Britain

Gloom for Gordon Brown

The ruling Labour Party in Britain is battered at the polls. Where next for its troubled prime minister?

LOCAL elections in England and Wales, such as those that took place on Thursday May 1st, are generally such complicated affairs, with contradictory trends visible in different parts of the country, that they manage to offer both solace and chagrin to all the main political parties. Not this time. The Labour Party, and its leader, Gordon Brown, have been comprehensibly humbled. The prime minister's day will get even worse if, as looks likely, Labour also loses its biggest prize: the mayoralty of London. That result is due on Friday evening.

Preliminary results from the 159 local authorities that held elections (local polls are staggered so that not everyone votes at the same time) suggest that Labour has scored its worst performance in local elections for 40 years. Labour seems to have polled just 24% of the total, a full 20 points behind the opposition Conservatives and a point behind the Liberal Democrats. It has done badly even in some regions where it has traditionally been invulnerable, such as industrial bits of Wales, losing more council seats than even the most pessimistic predictions envisaged. The Conservatives, meanwhile, have made some symbolic gains in hitherto hostile territory in the north of England. David Cameron, the Tory leader, described the result as “a big moment”. A “bad” and “disappointing” night, said Mr Brown.

The line emanating from some Labour ministers is that voters were responding to the depressing economic climate, and also, more apologetically, that the government needs to do a better job of listening to their concerns. And there are some genuine reasons to doubt that the implications for Mr Brown are quite as bad as some commentators suggest (one newspaper described May 2nd as his “Black Friday”). As in most local elections, turnout was comparatively low, at around 35%. Some of the individual results will have been determined by local concerns rather than judgments about the prime minister and his rival. Moreover, British voters have in the past used local elections to thumb their noses at governments with whom they are irritated but not terminally estranged: under Tony Blair, and in the wake of the Iraq war, Labour did almost as badly in local elections in 2004, nevertheless winning the general election in the following year.

Unfortunately for Mr Brown, these results come after a series of bungles and mishaps that have cumulatively cast doubt on his leadership, creating a febrile political environment in which they will doubtless be seen as yet more evidence of his failings. His troubles started last autumn, when he considered but ultimately rejected the idea of holding a general election. Since then there has been a political funding scandal, a messy ministerial resignation and the forced nationalisation of a major mortgage lender, among other setbacks. A botched tax reform has alienated many of Mr Brown’s own Labour MPs; both he and they are spoiling for another parliamentary fight over plans to extend the period for which terrorism suspects can be held before they are charged. A few whispers have spread about replacing Mr Brown with another leader—but there is no obvious successor, and to foist another prime minister on the electorate now would probably look both chaotic and undemocratic.

If Boris Johnson, the Tory candidate, does indeed win in London, Labour will be cast into even darker gloom—even though the London race, like the city itself, is deeply idiosyncratic. The Labour incumbent, Ken Livingstone, has served two terms as mayor, introducing some widely praised reforms to the transport system but his cantankerous demeanour, alleged cronyism and eccentrically outspoken foreign-policy views have alienated many Londoners. He is an odd champion for Mr Brown to be pinning his residual hopes on: the two men loathe one another, and indeed Mr Livingstone temporarily quit the Labour Party to stand as an independent when he won the mayoral election in 2000. If he loses now, he may well have unkind things to say about Mr Brown himself.

A win for Mr Johnson would be spun by the Tories as evidence that they are once again electable to high office (and privately seen as reassuring proof that a posh background, of the kind that both Mr Johnson and Mr Cameron share, is not as off-putting to voters as it may once have been). Though talented, Mr Johnson is himself a flawed and erratic candidate, who may, as mayor, inflict as much embarrassment on his party as Mr Livingstone once did on his. For the moment, however, the discomfort is all Mr Brown’s.