Reasons to be cheerful, part 3

Since Thursday's elections the focus of most of the media has been on the outcome of the parliamentary elections. There's been precious little coverage of the council elections, held at the same time. In London these local elections have greatly boosted Labour's power base, a fact that hasn't escaped the notice of London blogger Dave Hill:

The results of Thursday's London borough elections can be quickly summarised: Labour soared, the Conservatives slipped and the Liberal Democrats fell. Labour now has full control of 17 councils, a huge increase of nine, damaging both its main rivals in the process. The Tories gained one and consolidated in their strongholds, but have lost three where they were in overall control and had their numbers depleted in boroughs where they'd been working in coalitions. The chances of these again featuring in our Town Halls have been all but destroyed, because in most cases the Tories' partners had been Lib Dems, and it is they who have lost the most seats of all.

Dave Hill concludes

Set this alongside the successful defending of several key Commons seats [by Labour] and the fact that in parliamentary terms the swing towards the Tories in the capital was just 2.5 percent - about half that in the country as a whole - and you can see that there may be good grounds for thinking that a Labour comeback for the surely imminent post-Brown era may already have taken root in London's ever-churning political soil.

Full blog post here.