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LONDON : British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's leadership was thrown into question Saturday after his ruling Labour party suffered a local election rout capped by the Conservatives' victory in the London mayor's race.
As eccentric lawmaker Boris Johnson took the plaudits for ousting maverick left-winger Ken Livingstone in the capital, senior Labour figures were assessing the wreckage from a disastrous election performance.
The loss of more than 300 council seats across England and Wales came in Brown's first test at the ballot box since he took over from Tony Blair in June.
The British media called it a "May Day Massacre" for Labour and said Brown faced an uphill battle to stave off the opposition Conservatives ahead of general elections which must take place by mid-2010.
The prime minister will start his fightback with a series of TV interviews Sunday and was expected to outline a new legislative programme next week.
One Labour backbencher warned him to improve fast or face "really hard talking" and even senior government figures such as Home Secretary Jacqui Smith admitted voters had given Labour a "kick in the backside."
Brown himself conceded Friday that Labour had performed badly, but blamed concerns about the global credit crunch for the centre-left party's defeat.
"We have lessons to learn from that and then we will move forward," he said.
The loss in London epitomized the scale of the defeat for the government, which has faced criticism of its economic record, botched tax reforms and public anger at rising fuel, food and energy costs.
Johnson, with his mop of blond hair and flowery language, was considered a joke candidate at the start of the campaign, but he secured a six-percentage-point victory over Livingstone who until recently seemed set to comfortably win a third term.
Johnson, 43, was a journalist for the Daily Telegraph newspaper and edited right-wing magazine The Spectator alongside his duties as a member of parliament but he came to wider public attention when presenting a satirical TV game show.
He has displayed a tendency for gaffes, for example in 2004 when he accused the city of Liverpool of wallowing in "victim status" after hostage Ken Bigley was killed in Iraq.
But his campaign for mayor surprised many, focusing on claims of cronyism surrounding Livingstone, vowing to tackle crime and seizing on disaffection with the government.
After a ceremony Saturday to accept office at London's City Hall, he pledged to "lead the fightback" against violent crime, pointing out that a 15-year-old boy was stabbed to death in the capital just hours earlier.
He found time for several of his trademark comments, joking that as he did not officially take up office until Sunday it gave the outgoing administration time to cover its tracks.
"I imagine there are shredding machines quietly puffing and panting away in various parts of the building, and quite right too," he quipped.
He said in his acceptance speech Friday that he hoped the May 1 elections showed "that the Conservatives have changed into a party that can again be trusted", 11 years after they were voted out of government.
One Labour heavyweight, former foreign minister Jack Straw, said the party had alienated its traditional working-class voters by scrapping the lowest, 10-pence (13 euro cents, 20 US cents) tax band.
But he insisted Labour could recover to win a fourth consecutive term in government.
"I am very clear that the situation in two years' time will be different from where we are today," Straw told BBC radio.
Veteran backbencher Ian Gibson warned however that Brown was running out of time to prove he could make a successful transition from a widely admired finance minister to prime minister.
"I'll give him six months to do it or there will be really hard talking," Gibson said.
Commentators predicted that the election drubbing signalled the start of the end for the Labour government.
"After an era of dominance that has endured since the mid-1990s, Labour is about to enter the twilight. It threatens to be a slow death," wrote Jonathan Freedland in the left-leaning Guardian newspaper.
In the local polls, the Conservatives took 44 percent of the national vote -- enough to secure a sizeable parliamentary majority if the results were repeated at a general election.
Labour slumped to third place with 24 percent, behind the Liberal Democrats on 25 percent.
- AFP /ls
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