Ken Livingstone has become the first directly-elected mayor of London. The independent left-winger, who was expelled from the Labour party because he stood against their official candidate, got over 40% of the vote. The Conservatives came second and Labour came third in what is seen as a political embarrassment for Tony Blair. In a conciliatory gesture today, Mr Livingstone said that he would be re-applying as soon as possible for membership of the Labour party.
The final declaration of the result of the mayoral ballot was delayed for several hours because of technical problems overnight with a new electronic vote-counting machine. But there were no surprises as the results began to pour in to the central London election centre this morning. They all bore out what the opinion polls had been saying for weeks. Ken Livingstone had 40% of first preference votes and won easily. In Hillsborough for talks with the Northern parties, Tony Blair reacted by saying that his view of Ken Livingstone had not changed but that he was going to make sure that it worked for the people of London. In the elections for the new devolved London assembly the Tories did better than expected, but most of the attention will now focus on how well Mayor Livingstone can work with the Blair administration in tackling key issues in London such as funding the public transport system.
In local council elections across England the Conservative party has made sweeping gains at the expense of Labour. The Conservatives have picked up almost 600 extra council seats but Labour still remains the biggest power in local government. The local elections are the last big test of electoral opinion before the next British general election, now widely expected next year, and the results represent a 10% swing from Labour to the Tories compared with the results of the last general election. The gloss has been taken off the Tories' successes however, by the loss of a Westminster parliamentary by-election at Romsey in Hampshire to the Liberal Democrats. There, Labour lost its deposit.
