Guardian UK: Johnson predicts worst elections ever for Labour

Johnson predicts worst elections ever for Labour
Johnson warns of disaster for Labour on election night

Toby Helm, Whitehall editor
The Observer, Sunday 31 May 2009


Alan Johnson, the cabinet minister widely tipped as a successor to Gordon Brown, prepared Labour for disaster at the polls as he predicted it would suffer the worst local and European election results in its history.

In a candid admission last night, the health secretary said he expected all three mainstream parties to do "badly" in Thursday's polls. But he believed that Labour would be hit hardest by the overwhelming tide of public anger over the MPs' expenses scandal. Raising his profile as a future leadership contender, he told the Observer: "If you are asking me for an honest assessment about whether recent events will have an effect, they are bound to, because we are the brand leader, we are the party of government and it will have more of an effect on us than the other parties."

Senior Tory sources predicted that Labour would suffer the humiliation of losing control of all county councils across the whole of England after Thursday. The Tory high command is confident of taking outright command of Lancashire and Staffordshire -two of the four councils that remain under Labour's power, and of depriving them of overall authority in the other two, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

With the BNP close to winning at least one seat in the European parliament and Labour at risk of being pushed into third place by Ukip, activists are questioning whether Brown can survive an electoral massacre on the scale being predicted. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/31/labour-elections-2009-alan-johnson