Opposition makes strong gains in British local elections

LONDON: Britain's main opposition party made strong gains in local elections in England and Wales as results were tallied Friday, piling pressure on Prime Minister Gordon Brown's struggling Labour Party government which faces a national election within two years. The British Broadcasting Corp. projected that the resurgent Conservative Party would take 44 percent of the vote, putting it 20 points ahead of Labour. Brown's party was running neck-and-neck with the Liberal Democrats, the country's third-largest party. Partial results on Friday from 99 local councils showed the Conservatives gaining 144 seats while Labour lost 145. The Liberal Democrats gained 10. "I think these results are not just a vote against Gordon Brown and his government," Conservative leader David Cameron said Friday. "I think they are a vote of positive confidence in the Conservative Party." Eric Pickles, the Conservatives local government spokesman, said Labour's poor showing would encourage Brown to put off a national vote until the last possible date in 2010. Today in Europe Britons wait for London and local election poll results Manchester vs. Chelsea final in Moscow challenges English fans Russia steps up effort to keep Georgia out of NATO "The ship of state is heading towards the rocks," Pickles said. Results of the closely fought London mayor's race were expected to be announced late Friday. A win by Conservative candidate Boris Johnson in the capital over Labour's Ken Livingstone, the left-wing mayor since 2000, would further erode Labour's grip on power after it lost control of Scotland's regional government last year. As Tony Blair's Treasury chief for more than a decade, Brown was credited with overseeing Britain's longest stretch of postwar prosperity. He took over from Blair last year as Labour leader, becoming prime minister without an election. But his brief honeymoon ended abruptly, and poll ratings for his Labour Party have sunk to a 20-year low. Voters, and factions of Brown's own party, now grumble over rising prices for food and fuel, falling house prices, tax changes that have hit the poor and some blue-collar workers, and the costly nationalization of mortgage lender Northern Rock, a victim of the global credit crisis. "People are concerned about their own financial situation," said Harriet Harman, the Labour Party's deputy leader. "In that respect these council elections have been different from other council elections really that have been taking place over the last 11 years in that people are concerned about rising food prices and the increase in fuel bills, and there is a worry about the financial instability. "We've got to really recognize those financial concerns to make sure that people are protected from the economic problems that are out there," Harman said. Under Britain's four-year municipal voting cycle, local council seats up for grabs in Thursday's vote were last fought for in 2004, when voters handed then-Prime Minister Blair a stinging defeat, using the ballots to protest at the unpopular Iraq war. Though local elections are not good predictors of national election results, analysts pointed out that Conservatives would win a comfortable majority in Parliament if they scored a similar 20 point victory over Labour in a general election. Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University said the results of Thursday's voting suggested that the Conservatives had finally recovered from the currency crisis in 1992 which drove Britain out of the European exchange rate mechanism and wrecked the Conservatives' reputation for economic competence. "The opinion polls have been suggesting over the last month or so that the Tories are in a stronger position than at any time since 1992," Curtice said in an interview with the BBC. He cautioned, however, that the local election results do not mean the Conservatives would inevitably win the next national election.