Conservatives pick up seats and councils around England

May 2 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

CONSERVATIVES were picking up seats and councils around England as the first results from local elections started to come in today.

But with results available from around a dozen councils, it was too early to say whether David Cameron’s party had made the kind of breakthrough he was hoping for, achieving a share of vote that would translate to 40% or more of the electorate nationwide.

Senior Labour figures admitted they were expecting a difficult night, with London campaign supremo Tessa Jowell saying “this is going to be tough”, while Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan described himself as “apprehensive” about results in the principality.

In early results, Conservatives won Nuneaton and Bedworth in Warwickshire from Labour, gained Harlow in Essex from no overall control, and took West Lindsey in Lincolnshire from the Liberal Democrats.

There was cheering news for Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, whose party regained control of Hull, which it seized for the first time last year only to see it slip out of its hands as two councillors defected.

The result in the highest profile of yesterday's contests – the battle between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson for the London mayoralty – will not be known until this evening.

Electronic counting in the capital, where voters are also electing the 25-member London Assembly, begins at 8.30am. Around 50 English and Welsh councils are also waiting until the morning to start their counts.

Labour strategists openly acknowledge that the party will lose councillors overnight, even though many of the seats up for grabs were last contested in 2004 when the party was at a low point following the Iraq War. Liberal Democrats, who performed particularly well in 2004, were also steering clear of predicting any gains.

With Mr Cameron riding high in the national polls with advantages of as much as 18 points over Labour, Conservatives were expected to win a lot of seats, with gains predicted to be well into three figures.

The Tories scooped a major victory on the South Coast, gaining eight seats in Southampton to seize control of the city, which had been administered by a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition. Labour lost four seats and the Lib Dems three.

And the Conservatives also won absolute majorities of seats on Harlow District Council in Essex and Elmbridge Borough Council in Surrey, both of which were previously under no overall control.

Harlow, which had been run by Labour and the Lib-Dems in coalition, is regarded as a bellwether seat in Westminster politics, closely shadowing the national results.

The Tory win in Harlow in 1992 was seen as a key moment in John Major’s victory.