The local elections should be pretty straightforward for Labour: these seats were last up in 2015, when David Cameron beat Ed Miliband handily on the election held on the same day.
Voters tend to vote for the top of the ticket and keep up the habit all down the ballot, which advantages the governing party. (Even when, as in 2010, the governing party loses power it tends to do better than it did in the preceding local election.) Labour lost control of three councils and lost 234 councillors.
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