Good morning. There are two days left before the local elections in England, and perhaps for labor campaigners, the government's main announcement is about plans to block sex offenders claiming asylum in the UK. Rajeev Syal Details are available here.

The government now announces this as it will change the law with amendments to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act, which has completed the committee's stage in public places and will soon get its reporting phase (the last chance to make amendments before the bill goes to the House of Lords). Immigration policy is not a problem for local authorities, but Labor still hopes today’s headlines will be helpful at least when people think about voting.

According to a forecast, conservatives are expected to lose about 500 council seats, which should be a difficult election Kemi Badenoch. But she won't accept it in person, she was receiving BBC breakfast this morning. When asked if the bad results would vote on her own "leader's personal visibility", Badennock replied:

no I do not. We suffered historic failures last year and it will take some time to get back on track. I am working to rebuild public trust and let the country know that the Conservative Party is under new leadership. But, as we have seen with the previous opposition, we have returned for 14 years, 13 years, and 18 years. I was a leader for only six months. It will take some time to solve the problems we had last year.

There was also a by-election on Thursday in Runcorn and Helsby, with Labor in the last election in which the majority of nearly 15,000 people. The constituencies are counting overnight, meaning that on Friday morning, when many local election results are not yet attended (many councils calculate on Friday, not overnight, because that's easy), the narrative of election night will depend heavily on Runcorn's results. Reform Britain hopes they can win, which will be a strong show of strength (even if the parties that achieve amazing by-election victory usually do poorly in the general election). Given what happened to Westminster expects the thermometer, even a narrow artificial victory is a good result for Keir Starmer.

And conservatives? According to Labor, they gave up their seats altogether. That's what Labour President Ellie Reeves told the UK HuffPost.

The Conservatives did nothing. (Conservative MP) Esther McVey basically said the Conservatives should sit it down and let the reform win, and we saw that on the scene.

They didn't do anything on the ground at all, it seemed they were just giving away to reforms.

Of course, Reeves had the motivation to maximize Runcorn's "continue reform" vote. But that doesn't mean she's wrong, and if she is, it would be surprising. The Conservatives wrote about the opportunity in this seat not long ago, and it makes sense for them to deploy campaign resources elsewhere.

This is the agenda of the day.

9.30 am: Keir Starmer chair cabinet.

morning: Liberal Democratic leader Ed Davey is running for East Anglia.

10 am: Comedy industry figures, including podcast Matt Forde, provide evidence on the status of live comedy to the House of Commons Culture Committee.

2.20 pm: Netflix's Creater Jack Thorne shows adolescence, and its co-executive producer Emily Feller provides evidence on the House of Commons' Women's and Equality Committee on Aversion Committee.

2.30pm: Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and Northeast Mayor Kim McGuinness provided evidence on industrial strategy to the Commons Business Council.

afternoon: Kemi Badenoch is running for the South West of England.

afternoon: British reform leader Nigel Farage is running against candidate Andrea Jenkyns, the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire.

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