No hiding place for Labour

Today there was no hiding place for Gordon Brown and the rest of the Labour Party, writes London Editor John Hipwood. They repeatedly told us that the local election results were "disappointing".They weren't. They were dreadful.

Early projections suggested that the governing party would come third in the national share of the vote - just behind the Liberal Democrats and about 20 points behind the Conservatives.

That's worse than anything inflicted on Tony Blair after Iraq started to go wrong, and worse than last year when Mr Blair was on the way out of 10 Downing Street.

So how must Labour MPs be feeling this morning? They thought changing their leader would give them a boost, and briefly it did. So much so, in fact, that some clever dicks nearly persuaded Mr Brown to call an autumn election. But the "new" man's popularity has fallen fast.

Times are tough just now. The cost of basics - food, petrol/diesel, gas and electricity have spiralled; and young couples and single people cannot get a mortgage to buy their first homes.

Yet for too long Mr Brown kept blaming the world economic downturn, the credit crunch, international oil prices and the rest, and telling us that everything was OK really and that he would continue to take the "right long term decisions for the future".

If he understood what "ordinary, hard working families" were going through, he didn't show it. Then, to top it all, he increased income tax for the lowest paid workers.

Belatedly, the Prime Minister said he was "listening" and his deputy Harriet Harman seemed to see the light today when she said the Government had to focus on family finances.

You might read something at the weekend about Labour agitation not just for a change of style and for a raft of new policies, but for a change of leadership. That won't happen. If Gordon Brown was the right man for the job 12 months ago and there was thought to be no need to skip a generation then, to change now would be a complete admission of failure.

And what now for David Cameron? There was no triumphalism from the Tory leader today. He has to convince still sceptical voters that the Conservatives have the individuals and the policies to be trusted with people's votes in the Big One.

What is still not clear is whether 2008 is another 2004 when Labour did badly but recovered 12 months later, or is it another 1995, a tipping point, when the nation finally showed it was fed up after 16 years of Tory rule, and voters went on to deliver a landslide for Labour two years later?

The signs today were that it was the latter.