Jubilant Kier Starmer last night hailed Lbaour’s victory in the West Midlands mayoral election as a ‘phenomenal result’.
Labour’s Richard Parker beat Tory incumbant Andy Street by 1,508 votes to become Mayor in an extremely close contest.
Talking after the result, Street said he was ‘incredibly proud’ he had lost by such a thin margin, despite being ‘personally devastated’ by the result.
He said: ‘Given that this has always been a place where some people said you should never have won in the first place, I’m actually very, very proud of what we’ve done.
‘The thing everyone should take from Birmingham in the West Midlands tonight is this brand of moderate, inclusive, tolerant conservatism that gets on and delivered has come within an ace of beating the Labour Party in, what they considered to be their backyard.’
You can read the immediate reaction to that result below: