In many other years, the first set of local elections with a new government and prime minister in place would be scrutinised keenly as a judgment on the PM’s performance so far. This year the runes will be harder to read because so many of the councils that are up are Conservative councils in Conservative areas. Few of the big cities are up, although some university cities and towns will be voting.

In contrast, the results will probably be read as judgment on the performance of the new Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch. The last time these council seats were contested, in most cases, was in 2021, when the Conservatives under Boris Johnson were riding high in the polls on “the vaccine boost”, and before the partygate scandal started to dent their popularity.

A poll last month, with a big sample size, suggested that the Tories would have fewer councillors elected on 1 May than Reform. Nigel Farage’s party won two council seats in 2021, and neither of those are up this year.

Neither of the two incumbent Labour combined authority mayors, in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and in West of England, is standing again. This year’s election in the two seats will be a first-past-the-post election; in 2021 supplementary vote was used.