LONDON (AFP) — Britain's governing Labour Party suffered its worst local election results in 40 years Saturday with widespread losses, including the key political prize of running London.
The Conservative Party's journalist-turned-lawmaker Boris Johnson topped off a depressing day for Labour, seizing London's City Hall and control of its 11-billion-pound (14-billion-euro, 22-billion-dollar) budget.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the losses in local elections held Thursday in England and Wales and London were "bad" and "disappointing", linking the effects of the global credit crunch to the centre-left party's defeat.
"We have lessons to learn from that and then we will move forward," he added.
A fight back is expected as early as next week, when a new legislative programme is outlined.
But the first editions of Saturday's newspapers suggested the Brown had an uphill battle to turn round what many saw as more than simply mid-term blues and an indicator of a Tory renaissance after 11 years in opposition.
Local government specialist Tony Travers, from the London School of Economics, detected growing disenchantment among the very voters that helped Labour secure a landslide general election victory on May 1, 1997.
"Taking England and Wales as a whole, it is clear the suburbs deserted Brown," he wrote in The Guardian.
"Perhaps this is the real fallout from the removal of his predecessor: Tony Blair's Conservatives have gone home."
Tory leader David Cameron, refused to predict that it meant they would win the next general election, which is due before mid-2010 at the latest.
"I think this is a very big moment for the Conservative Party, but I don't want anyone to think that we would deserve to win an election just on the back of a failing government," he said.
Newspaper editorials said that while a Tory government was now a possibility, Cameron now had to put flesh on the bones of his vaguely sketched-out policies to be a credible "government-in-waiting".
The loss of London was a blow to the government, which has been fighting criticism of its recent economic record, botched tax reforms and public anger at rising fuel, food and energy costs and falling house prices.
Six months ago Labour's Ken Livingstone, mayor since the post's inception in 2000, seemed set for a smooth re-election for a third term -- but Johnson surprised many by the discipline of his campaign.
The 43-year-old had hitherto been mainly known as a bumbling, blond-haired eccentric, sometime panellist on television game shows with a tendency to put his foot in his mouth.
His campaign -- "A Change For The Better" -- focused heavily on claims of cronyism surrounding Livingstone as well as wider, national issues and growing disaffection with the government.
As the most powerful Tory in the land, he will now be London's public face in the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games and set policy on transport, housing, the environment, business and tackling crime.
"I do not for one minute believe that this election shows that London has been transformed overnight into a Conservative city," he said in his acceptance speech.
"But I do hope it does show that the Conservatives have changed into a party that can again be trusted."
In the local polls held only in England and Wales, the Tories took a 44 percent share of the national vote -- enough to secure them a sizeable parliamentary majority if the results were repeated at a general election.
The Liberal Democrats took 25 percent and Labour 24 percent, the BBC said.
With results from all 159 local councils counted, the Conservatives controlled 12 more at 65, Labour lost control of nine to leave 18, and the Liberal Democrats were up one at 12.
Worryingly for Brown, Labour lost seats in key heartlands such as south Wales, while the Conservatives made gains beyond their southern England powerbase in the north.
Senior government ministers insisted Brown was still the best man for the job. But some rank-and-file Labour members of parliament were more outspoken.
"Gordon has committed spectacular own-goals and the public is punishing him for it," said Derek Wyatt.
Fellow backbencher Ian Gibson said Brown was running out of time to prove he could turn things around.
"I'll give him six months to do it or there will be really hard talking," he warned.
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