LONDON: Early results Friday from British local and regional elections seen as a key test for opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn showed strong gains for Scottish nationalists, as London looked set to elect its first Muslim mayor.
Initial results showed the Scottish National Party winning what their leader called a "historic" victory in Scotland, as it seeks a mandate to move towards a second independence referendum.
Some counts were expected to stretch into the weekend as 45 million eligible voters were asked to cast their ballots in contests across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The results of local elections were already emerging early Friday, while the outcome of the vote for a new mayor of London to replace Conservative Boris Johnson was expected later in the day.
Labour lawmaker Sadiq Khan, a former government minister and son of a bus driver from Pakistan, is tipped to beat Conservative multimillionaire environmentalist Zac Goldsmith in the race to run the British capital.
The voting day dubbed "Super Thursday" came after a bitter few weeks of political sniping between the Conservative party of Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour.
Corbyn set up an inquiry into anti-Semitism and racism in Labour after former London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended from the party for claiming Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler supported Zionism.
Several other Labour politicians were also suspended.
With results in from 78 out of 124 councils in England, Labour has suffered losses though they were not as bad as expected, damping down talk of a potential leadership challenge to Corbyn.
Of the two main parties, Labour held 40 councils, down one, and 768 seats, down 7 and the Conservatives had 19 councils and 467 seats, up 9.
Cameron is also grappling with deep splits in his party ahead of the June 23 referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union.
Retired head teacher Mary White, 66, said that for her the biggest issues in the London mayoral election were "housing and transport".
"I don't think that any of the candidates have a magic solution so it's incredibly difficult to chose between them," White said as she voted in London.
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