Local Elections: Capital provides crumbs of comfort

IT could have been even worse for the Tories in London, of course. There had been genuine fears among some senior Conservatives that Wandsworth would fall. That it and the other Tory London 'showpiece', Westminster, did not fall to Labour is a comfort to John Major. So too is the fact that Labour failed to win Brent, an inner-city borough where the residual irritation at the party's past extremism appears to have taken its toll.

However, the outcome cannot fail to worry the Tories. As the results - many too late for yesterday's morning newspapers - came in, it became clear that Labour's gains in the capital are a key part of the story of the Tories' worst night of elections in living memory.

It was a mixed picture for Labour too: the party held on to Southwark, which the Liberal Democrats had some hope of gaining. But the Liberal Democrats have the same number of seats as Labour in Lambeth with every sign of traditional Labour supporters turning against their famously unpopular council.

Equally, it was the Liberal Democrats who took 10 seats from the Tories - and four from Labour - in Bromley where Labour opposition was badly squeezed. And they took eight seats from Labour in Islington, in what for Labour could be an ominous revival of the strong SDP base of the early and mid-1980s in the borough. The Liberal Democrats took long-targeted Kingston.

The picture in London illustrates an important point about the rivalry between the two Opposition parties. Where one, like the Liberal Democrats in Bromley, has an existing base, disgruntled anti-Tory voters are likely to turn to it as the best means of getting rid of the Conservatives.

But that can work for Labour too. Haringey and Hackney have not enjoyed a reputation as the most popular London boroughs. Yet Labour held each comfortably, gaining 14 seats from the Tories in Haringey and wiping them out in the process.

In Tower Hamlets, Labour triumphed partly thanks to a skilful campaign which warned owner- occupiers that BNP victories would bring the value of houses down and targeting Yuppie voters put off by the messy strife within the Liberal Democrats over claims of racism. One Porsche owner turned up at the Labour committee rooms offering to ferry old ladies to the polls.

But the most important results may prove to have been in outer London. The victories in Croydon and Enfield demonstrated Labour as a party fit for former Tories to back; less noticed, but equally significant are the gains Labour made in seats such as Merton which they only narrowly held in 1990.

Among the 11 seats Labour took off the Tories were some in well- heeled middle-class areas which Labour would never have conceived of winning a decade ago. Some of those neighbourhoods have more in common with parts of Surrey or Kent than they do with inner London.

Trying to extend their territory into the South-east beyond London is what Labour's drive for general election victory in 1996 or 1997 will be all about.