The Mayor of South Yorkshire, Oliver Coppard, is feeling confident about Labour’s chances as he attended the Barnsley count this morning.

He said: “It looks like a good night for Labour so far as we can tell. I’ll be interested to see what happens with the mayoral results across the country. I think it’s always going to be difficult when you’ve got somebody like Ben Houchen who had 73% of the vote last time round. The West Midlands will always be a difficult contest for the Labour party.

“But I think we’re fairly confident about the picture nationally. It definitely puts us on course I think for the general election later this year.

“What you hear is that people are frustrated, let down, disappointed and angry about the state of this country. We’re in a broken Britain because of this Tory government and what we’ve seen in the ballot box so far is that people are letting their feelings be known.”

Speaking about his chances in the mayoral vote he said: “I’m hopeful that what we’ve shown over the last two years is that we can do a good job for this region and provide the leadership this region needs.

“When you look at what we’ve done with the airport, the buses, the tram, beds for babies, guaranteeing a bed for every single child under five in South Yorkshire. Those are the things that I think people want to see.

“We’ll find out what people think over the next few hours and I’m hopeful that that will be an endorsement of what we’ve done over the last two years and what we want to do over the next four years as well.”