Conservative Elected London Mayor
Boris Johnson's Victory Part of Strong Backlash Against Labor, Gordon Brown

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 3, 2008

LONDON, May 2 -- Journalist-turned-politician Boris Johnson was elected London mayor on Friday, capping his Conservative Party's nationwide stomping of the ruling Labor Party in a rebuke to the leadership of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

"Let's get cracking tomorrow -- let's have a drink tonight!" Johnson, 43, a famously playful iconoclast instantly recognizable for his rebellious blond hair, said in a midnight acceptance speech at City Hall.

Johnson, who becomes London's first Conservative mayor, soundly defeated two-term Labor incumbent Ken Livingstone on a day when Labor finished an anemic third nationally behind the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats -- Labor's worst local results in 40 years.

Analysts said the party's dismal national showing was largely due to shaky public confidence in Brown, who took office last summer. As the British economy suffers fallout from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, Brown's approval ratings have sagged to 28 percent amid fears that he lacks in leadership and direction.

Voters took generous helpings of revenge on Brown and Labor in what the Independent newspaper called "The May Day Massacre." The Daily Express headline quipped: "Brown and Out."

In elections for more than 4,000 local seats across England and Wales, the Conservatives finished with 44 percent of the popular vote, far ahead of the Liberal Democrats with 25 and Labor with 24, according to a BBC analysis.

"We are renewing the Conservative Party," David Cameron, the clearly buoyant Conservative Party leader, told reporters Friday afternoon as counting proceeded, insisting that the vote was a show of confidence in his party and not simply a vote against Labor.

While voting in local races is not a precise predictor of voting in general elections , analysts said momentum was clearly with the Conservatives ahead of national elections that must be held within the next two years.

"This is catastrophic news for the Labor Party," said Philip Cowley, a professor of politics at the University of Nottingham. "You can see it in the faces of the Labor politicians -- they all know this is a disastrous result."

Cowley said Labor's performance had an ominous historical precedent. Its share of the vote, he noted, was slightly worse than the Conservative Party's showing in the 1995 local elections-- two years before the party was routed from power nationally by Labor, led by a young newcomer, Tony Blair.

Brown's challenge now is to keep Cameron and the Conservatives from ending Labor's 11 years in power.

"I think for a lot of people in the Labor Party, there is a feeling that Brown is not what they thought they were getting," he said. "Astonishingly, a lot of them thought he would be their savior."

The Conservative wave washed across Britain from the wealthy counties of southern England to mining towns in Wales. But it was the London race that captured the public's imagination in recent weeks as two of Britain's most outsize political personalities battled in a razor-close race.

More than 2.4 million Londoners, about 45 percent of registered voters, turned out to cast ballots Thursday, compared with about a third in the rest of the country. The capital city turnout was also a sharp increase over 2004 and 2000, when the mayor's job was created.

While the London race was ostensibly about crime, transportation and housing issues, it was mainly a referendum on two controversial personalities. The most passionate votes, analysts said, were those cast against either Johnson or Livingstone.

Johnson is a product of the elite Eton School and Oxford University who spent years working for Conservative-oriented newspapers and magazines before becoming a Conservative Party member of Parliament in 2001.

He is best known for his antics as a guest on popular British television programs and his often slightly off-color wit. Despite remarkable ease with multisyllabic words rarely used outside PhD theses, Johnson has a long history of embarrassing and sometimes offensive gaffes.

Livingstone, 62, is a streetwise rebel from inner-city London, a tough and shrewd politician whose admiration for Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez earned him the nickname Red Ken.

Friday night at London City Hall, a modern glass building on the banks of the Thames, Johnson's supporters celebrated while Livingstone's were melancholy -- one elderly couple said they came out to "wave one last goodbye to Ken."

"Ken probably wishes he wasn't part of Labor right now," said Rob Cottrell, 35, a teacher who came to soak up the election-night atmosphere. "Ken is a straight shooter, and it gets him in trouble, but I like that. Boris is more of a playful personality, and that's what people want, some personality."

Madeleine Lee, 30, another teacher, said Livingstone "hasn't done enough" with his eight years in office."

"But you don't know what you're going to get with Boris," she said. "He can perform, but can he deliver? It's the unknown that's concerning."

Special correspondent Karla Adam contributed to this report.