A "truly historic shift in British politics" has taken place where the national political question is no longer about "left or right", Brexit pioneer Nigel Farage said as his Reform Party surged in early results in what has been called the "midterm" elections.

The first Britain-wide local election results trickled in overnight — and will continue to do so through the day and into the weekend as over 5,000 local races have their votes counted — revealing in its early stages a massive swing to Reform UK. Party leader Nigel Farage hailed the party's gains so far, and vowed "the best is yet to come" as the vast majority of elections have yet to be counted, and with those on their way being some of the most promising for his party, he said.

17:30 BST — The First Minister of Wales has lost her seat

History has been made: the leader of an elected government in the United Kingdom has lost their seat at election. This has never happened before: while there have been plenty of shock losses over the years with cabinet ministers and prominent party people having their seats cut out from under them, party leaders and heads of government — such as the Prime Minister or first minister of the home nations — tend to have rock-solid seats.

Not so for Labour's Eluned Morgan, until now the First Minister of Wales, who even under Wales' very forgiving additional member electoral system couldn't find a seat. Her Ceredigion Penfro constituency had six seats up for grabs, handed out proportionally: the nationalist Plaid got three on 35 per cent of the vote, Reform got two with their 25 per cent, and the Conservatives got the last one with 16 per cent. Labour, which has dominated Wales for over a century, couldn't even make it into the top three with just seven per cent.

Ouch.

Morgan's comments after receiving the news was many things, but it didn't necessarily come across as gracious. Perhaps it is this paternalistic attitude towards voters — she complained that "Today's politics… rewards noise over truth", presumably implying she is the purveyor of truth and her enemies of noise — that pushed Labour to these punishing results nationwide.