Election live: Bloodbath as Lib Dems lose Sheffield and Hull; two council leaders lose their seats; Labour sweep Leeds

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The result capped a disastrous night for the Lib Dems. The party was also predicting it “could lose everything” in Liverpool, which has traditionally been a stronghold.

In Hull, the party lost ten seats to Labour, with former council leader Mr Minns among the casualties. Labour now has a clear majority in the city.

And in York, Lib Dem council leader Andrew Waller has lost his seat as Labour swept the board in the Westfield ward.

In Leeds, Labour snatched power as the Liberal Democrat vote collapsed again.

Mr Clegg’s party lost five seats as Labour, which had been leading a minority administration, claimed a majority with seven gains, putting them on 55 seats.

The Tories lost one seat but gained another, so they have 21 seats on the council, with the Lib Dems left with 16, down from 21.

Labour councillor Mohammed Rafique said: “The people of Leeds and across the country have spoken loud and clear.

“People are concerned about the scale and speed of the cuts and have sent a message to the coalition Government. People are concerned about the VAT increase, the hike in fuel prices and cuts to local government finances.

“Hard-working, ordinary people have spoken and said the cuts are not acceptable.”

Lib Dem leader Stewart Golton said: “It is inevitable that the Labour Party would consolidate their position in Leeds given that the Lib Dems and Conservatives are in power nationally. What we did not anticipate is that they would do so so convincingly.”

Sheffield, where Mr Clegg has his parliamentary seat, had been governed by the Lib Dems without an absolute majority.

The party’s former council leader Paul Scriven insisted that the results were merely a “short-term setback” for the party, and said it should not change direction in response to its drubbing in the polls.

Mr Scriven said Lib Dems had to “keep our nerve, keep our backbone and keep bringing fairness to Government and sort out this financial mess”.

He told the BBC: “We are in this for the long term, because if not we let the country down.”

As the counts were declared in Sheffield, former Labour minister David Blunkett said Cleggmania had become “Clegg pneumonia.”

He said: “We will be extremely pleased if we take six seats from the Lib Dems. The numbers they’ve been coming out with are just blarney.

“A year ago I was unfortunately here in Sheffield saying that, regrettably, we’d lost and Cleggmania had taken people by storm. A year on it’s Clegg pneumonia that’s taken hold.

“I am grateful to the people of Sheffield that this is the end of Cleggmania.”

Mr Clegg admitted this morning that the Liberal Democrats had taken a “real knock”.

With the party also facing defeat later today in the referendum on voting reform, Mr Clegg admitted they had lessons to learn.

But he insisted that the results would not affect the Lib Dems’ support for the coalition Government with their Conservative partners.

“In politics, as in life, sometimes you get these big ups and downs and we have taken a real knock last night,” he said as he left his London home.

“We will need to learn the lessons from what we heard on the doorstep. But we need to get up, dust ourselves down and move on, because we have got a really big job to do.

“We need to provide optimism, hope and jobs for people up and down the country. That is the job we started and that is the job we are going to see through.”

The Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition running Birmingham City Council just managed to retain its grip on power, but lost a combined total of 13 seats to Labour.

The Liberal Democrats saw their share of the vote in the city plunge to just 14.7%, according to initial estimates, as voters apparently railed against the national Government’s programme of cuts.

To rub salt into Mr Clegg’s wounds, the Tories appeared to have been spared the voters’ ire over the coalition’s policies, gaining 45 seats and control in two councils.

In Scotland, the SNP had 49 seats and were hopeful of an outright majority in the 129-seat Parliament following a difficult night for Labour and a disastrous one for the Lib Dems.

In Wales, Labour were hopeful of winning control of the Senedd, where they have been sharing power with Plaid.

It was also a difficult night for Labour, who lost 12 seats in the Scottish Parliament as the SNP made big gains, putting First Minister Alex Salmond on course for an overall majority at Holyrood.

At the same time, Labour failed to make the sort of gains in the English council elections which some had been predicting.

Labour leader Ed Miliband insisted that he was “pleased” with the results in England and Wales but said he was “disappointed” with the outcome in Scotland.

“We will have to learn our own lessons from what the public is saying to us there,” he said as he left his home in London.

Overall, he said voters had sent a clear message rejecting the Government’s strategy.

“What you have seen is voters sending a clear message to this Government and the Liberal Democrats in particular,” he said.

“People have said ‘This is not what we voted for at the last general election’. I think the right thing to do is to listen to what people are saying.”

Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted it had been a disappointing night for the Labour leader and the results did not suggest that he was on course to regain power.

“He is not doing as well as I was doing when I was leader of the opposition, which wasn’t brilliantly well,” Mr Hague said, referring to his ill-fated time as Conservative leader following Labour’s 1997 landslide.

He rejected charges by former Lib Dem leader Lord Ashdown that the Conservatives had backtracked on assurances given over the referendum on the introduction of the alternative vote (AV) system for Westminster elections.

“We have held the referendum that we promised to hold. We have held it on the day that we promised to hold it, so there has been no breach of faith,” Mr Hague said.

On a night of Labour victories the Tories had a surprise gain in North Lincolnshire, winning five seats to claim a three seat majority.

Labour lost two seats and three independents were also voted out.

In Scotland, Labour was urged to “take a long look at itself” as its lost several seats to the SNP in its traditional Glasgow heartlands.

The city’s Shettleston, Cathcart, Southside, and Kelvin constituencies were all taken by the Nationalists on a “historic” night for Alex Salmond’s party.

All seats scooped so far by the Nationalists in the city recorded swings of between four and 12% from Labour to the SNP.

In the only North Yorkshire count to take place overnight, the Conservatives took control of Ryedele Council.

Labour was defending only 1,600 of the 9,500 seats being contested nationwide and experts predicted possible gains of up 2,000 seats – claiming anything fewer than 800 would result in Ed Miliband facing some difficult questions about his leadership.

Bradford Council’s Labour leader Ian Greenwood warned that it would be a “tall order” for his party to take the seven seats it needed to achieve a majority in the city. He said: “We are confident of gaining some seats but others are just to close to call.”

When the same set of elected positions were last contested in May 2007, Labour, the then-governing party, was at a very low ebb and trailed the Tories by 13 percentage points. David Cameron’s party gained more than 900 seats as Labour lost more than 500.

A reduction in the number of councils and seats means Labour probably needs nearer 400 gains to reverse those losses – taking it close to the 7.3 per cent Tory 2010 General Election margin.

If it pushed the seats advance to 1,000 this would indicate a clear lead for the party.

But if the sweeping spending cuts generated enough Government unpopularity to take the gains total to 2,000, Labour could be ahead by about 20 per cent.

That would be in line with its last 1995 peak during the dying years of John Major’s Tory government.

The one crumb of comfort for Ministers in that nightmare scenario would be that in 123 of the 279 councils involved – including the 36 metropolitan authorities covering the big conurbations – only a third of the seats were at stake. And many of the councils where all the seats were up for election were in rural or small town areas where Labour is traditionally weak. In more than 70 full council contests the two main contending parties were Tories and Liberal Democrats, such as Harrogate and Ryedale.

In some others, such as Richmondshire, the main challenge was from independents.

Much will depend on the size of the widely forecast Liberal Democrat seats slump. There are suggestions that it could top 1,000 losses – more than half the seats the party is defending.

There is hope for the party that in the past, when in opposition, it has had much success in local elections. In council byelections since the General Election it has just held its own, offsetting losses to Labour with gains from Tory coalition partners.