, piling pressure on the two party leaders to resolve the Brexit crisis paralysing British politics.
Britain’s major parties interpreted their poor results as an angry demand from a frustrated population to deal with Brexit, which has locked Parliament in a stalemate for months.
Cross-party talks to agree a way forward for the UK’s divorce from the European Union are due to resume on Tuesday. Senior Labour and Conservative officials were expected to spend the weekend trying to work out whether they will be more damaged by compromising to wrap up a deal, or by sticking to their guns.
“There was a simple message from yesterday’s elections to both us and the Labour Party: Just get on and deliver Brexit,” May said in a speech to Conservatives in Wales.
“An arrangement has to be made, a deal has to be done and parliament has to resolve this issue,” Corbyn said later, in comments welcomed by May. “I think that is very, very clear.”

Forced Delay
Britain was due to leave the EU on March 29 but May has been forced to delay the departure until as late as October 31, after failing three times to get her withdrawal deal approved by parliament.
Against that backdrop, more than 8,400 council seats were up for grabs in mainly rural parts of England. No elections took place in London.
The ruling Conservatives paid the heaviest price for overseeing the Brexit chaos. By the time all 248 councils had declared their results, May’s Tories were down 1,334 seats, much worse than most election experts had predicted.
Corbyn’s party has also struggled to cope with internal divisions over parliament represent both strongly pro-Brexit and pro-EU constituencies and Corbyn has attempted to bridge that gap.
Labour had been expected to pick up many of the council positions the Tories lost, but instead found itself down 82 seats. The big winners were the pro-EU Liberal Democrats, who were up 703 seats and nearly doubled the number of councils they control.