Conservatives make progress in the capital

The Tories performed much better in London than anywhere else, with a swing of 10 per cent dwarfing their average swing of 4 per cent nationally.

Concerns about the recent surge in street crime, high council taxes and transport appeared to help the party win six new town halls.

It regained councils such as Enfield, the scene of Michael Portillo's 1997 general election defeat, and Barnet, Margaret Thatcher's former backyard.

Richmond, run by the Liberal Democrats for 18 years and its main stronghold in south-west London, went Conservative amid concern over the highest council tax in the capital.

Labour suffered badly, losing Lambeth, Harrow and Waltham Forest to no overall control and seeing Redbridge, Enfield and Barnet fall to the Tories.

The Conservatives repeated their general election success in the Essex-London border region, becoming the biggest party in Havering. Of the five parliamentary seats that the Tories took from Labour last June, two were in the area, at Upminster and Romford.

Enfield saw Labour's eight-year affair with the council end in the face of a 12 per cent swing, with high council tax and poor services in the leafy borough seen as key to the changeover.

However, the Tories failed to win back prize councils such as Hammersmith and Fulham, Hillingdon and Croydon, all marginal areas they would need to win to clinch a general election victory.

Another surprise was Labour's increase in vote in Hackney, where the Liberal Democrats saw their councillors fall from 15 to three and the Tories lost two of their 11 seats. Labour said it was surprised its opponents did not campaign harder on the controversial private finance plans for the Tube.

Overall turn-out in London, at 30 per cent, was lower than the rest of the country, perhaps underlining the widely held belief that Labour is normally hit harder than other parties by voter apathy.

Further evidence of this phenomenon came in Bexley, where Labour won power from no overall control after a determined effort to mobilise its core voters against the threat of seven British National Party candidates.

All three mainstream parties were cheered by the failure of the BNP to gain a foothold in London despite running a total of 23 candidates.

Despite the Liberal Democrats' loss of Richmond, they were delighted to hold on to Islington, where Labour had launched a determined push, and to regain Kingston from no overall control.

The Liberal Democrats failed to meet their own prediction of seizing Southwark from its minority Labour administration, although it ended up the biggest party.

With London forming the key battleground for any general election, the Tories were dismayed in 1998 not to make any headway and will be privately disappointed at the limited nature of this week's advances. However Steve Norris, who was the Conservative candidate for London Mayor, insisted that the Tories had done reasonably well in the capital. "I think we won in all the seats where the Liberals failed to put candidates up," he said. "We are now head-to-head with Labour in the popular vote in London, about 35 per cent to 35 per cent."

Nick Raynsford, the minister for London, agreed that the turn-out was disappointing but poinyed out that the capital had the highest turn-out for local elections four years ago. "The rest of the country has improved. London hasn't," he said.