THE DEPTH of the Tory humiliation in the local elections is revealed by the figure – more than 800 seats lost, only 15 councils won out of 189 contested.
Projections for June's European elections give the Tories as few as 12 seats against 54 for Labour and 14 for the Liberal Democrats.
Up and down the country defeated Tory mayors are screaming blue murder; Major will be replaced, the only question is when.
Evidently the vote reflected mass anger with Tory policies – higher taxes, the attack on the NHS and the rest of the welfare state and the chronic failure to get out of recession and mass unemployment.
All these failures would have meant a bad result for the Tories, but what made their defeat so crushing was the chronic disunity in the Tory party over Europe. This is an historic divide in the Conservative party; and in the run-up to European elections it is disastrous.
Beyond the expected rebuff for the Tories there are important factors to note from the results.
The main gainer in terms of seats were the Liberal Democrats. Three factors come into play here. First, they were starting from a low point – during the 1990 local elections the Lib Dems were still suffering the fall-out from the collapse of the Alliance and the Liberal-SDP merger. Labour was starting from a high-tide in local government but still increased its vote by three per cent.
The Lib Dems won seats heavily in rural and prosperous southern areas where disaffected Tories naturally turn to them rather than to Labour. However, the Liberals made progress in some inner-city Labour-controlled boroughs, where the right-wing has imposed harsh cuts policies and witch-hunted the left.
This was the case in Lambeth, where there is now no overall control, and Islington where the Lib Dems now have 14 seats. Thus the Liberals were generally able to make gains against those in power, whether Tory or Labour.
Against the trend of Liberal Democrats gains they lost Tower Hamlets to Labour following the scandal over Lib Dem racism. While BNP councillor Derek Beackon was thankfully defeated and the threat that the fascists could win three seats on the Isle of Dogs never materialised, this doesn't mean that the BNP have gone away.
In fact their votes went up, and they got 10,000 votes overall in the East End. The Labour victory and the defeat of the BNP and racist Liberal councillors was won by the mobilisation of local anti-racists and the labour movement, in particular security measures taken to ensure that Asians could vote without racist attack.
After the local elections the Tories are a chronically divided and weak government. They will now, sooner or later, be forced into another humiliating change of leader.
The whole labour movement must now campaign for a general election to force the Tories out.