A victory for protest and a defeat for IDS

England's voters have raised two fingers to politicians of every traditional stripe. That, as much as the relative performance of the main parties, holds the secret to what happened yesterday. While Iain Duncan Smith is the party leader with most reason to be downcast today, none can be happy with a pervasive determination to cast protest votes across England. The most visible symbols of this came from Burnley, Hartlepool and Kidderminster, where voters elected, respectively, two British National Party councillors, a selfstyled "monkey" as mayor and a hospital action group to run the local council.

However, these victories mark only a tiny, if exotic, tip of an electoral iceberg. As the seemingly contradictory results flowed in, with each party soaring one minute only to slump the next, a curious pattern started to emerge. With only occasional exceptions, the party locally in power lost ground. Thus the Conservatives lost Eastbourne and Worthing, while Labour lost Hull and Norwich, and the Liberal Democrats surrendered Richmond and Sheffield.

This may be linked to the unexpected rise in turnout. True, at 35 per cent, it was still disappointing, but it managed to climb five points above the dreadful 30 per cent of two years ago. And it looks as if the extra voters were often motivated by a desire to protest against poor local services. This was especially true in London, where Labour suffered a triple whammy. First, it has been the dominant party in the boroughs. Second, the Government's record over street crime and public transport faces wider criticism in the capital than elsewhere. Finally, Gordon Brown's Budget seems to have met with less acclaim in a city where average pay rates are higher than elsewhere.

Overall, according to the BBC's projection, London swung by almost 10 per cent from Labour to Tory, compared with last year's general election, while the rest of England swung by only four per cent. Indeed, the Conservatives outpolled Labour in the capital by two points - exactly as projected in the Evening Standard/YouGov poll on Wednesday.

However, the Tories failed to convert this into council victories on the scale they might have hoped. They now control eight boroughs outright (compared with four after the 1998 elections), but Labour, with 15 boroughs (down from 18 four years ago), still runs twice as much of the capital.

The Liberal Democrats still control three - regaining Kingston, but losing nextdoor Richmond to the Tories.

More generally, Labour lost ground to the Lib-Dems in inner London - losing Southwark, being hammered in Islington, and suffering serious but less fatal losses in Camden, Brent and Haringey - while losing out to the Tories in such outer suburbs as Enfield, Havering, Hounslow and Redbridge.

As in the rest of Britain, there were exceptions. Labour captured Bexley for the first time in 30 years and made big gains in Hackney. But, overall, yesterday provided Labour with its worst set of borough results since the elections fought 30 years ago in the middle of the Falklands war.

As for the national picture, the BBC projects the results to a nationwide share of Conservative 34 per cent, Labour 33, Lib-Dems 27. To overtake Labour looks like a good result for the Tories, but nobody at Conservative Central Office should be fooled. This is worse than two years ago, when William Hague was party leader. Then the equivalent projection put the Tories on 37 per cent, eight points ahead of Labour. This "triumph" did nothing to prevent the party suffering its second successive landslide defeat a year later.

In reality, had yesterday been a general election, Labour would undoubtedly have won another big victory. For the Tories to boast of real recovery, they would have had to be nudging 40 per cent of the projected national vote; and to claim to be on course for general election victory, they would need to be nearer 45 per cent. Yesterday's results mean they actually slipped back from the position they reached during the last Parliament. Iain Duncan Smith must know in his heart that he was last night's biggest loser.