THE TORY high command will rally around Mr John Major today after a night of massive defeats in the English local elections. The latest opinion before the general election left the Conservatives with a projected 27 per cent share of the vote - 17 points behind Labour and just two ahead of the Liberal Democrats.
Results declared from 100 of the 150 councils contested yesterday showed Labour with 330 seats gained, and the Liberal Democrats with 102, while the Tories had lost 400. At midnight, as counting continued across the country, the BBC was predicting the Conservatives could lose some 600 of the 1,166 seats the party was defending yesterday.
Losses on that scale would further erode any lingering belief among Conservative MPs that Mr Major can deliver a filth general election victory, and are bound to strengthen demands for a radical change in policy - particularly on tax and the EU - if not for a change of leadership.
Mr Michael Heseltine, the Deputy Prime Minister, claimed the improvement on last year's "worst ever" Conservative performance - by an estimated two per cent - was proof that "the Tory recovery which we have been talking about has been maintained".
And he insisted the situation was similar to that which the party had faced in 1986 and 1991, before going on to win the general elections of the following years. "The idea that this has anything to do with the general election is to spit in the face of the reality," he declared.
But Prof Anthony King dismissed the analogy, pointing out that the Conservatives and Labour had been level pegging in the local elections of 1986 and 1991, and that the Tories were well ahead of Labour in 1983. Despite the modest improvement on last year, Prof King said "this is still going to be one of their worst ever years in local government."
And there were the early sounds of alarm bells ringing at Westminster, as the Conservatives suffered "wipe outs in Oxford, Harlow, Stevenage, Wigan, Hastings, Newcastle and Tamworth.
Mr John Redwood, last year's defeated leadership challenger, said voters were plainly worried about the big issues of health, law and order and the EU.
A crumb of comfort for Mr Major lay in the Conservative success in fighting off the Labour challenge in his own Huntingdon constituency. But Labour took control of Peterborough, home of the Tory party chairman, Dr Brian Mawhinney. And the Tories were all but wiped out in Basildon in Essex, the totem of Mr Major's 1992 election success.