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LONDON - BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown is bracing himself for an electoral slap in the face on Thursday with local elections in England and Wales and a knife-edge vote in the London mayoral race.
'There is a very good chance that Labour will come third' behind both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in this week's vote, said Mr Stephen Driver, author of New Labour, a study of former prime minister Tony Blair's leadership.
'Along with everything else, this will be seen as a government which is no longer in control of events,' he said.
Some 13,000 candidates are fighting for more than 4,000 seats on 159 municipal councils and the London Assembly amid claims that poor results for Labour could spell a near fatal disaster for Mr Brown in his first electoral test since becoming prime minister last June.
A recent YouGov/Daily Telegraph poll put the main opposition Conservative Party 18 points ahead of Labour - a 21-year high and on track for a parliamentary majority if the results were repeated at a general election.
'It is difficult to think of a worse electoral and polling background to a set of local elections for Labour,' said local government specialist Tony Travers of the London School of Economics.
He believes Labour could see its share of the vote fall to about 25 per cent - a 30-year low - with severe implications for the next general election.
Despite a strong start after taking over from Mr Blair last June, Mr Brown has endured a torrid time, seeing the fortunes of his governing Labour Party and personal poll ratings plummet.
Mr Brown's Labour has trailed the opposition Conservatives in polls all year. Nurses, teachers and railway workers have gone on strike for higher wages. House prices have begun falling. A revolt by Labour lawmakers last week forced him to compromise on a tax plan.
Even advisers running his local council campaigns say voters in southern England, who put Labour's Blair in office in 1997, are shifting back to the Conservatives.
Labour officials predict they will lose 200 of 4,023 contested seats. Even Labour's London Mayor Ken Livingstone, 62, is lagging in polls, with Conservative Boris Johnson, 43, holding a double-digit lead, according to the latest surveys released yesterday.
'Once you lose your local government base, it damages your capacity in national elections,' said Professor Philip Cowley of Nottingham University in England.
While some Brown allies dismiss the likely mid-term kicking as routine, others, including Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, warn that the Prime Minister still has not found a clear message 10 months into the job.
But Mr Brown brushed aside critics yesterday and said shepherding the British economy through its current difficulties is his chief priority.
'I am going to concentrate on the job ahead, on the priorities that matter for the British people, and not on gossip or rumour, or statements made by one or two people,' he told the BBC.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BLOOMBERG, REUTERS
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