Government shrugs off losses but admits voters want delivery on services

The Labour Party sought to shrug off the loss of about 800 seats in Thursday's local elections in England as a dose of the "mid-term blues" and claimed it was still on course for victory at the next general election.

But the Labour high command admitted that voters were anxious to see the Government keep its promise to improve public services. It said it had failed to communicate the Government's message and needed to reach out beyond the "Westminster village" by using language that appealed to ordinary people.

At a press conference, senior Labour figures spent most of their time analysing what they said was a poor performance by the Tories that showed that Iain Duncan Smith's party was still "flatlining" and failing to make the advances needed to give it any chance of regaining power.

Ian McCartney, the Labour chairman, said: "Mid-term elections are about just how big a platform the opposition can build to mount a serious challenge for the next election.The Conservatives are nowhere near a serious challenge."

He highlighted the Tories' failure to match their performance when the same seats were contested in 1999, when they gained 1,300 seats and took 39 per cent of the vote two years before slumping to their second-worst defeat in a general election. However, Mr McCartney believed the voters wanted to see improvements to public services and had sent Labour this message: "We have seen what you are doing. We want to see more delivery."

He said: "We gave an absolute commitment to deliver improvements in public services and that is what we have got to do now. We have got to be able to show on the ground that we are delivering the changes in health and education and other public services."

The Labour chairman acknowledged that a change in style may be needed to persuade voters of the virtues of reforms such as foundation hospitals. "We have got to do it with some passion and commitment and less managerial language, more the language of community and partnership. I think that is the message for us," he said.

David Triesman, Labour's general secretary, cited the Government's repeated pledges to crack down on "anti-social behaviour" as an example of the political jargon the party should now seek to avoid. He said there was a risk Labour was failing to communicate because it was using "a private language" understood by people in Westminster but not elsewhere.

Mr Triesman said the Government could have soft-pedalled on its reforms to public services in an attempt to gain electoral advantage but had decided to drive through the changes.

He insisted: "The Tories are stuck. They are going nowhere. Last year they were on 34 per cent, this year they are on 34 per cent. Perhaps most significantly, they made no real progress in the big cities, where they are absent to any real extent, and no real progress in Scotland or Wales."

Labour played down the impact of the Iraq war on Thursday's contests, with officials saying it had been a plus in some areas and a minus in others.

Privately, they had admitted that the refusal of traditional Labour supporters in the Muslim community had probably been a factor in the party losing control in some places such as Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester and Coventry.

With many grassroots activists disaffected by the war and membership said to be dropping, Labour will have a fight on its hands in next year's local elections in its metropolitan heartlands. A bad defeat in those areas would have much bigger implications than Thursday's elections will.