The ballot boxes have been locked away at least for a few months but now the dust has settled on the local election results, what are the key takeaways? Our political editor Paul Francis gives his verdict.

The Liberal Democrats have shown they remain a potent political force and their recovery from the disastrous leadership of Jo Swinson has been pretty remarkable.

The totemic value of sweeping to victory in the former Conservative strong-hold of Tunbridge Wells cannot be under-estimated and while the majority may be very thin, they are in place for the next few years - in theory, at least.

Does the result mean they are on their way to making the parliamentary breakthrough they have long coveted in Kent? No. Not winning Maidstone will be disappointing.

But they are unarguably in a better position to campaign and will probably secure support from the party machine in their efforts to topple Conservative Greg Clark in Tunbridge Wells. With just a few months before a national poll, the new council administration will need to be careful to avoid any controversies their opponents could capitalise on.

The Conservatives have a mountain to climb and are short of time in which to effect a fresh start and unleash new policies. While it seems Rishi Sunak will escape a leadership challenge, the party looks destined to be out of office and there are few crumbs of comfort in these results.

But does it mean electoral oblivion in Kent? Not necessarily.

Some of the majorities they secured in 2019 - in what was seen as the Brexit election - are whopping and provide a cushion that might well halt its terminal decline. For Labour to make gains beyond those constituencies that are their official targets, the Conservatives would need to go into a tailspin on a scale that would outdo their ‘crash and burn’ rout in 1997.

Having said that, the party is unusually nervy - even in some of their safest bastions and despite a pledge to “stop the boats” by the PM, it looks highly unlikely they will fulfil that promise as the numbers creep up again.

The Green Party isn’t going away. It won’t win any seats at the general election but they have continued to demonstrate that they are fast becoming a much more influential party.

Climate change and environmental issues have gone up the political agenda in plain sight and intriguingly, some of their support is coming from Conservatives disillusioned with their party’s failure to stand up to developers building swathes of new houses.

In some parts of Kent, they are nipping at the heels of not just the Conservatives but the Lib Dems, too. However, with success comes greater scrutiny and they are edging into the political mainstream that could curb its radical instincts

Labour cannot assume it’s all in the bag and victory is theirs to claim.

Kent remains a key battleground and for the party to unlock the door to Downing Street, it needs to win crunch seats in the same way it did under Blair in the historic 1997 landslide.

These elections don’t tell us much about the party’s prospects in Kent as the two councils were essentially tussles between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems.

Neither do they tell us much about how the Reform Party might perform at a general election. The central question about whether Nigel Farage might stage a political comeback remains unanswered and he may prefer to keep it that way to hold the Conservative party’s feet to the fire on its Rwanda plan.