LONDON, 3 May 2008 — Voters in England and Wales gave British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a bloody nose in local elections as the Labour Party suffered its worst town hall election results in 40 years, crashing to third place with only 24 percent of the popular vote compared with 44 percent for the Conservative Party and 25 percent for the Liberal Democrats.
If these figures were to be translated into a general election, then Conservative leader David Cameron would be the new prime minister with a landslide majority of 138. Already senior Labour backbenchers such as Ian Gibson has warned Brown that he has six months — up to the Labour Party conference in the autumn — to turnaround the party’s electoral fortunes or risk losing the next general election.
A visibly affected Brown, hosting a meeting of foreign ministers involved in the Middle East peace process at No 10 Downing Street yesterday, acknowledged that it was a “bad and disappointing election” for the Labour government and that the message of the voters would be heeded and that he would “listen and lead” from now on.
Brown told reporters: “It’s clear to me that this has been a disappointing night, indeed a bad night for Labour. The government has lessons to learn, my job is to listen and to lead. People are experiencing difficult economic circumstances. I think people want to be assured, and indeed people are questioning and want to be assured, that the government will steer them through these difficult times. The test of leadership is not what happens in a period of success but what happens in difficult circumstances.”
Labour’s woes may be exacerbated later in the day as the result of the London mayoral election is eagerly awaited with the colorful Conservative (Tory) candidate, Boris Johnson, reportedly ahead of the incumbent Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone in the count so far. The result is expected to be declared late in the night, but with 70 percent of the vote counted so far, even Tony Travers, director of the London Electoral Group at the London School of Economics, was suggesting a Johnson victory, albeit with some caveats. Voter turnout is projected at about 45 percent, that is 8 percent higher than the last mayoral election, and is considered very high for such an election.
Whatever the result at City Hall in Tower Hill, a victory for either side will be used by party leader as a tool to attack each other. Perhaps as a sign of an acknowledgment of a possible defeat, Brown in a phone call paid tribute to Livingstone, congratulating “him on what he had done to secure the Olympics for London, what he had done for transport, what he had done for improving policing.”
Livingstone has been mayor for eight years and voters may have decided that it was time for a change. In recent months he has been embroiled in allegations of corruption and cronyism in City Hall.
Johnson is an Old Etonian and Oxbridge graduate — a brilliant scholar — and former editor of the prestigious right-wing Spectator magazine. He was campaigning on a ticket of value for money for London taxpayers and less interference from City Hall.
Labour lost more than 310 council seats while the Tories gained over 252 new seats. The Tories gained control of 12 new councils while Labour lost control of eight including some of their electoral heartlands such as Southampton on the south coast, where two 18-year-old students, David Fuller and Matthew Jones, were elected as the youngest councilors on the Tory ticket; and Nuneaton in the East Midlands, where Labour has ruled the local council for over 34 years.
Voter discontent centered on the abolition of the 10p tax rate, which has adversely affected some five million low paid workers and which the government belatedly tried to correct; rising prices especially of foodstuffs, utilities and petrol; and the downturn in the housing sector and rising mortgage prices; and the general gloom in the economy as a result of the credit crunch which has already seen a record number of insolvencies of companies and home repossessions in the first few months of 2008.
True in some constituencies there were local issues at stake such as high council taxes; introduction of expensive road tolls and congestion charges; additional charges for refuse collection; and even the closure of some local schools in rural areas.
Conservative leader David Cameron had his own explanation for Labour’s electoral rout. “People have had enough of this top down ‘Whitehall knows best’ approach”, declared a jubilant Cameron visiting the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, where the Tories are bouncing back after years in the wilderness and where Labour lost in its core constituencies in droves. Labour lost control of five councils in Wales and could also be out of office in another.
Labour was defeated in its south Wales valley heartland areas of Merthyr Tydfil, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen and Caerphilly. It also lost Flintshire. “This is a very big moment for the Conservative Party — but I don’t want anyone to think that we would deserve to win an election on the back of a failing government.
I want us to really prove to people that we can make the changes that they want to see, in terms of schools and hospitals and crime and the other issues that really matter to all of us. That’s what I’m going to devote myself and my party to over the next few months,” he declared.
The Tory margin is similar to the drubbing received by Tory Prime Minister John Major in council elections in 1995, two years before he lost the general election to Tony Blair. Brown yesterday suffered a further setback as the party’s newly appointed general secretary, David Pitt-Watson, a City fund manager, decided not to take up the position. Pitt-Watson was appointed after Peter Watt resigned over the row about donations from businessman David Abrahams.
