Lib Dem leadership accused of putting councils in position of having to defend cuts they did not believe in
Hundreds of Liberal Democrat councillors have been ejected from England's town halls as they paid the price for their national leadership's deficit reduction programme in Westminster.
The leader of the Liberal Democrats in local government, Richard Kemp, blamed the Tory communities secretary, Eric Pickles, for frontloading cuts to councils' budgets and forcing them to slash services just weeks before the poll. But he also accused his own party's leadership of failing to stand up for councils, and putting them in a position where they had to defend cuts they did not believe in.
He called on the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, to lobby to have the cuts scheduled for the next three years backloaded, so that they could make efficiency savings instead of slashing services in order to avoid another rout in the local elections next year.
Gary Long, the ousted leader of the Lib Dems on Nottingham city council, who lost all their six seats, called on Clegg to step aside. "I'm in favour of the coalition, but I think he's run it very badly and in my view he should resign immediately," he said.
The Lib Dems' pain at losing 695 seats, after 270 of the 279 councils in the elections had declared, was made worse by the fact that their senior partners in the coalition, the Conservatives, confounded all expectations by winning 81 extra seats. The Tories won control of North Norfolk from the Lib Dems, and North Lincolnshire, South Devon and Ryedale in north Yorkshire from no overall control. They fought off Labour's challenge in Trafford, not conceding a single seat, and in Dover, which Labour had targeted heavily.
Labour have won 569 seats so far, reversing many losses made when the seats were last up for re-election in 2007. But it falls short of predictions that they should take 1,300 and they also appear to have failed to make significant inroads into the Tory south.
The Labour wins and Conservative resilience saw the north-south divide between the two harden and the Lib Dems pushed out to the periphery. The Lib Dems lost control of a swath of northern towns won during Labour's unpopularity over Iraq.
In Sheffield, where Clegg is MP for Sheffield Hallam, Labour took control from the Lib Dems. It also won Hull from the Lib Dems, where the council leader, Carl Minns, lost his seat.
In Manchester, the 10 Lib Dems who stood all lost, as did 12 in Liverpool, where the former council leader, Lord Storey, was beaten in Wavertree by Labour's 18-year-old candidate, Jake Morrison.
In Birmingham, England's biggest council currently controlled by a Lib Dem-Conservative coalition, the combination of seats up for re-election made it impossible for Labour to seize control this year, but they are now on course do so in 2012.
Labour took control of Leeds, Bolton, Stoke, Telford and Newcastle, where there was a 22% swing to Labour. Labour took control of Bury after a crucial seat, Ramsbottom, was determined by drawing lots.
Labour dipped a symbolic toe into the south with a win in Gravesham, which Ed Miliband had visited twice during the campaign and where he spoke to reporters today, and in the east, where they took Ipswich. But the party failed by one seat to take Thurrock, and lost a concerted attempt to win in Dover.
In Bristol, where the Lib Dems lost control of the council, the group leader Barbara Janke told the BBC: "Obviously there is a huge national factor, it's been a very bad night for the Liberal Democrats and there's no escaping that. "We really feel that Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have been rather unfairly blamed for anything that's wrong with the coalition, but then there is a challenge for us to explain the policies, communicate them and make sure people understand the very positive things that we are doing."
There were small pockets of hope for the Lib Dems though. In Eastleigh, where the increasingly rebellious energy secretary Chris Huhne is MP, the party gained three seats, including one from Labour.
Paul Scriven, the Liberal Democrat leader of Sheffield council up until Labour seized control today, said: "Maybe in three or four years' time, people will look back and say they were a little bit harsh to the Liberal Democrats."
Kemp has called a national meeting of Lib Dem group leaders next month to assess the damage done to the party's morale and campaigning grassroots. Clegg has been invited. There are warnings the losses in the local elections will not only weaken the Lib Dems' power locally, but decimate its activist base, making it harder for MPs to campaign for Westminster elections.
Kemp said: "We in local councils have paid the price of the cuts. One of our problems was that we were defending things that we thought were indefensible. I'm not a deficit denier, but Eric Pickles and the Department for Communities and Local Government have behaved badly and frontloaded disproportionally high cuts for councils. "We as a party got it wrong. We allowed that to happen. They've taken 28% out of our grants. If you do it 7% a year we could manage that, they chose to put 11.5% in the first year and another big cut next year. You can't make efficiency savings, you have to slash and burn. "