John Curtice: Labour's loss takes shine off Tory gains

No sooner had the polls closed did Crispin Blunt unsheathe the dagger that was designed to bring Iain Duncan Smith's leadership of the Conservative Party to an end. But by the time the local election votes had been counted just a few hours later, the dagger proved to be blunt.

By recording more than 500 gains, the Conservatives passed just about every test that had been set for them, ensuring that Mr Duncan Smith had the ammunition he needed to survive. Yet in truth, it was not so much a night of Conservative gains as Labour losses. Labour's vote was typically six points down on where it stood four years ago. In contrast, the Conservatives were two points up, and doing no better this year than they were in the last round of local elections 12 months ago. If Tory MPs believed before Thursday that their party had problems, there seems no reason why they should change that view.

But just how did the Conservatives manage to gain so many seats on so modest a performance? First, the Liberal Democrats only made a moderate advance of three percentage points on their position four years ago. And they tended to reserve their best performances for safe Labour wards where they could do little harm to the Conservatives. As a result, the gains the Conservatives made from Labour were not counterbalanced by big losses to the Liberal Democrats in the way that much of the pre-polling day speculation had suggested they would be.

So by doing little more than standing still, the Tories profited from Labour misfortune without suffering the costs of a substantial Liberal Democrat advance. But at 35 per cent of the projected national vote, the Conservative performance did not even match that of William Hague 12 months before the last general election, let alone the 40 per cent plus performances regularly achieved by Labour in the 1992-97 Conservative government. The lack of substantial advance was even more apparent in the Scotland Parliament elections, where the Conservatives did little more than maintain their support of four years ago.

Mr Blunt's intervention did help take the spotlight off Labour, for which Tony Blair will doubtless be grateful. Labour's fall in support in England was no disaster, but it did confirm the message of recent opinion polls that the Government is rather more unpopular now than it was at this stage of the last parliament. And while Labour bucked the declining trend in Wales (though not in Scotland) it again failed to secure an overall majority in the Assembly.

Of particular note in the wake of the Iraqi war were further signs of the strains that Mr Blair's style of leadership can impose on the party's support. Not only did the party lose a lot of support in its heartlands, it also seems to have suffered an above-average drop in local council areas with a relatively high Muslim population.

In truth, Thursday posed important challenges to all of Britain's mainstream parties. The BNP managed to improve on its headline gains of two years ago, becoming the second largest party in Burnley and recording a six-point increase in its share of the vote in those wards it fought 12 months ago. Asylum-seekers seems certain to remain an important issue.

In Scotland, voters turned their Parliament into a political rainbow. The far-left Scottish Socialists secured six MSPs and the Greens seven by just breaking the crucial 6 per cent barrier on the party list vote.

Three independents won seats in the Parliament as well as a pensioners' list candidate.

Together with the failure to persuade 52 per cent of Scots to vote – there was a turn-out of about 40 per cent in Wales – the result suggests that either voters did not appreciate the narrow range of choices offered them by the main parties, or that they regard the Edinburgh Parliament as sufficiently unimportant that they feel able to experiment with their vote.

But if devolution was served a warning notice, there was no sign that it may prove a stepping stone to independence.

Both the Scottish and the Welsh nationalists fell back heavily. At least the United Kingdom is one institution that looks stronger this weekend.

John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University