Elections are brutal and unforgiving.

No matter how hard you work, no matter how just and honourable you believe your cause is, once the voters have put their little cross in the box, that’s it done and dusted.

Just ask some the ‘big names’ that lost their seats in last week’s elections.

I’ve said it before but I have all the respect in the world for those who are prepared to put their heads above the parapet and stand for local elections.

As interested as I am in the machinations of local politics I would never, ever consider standing so hats off to those who fought and won, but especially to those who fought and failed.

I don’t think my fragile ego could handle the rejection.

So what are we left with now all the ballots have been cast and counted?

Well it looks like not much of a change really.

In Cheshire West and Chester, there was a certain amount of satisfaction for the Labour group which had run a minority administration since the last election in 2019 which now has full control of the council, increasing its numbers from 33 to 39.

For the Conservatives, the loss of five councillors, including highly experienced figures such as Lynn Riley in Frodsham, and Jill Houlbrook in Upton, saw its numbers fall from 28 to 23.

In Cheshire East, the ‘change’ was even less dramatic with the council going from ‘no overall control’ to a slightly different version of ‘no overall control’.

As Local Democracy Report Belinda Ryan reported: “Labour made six gains overall and the Tories three – mostly at the expense of the Independents who had a night to forget, losing seven seats. The Liberal Democrats dropped two of the four they had previously held.”

The Conservatives are still the biggest party on the new-look council with 33 councillors, Labour are now just behind on 31, the Independents have 16 and the Lib Dems, two.

So what can the voters of Cheshire East expect? When asked whether the council would continue to be run by a joint Labour-Independent administration as it has been for the past four years, Labour leader of the council Sam Corcoran said: “I will certainly be working with the Independents to see if they are willing to form a joint administration.”

So no change there then.

But what, if anything do these results, and those from other parts of the country, reveal about the state of our political parties with a general election looming next year?

There’s little doubt the Conservative Party will delay the election as long as possible while it remains behind in the opinion polls and contemplates the loss of more than 1,000 councillors across England. Not even the crude attempt at voter suppression by rushing in voter ID requirements could hide the disastrous results for the Tories.

It seems reasonable that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is going to want as long as possible to undo the damage caused by predecessors Boris (partygate) Johnson and Liz (disastrous budget) Truss.

I watched a brief TV interview with Sunak as the local election defeats piled up and his answer to every single question was the same, basically repeating the mantra of his five ‘pledges’ as though they are some kind of magic formula that will sweep him back into power.

(At the risk of doing his work for him, the pledges repeated ad nauseam are: Halve inflation; grow the economy; reduce national debt; reduce NHS waiting lists; stop the small boats.)

Fair play to the man if he thinks these will do the trick but an inflation rate of five per cent doesn’t mean your shopping will be cheaper, it just means that things that have already shot up in price will still be going up but a little more slowly.

And I would also question how much understanding there is of abstract concepts such as ‘growing the economy’ or ‘reducing national debt’.

Given the refusal to pay NHS staff a wage that will attract new entrants or help retain existing staff, I wish Sunak the very best of luck in bringing down waiting lists.

And while there’s a vocal minority who have been convinced that those risking their lives to cross the Channel are the root cause of all our problems, I would suggest the vast majority of us are more concerned about the cost of living crisis, energy prices, a failing railway system, human waste in our rivers and seas, a devastated criminal justice system and a myriad of other examples of broken Britain.