Voters tell Labour and Tories: This is a plague on both of your houses

What do you do when the Tory heartlands turn on you?

Theresa May chose to flee the scene and address the local-election-free Welsh and Scottish party conferences.

But in a sign of how dire things have got for her, there was no respite there either. Heckled by one of her own people – “why don’t you resign!” – in the one place she should have been adored.

The prime minister who failed to deliver Brexit: she was brutally punished at the polls on Thursday as the Conservatives lost a staggering 1,335 seats in the local elections.

It was the worst performance since the John Major meltdown in 1995 when the Conservatives lost 2,016 seats. And we all know what came after that: 13 years of Labour rule.

Her only consolation in this picture of electoral gloom was that Labour had a horror show, too.

After nine years of Tory government, Labour should have been making serious inroads into Tory territory and yet Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour failed to land even a blow.

Twenty-five years ago, the main opposition was wiping the floor with a jaded Tory government and yet in these locals the voters have wiped the floor with them. Labour brought in net losses of 86 seats.

At the close of polls on Thursday night, gains of 100 seats would have been seen as a dreadful result.

This was off the scale.

The first elections since Mrs May’s Brexit delay, voters have given mainstream parties their verdict: this is the “plague on both your houses” election with both the Conservatives and Labour being punished at the polls.

And both sides appear to have got the message.

The prime minister said the “simple message” from these elections is that voters want Brexit done.

John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, said a similar thing: “So far the message from local elections: Brexit – sort it. Message received.”

But as we’ve seen from the past three years, solving the Brexit riddle is far easier said than done.

A Conservative cabinet source told me that if one good thing comes from this bloodbath, it’s this: Labour now knows that they really need to get this done.

Cross-party talks resume next week but even if the two frontbench teams can secure a deal, getting it past their backbenchers is an entirely different matter.

For the Conservatives, any form of customs arrangement could provoke a fierce reaction from the backbenches. For Labour, the prospect of a Brexit deal without a confirmatory vote could provoke an uprising on their benches.

These results offer a muddy narrative on how Mr Corbyn’s Brexit equivocation has hurt the party.

Labour was hit in Leave-backing northern councils – Bolsover, Derby, Bolton – but suffered at the hands of Remainers losing ground to the resurgent Lib Dems and Green Party.

For the other theme of the night, the desire for anything but the two big parties.

The Lib Dems put on 704 seats and independents took 862 seats more – as voters, who coalesced around the Tories and Labour in the 2017 general election, splintered once more.

It’s too early to say whether these local elections mark the beginning of the end for two-party politics. But the volume of spoiled ballots by disgruntled voters tells us that the plague afflicting both main parties is Brexit.

One MP said these results were like the moment before a tidal wave, when the sea suddenly goes out and then the tsunami comes crashing back in. Electoral devastation beckons in three weeks’ time when voters will be able to tell them again in the European elections.

The big unknown is how the respective parties decide to clean up the mess.

(c) Sky News 2019: Voters tell Labour and Tories: This is a plague on both of your houses