A Dime a Dozen Blog

Labour falls to third place in yesterday’s local elections in the UK, below the Tories and the LibDems:

Gordon Brown today acknowledged a “bad night” for Labour after the party’s national share of the vote plummeted to 24% – its lowest level since the 1960s – in his first electoral test as prime minister.

With about two thirds of the results declared, the Conservatives had 44% of the national share of the vote – enough to give David Cameron a landslide majority if it were replicated in a general election.

The Liberal Democrats, on 25% of the vote, pushed Labour into third place for only the second time in their history.

Ominous times for the left. What’s even better? Red Ken’s gone. Poor Londoners – they won’t have Ken Livingstone to kick around any more. If you don’t know, him here’s the highlights reel:

On capitalism:
“World wide capitalism kills more people everyday then Hitler did. And he was crazy.”

On democracy:
“If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it”

To a Jewish reporter:
“Actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You’re just doing it because you’re paid to, aren’t you?”

On Iraq:
“Under foreign occupation and denied a right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs … I suspect that if it had happened here in England we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves,”

“But I don’t just denounce suicide bombers. I denounce those governments which use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy.”

All the latest on the election are here.