Elections threaten Gordon Brown

2008-04-28 10:36

London - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is bracing for an electoral slap in the face on Thursday with local elections in England and Wales and a knife-edge vote in the race to be London's mayor.

Some 13 000 candidates are fighting for more than 4 000 seats on 159 municipal councils and the London Assembly amid claims that poor results for Labour could spell a near fatal disaster for Brown, in his first electoral test since becoming prime minister last June.

Ken Livingstone, Labour's maverick mayor of London, also faces a tough battle to win a third term against the Conservative candidate, Boris Johnson.

Despite a strong start after taking over from Tony Blair last June, Brown has endured a torrid time, seeing the fortunes of his governing Labour Party and personal poll ratings plummet.

A YouGov/Daily Telegraph poll on Thursday put the main opposition Conservative Party 18 points ahead of Labour --a 21-year high and on track for a parliamentary majority if the results were repeated at a general election.

Labour could see vote fall

"It's difficult to think of a worse electoral and polling background to a set of local elections" for Labour, local government specialist Tony Travers, from the London School of Economics, told AFP.

"I would be surprised if Labour did not do as badly as, or slightly worse than, their performance in 2004 when they came third in the national equivalent vote share."

The comparisons with 2004 will make grim reading for Brown and his centre-left party. At the time, Blair and Labour were hit hard at the ballot box by the fall-out from the widely unpopular Iraq war.

Then, Labour lost 833 seats and control of 28 of the 94 councils where elections were held. All three major parties also saw a switch to smaller, more Eurosceptic parties in the European parliamentary elections.

This time, Travers believes Labour could see its share of the vote fall to about 25% - five percent less than in 2004 and a 30-year low - with severe implications for the next general election.

Tight race

Professor Philip Cowley, from Nottingham University in England, said: "Once you lose your local government base, it damages your capacity in national elections."

Nowhere is Labour's predicament played out more than in London, where polls indicate the Conservatives' Johnson is in a tight race for City Hall from Livingstone.

Travers sees the contest between the two mavericks as a "war by proxy" between Brown and Tory leader David Cameron, with a Johnson win likely to ratchet up pressure on Labour before the next general election.

London is seen as a benchmark of national voting intentions, particularly as Labour's three consecutive general election successes have owed much to their ability to win in the Tory heartlands of southeast England.

The capital is a big political prize: the mayor controls an annual budget of more than £11bn and his policy decisions affect 7.5 million Londoners and millions more who visit.

Further afield, national issues - plus the negative perception of Brown as a leader and growing dissatisfaction with the Labour government that has been in power since 1997 - are likely to weigh on voters.

- AFP