LONDON, May 4 — Britain’s main political parties all made gains in local council elections, benefiting from the collapse of the UK Independence Party, in results that saw Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour continue to struggle outside London.

At 5.30am, with results in from 90 of the 150 English councils that were holding elections, Theresa May’s Conservatives had a net gain of 11 seats, Labour had a net gain of 18, and the Liberal Democrats were up 40. Ukip were down 86. More than 4,000 seats were up for for grabs.

The seats were last contested in 2014, when Ukip was on the march as voters protested about immigration from the European Union, and the Lib Dems were taking a beating from people angry that they were in coalition with the Conservatives nationally.

What does it all mean?

It’s bad for Labour

The basic rule for council elections is that the party that’s in national government usually loses seats. The vote may be supposed to be about local issues — schools, planning, trash collection — but many people see them as an opportunity to kick the party in national power.

For Labour to barely be ahead of the Tories in overall net gains is poor. “Labour hasn’t made anything like the expected gains in terms of seats, and is actually going backwards slightly on the national vote share,” said Matt Singh of NumberCruncherPolitics. “These aren’t the results of a party that’s about to storm the next general election.”

But it’s not exactly good for the Tories in London

In the capital, Labour made gains, though not at the level it had hoped, as did the Liberal Democrats. May’s decision to use Brexit to fight a culture war against internationally-minded “citizens of nowhere” continues to play badly in the capital, where there are high levels of racial diversity and a lot of opposition to leaving the EU.

But Labour were hoping for more

A lot of the London results are yet to come, but remember that back in March we were told the Tories would lose 100 seats to Labour, falling to their lowest-ever showing in the capital. Things seem to be looking better than that. “There isn’t really much for the Labour Party to celebrate,” Strathclyde University’s elections guru John Curtice told the BBC.

Divided Britain

Every so often, May announces that the country is coming together after the splits of the Brexit vote. Once again, these election results fail to bear that claim out.

“We seem to be seeing an entrenchment of the status quo; a divided Britain in which big cities vote Labour and everywhere else votes Conservative,” said Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit.

Winning losers?

It’s undoubtedly a bad night for Ukip, continuing their collapse since the Brexit vote and former leader Nigel Farage’s departure. But remember that though Ukip may no longer have much influence over trash collections in the English Midlands, but their guiding policy — leaving the EU — has been adopted wholesale by the British government. — Bloomberg