BRITAIN: Frank Millar, London Editor, analyses local elections in which Labour saw its losses top 800.
The British Conservative leader, Mr Iain Duncan Smith, yesterday brushed aside renewed questions about his leadership as he claimed a "spectacular victory" for his party in the English local elections.
However, the resignation of a front-bench spokesman declaring him an electoral "handicap", and an estimated share of the overall vote at 35 per cent, combined to challenge Mr Duncan Smith's claim that he is in serious contention to replace Mr Tony Blair as prime minister in barely two years' time.
Voter apathy, national insurance and council tax rises, some evident Muslim alienation and lingering anti-war sentiment combined to deliver a dollop of mid-term blues for the Labour government.
The Labour Party saw its losses top 800 and emerged level-pegging with the Liberal Democrats with an estimated 30 per cent share of the vote on a day which saw the far-right British National Party become the second-largest party in the Lancashire town of Burnley. However, as the BNP leader, Mr Nick Griffin, failed to win a seat in Oldham, Lancashire, the main parties agreed the BNP "advance" should be seen in the context of elections to more than 10,000 council seats across the country.
Labour also suffered a bloodied nose in Scotland, emerging still the largest party but with a reduced majority and still in need of Liberal Democrat allies to form a new coalition Executive to lead the Scottish Parliament.
However, Labour's disappointment was eased by even heavier losses for the Scottish National Party, while in Wales, First Minister Mr Rhodri Morgan hinted that Labour might govern alone after winning 30 of the 60 seats in the Welsh Assembly. With Plaid Cymru also the biggest losers Welsh Secretary Mr Peter Hain declared the outcome of the devolved elections "terrible" for the nationalist parties.
While the Liberal Democrats celebrated winning an extra 180 seats, Mr Duncan Smith seized on more than 600 Conservative gains to reclaim his party's position as the largest force in British local government.
And he told cheering supporters at Conservative Central Office the results showed the electorate saying "enough is enough" to the Blair government and gave them the opportunity "to show that we can once again . . . run this country and deliver them a government."
Having deliberately under-played their expectations in advance, the Tory chairman, Ms Theresa May, also hailed "a great day" for her party. And she joined Mr Duncan Smith in rubbishing Mr Crispin Blunt's assertion that the party had no chance of returning to power under his leadership as "wholly irrelevant".
Mr Blunt announced his resignation as front-bench trade spokesman on Thursday night just as the polls closed, and called on his fellow Conservative MPs to "face up to the unpleasant responsibility" of replacing Mr Duncan Smith as leader.
He later told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Frankly, everyone knows that Iain Duncan Smith is not making the impact we would all like him to as our leader and is not making the necessary impact to carry credibility with the electorate as the alternative prime minister."
He continued: "We have to decide as a party whether or not we can carry that handicap to a general election. That is a simple statement of fact about how he is regarded by [the media\] and by Conservative up and down the country."
Ms May retorted that the actual election results had left Mr Blunt looking "a little silly" while conservative commentators agreed that Mr Duncan Smith had probably done enough to secure his leadership until the general election. However, leading political analysts observed that the Conservatives were still significantly short of the 40-plus share of the vote necessary at this stage in the life of a parliament for an Opposition party to survive inevitable government recovery in the run-up to a general election.
Labour chairman Mr Ian McCartney also pointed-up the Conservatives' "failure" to match their performance in the same elections in 1999, when they gained 1,300 seats and claimed 39 per cent of the vote before falling to their second successive general election defeat two years later.
The Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Charles Kennedy, said his party's performance had exceeded expectations: "Our argument would be that this shows we are very much in three-party politics, competing on the same basis as the other two parties."