John Curtice: Look beyond the headlines - these polls do not mean the end of Labour

Gordon Brown will inherit a party that is badly, but perhaps not quite fatally, wounded. Meanwhile, he faces a Conservative Party that is struggling to make progress across the country as a whole, and a Liberal Democrat party that has lost momentum. These are the mixed messages to emerge from Thursday's bumper round of local and devolved elections.

In England, Labour avoided digging itself any deeper into the electoral hole into which it has plunged in recent local elections. On average, its vote was up a little on last year - enough to pull up its projected national share from the record low of 26 per cent it scored in 2006 to 27 per cent.

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But calamity was not avoided in Scotland, albeit by only the narrowest of margins. The SNP leader Alex Salmond inflicted on Labour its first significant defeat north of the border for 50 years - by just a single seat. Although Labour's share of the vote fell by only two and a half points since 2003 on the constituency vote, a nine- to 10-point advance in SNP support proved enough to dislodge Labour from top spot.

Nevertheless, Mr Salmond's path to power will not be straightforward as even if he can strike a deal with the Liberal Democrats, the parties together are two seats short of a majority.

Meanwhile, in Wales, the party received an unambiguous drubbing. It was left with just 26 seats - not only well down on the 30 seats neededto control the Assembly but even fewer than the 28 seats won in 1999 - a result that then was regarded as an unprecedented disaster.

The Tories' support barely increased on last year, and certainly too little to push its projected national vote to more than last year's 40 per cent. The limited nature of the Tory performance was masked by the fact that most of the seats up for grabs on Thursday were last fought in 2003, when the Conservatives won only 35 per cent of the projected national vote.

Advance elsewhere was less apparent. In Wales, the Tory vote was up by just two points since 2003 on both the constituency and the list vote, less than the five-point increase registered in English local elections over the same period. In Scotland, the party's vote fell slightly compared with 2003.

Whatever impact the Cameron effect has had in England there is no sign of it reaching north of the border.

These were always going to be difficult local elections for the Lib Dems. The party's support in England fell, putting the party on the equivalent of 26 per cent, its weakest performance for six years. In Scotland and Wales, its support was little different from four years ago. Yet thanks to proportional representation it could end up in power. And whatever government is formed in Scotland, it is likely the Lib Dems will be part of it. Being in the centre clearly has its advantages.

John Curtice is a professor of politics at Strathclyde University