LABOUR is heading for its worst local election drubbing in almost 40 years this week, as voters protest at the failings of Charles Clarke and the lurid sex allegations involving John Prescott.
Two weeks ago the party was expecting a poor showing in local elections but after days of damaging revelations experts are now predicting the biggest disaster since 1968, which came months after sterling was devalued under Harold Wilson.
In London, Labour could lose up to ten of the fifteen councils it controls as local government pundits predict a “meltdown” in support for the party on Thursday.
Tony Travers, local government expert at the London School of Economics, told The Times yesterday: “I would be very surprised if the events of last week had no effect. They will definitely jog people’s minds about what they don’t like about this Government, such as chaos over asylum-seekers and sleaze.” There will be no relief for the Government over the next few days as Charles Clarke faces mounting pressure to disclose to MPs how many of 79 freed foreign prisoners convicted of serious offences have been found and detained.
Yesterday the Home Secretary spoke to the Prime Minister by phone to update him on the huge police operation to track down the foreign offenders released in Labour’s worst penal blunder since coming to power. He has refused to bow to Tory demands to make a statement in the House of Commons today.
Meanwhile, one Labour MP became the first woman in the party publicly to express party disquiet at the allegations made against John Prescott.
Geraldine Smith, the MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, said that many female colleagues in the Parliamentary party would be alarmed at the “worst sort of abuse of power” by Mr Prescott if the allegations against him are true.
“We have tried to combat that within the Labour Party for years. It is as old as Adam, the male employer taking advantage of a young female employee, and I don’t think it looks good”.
With the party facing huge losses at the polls on Thursday, Tony Blair will be joined by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, on the campaign trail over the next two days to shore up support in London.
Senior political analysts speculated that Thursday’s poll could mirror Labour’s results in 1968, when it only achieved 28.5 per cent of the vote in London while the Tories got 60.1 per cent. Mr Travers predicted that the Tories are likely to win a string of councils from Labour in the London suburbs including Merton, Croydon and Bexley.
Mr Clarke, who did not canvas for Labour in his home city of Norwich on Saturday as he feared that he would be a distraction, is planning new measures to reduce the number of foreigners in jails.
He wants all non-EU foreign nationals sentenced to more than three months in jail to be automatically considered for deportation at the end of their sentence. At present the threshold is 12 months.
The Home Secretary also wants a deal with other EU states that would allow 1,800 EU nationals in jail in England and Wales to be be transferred to their home states to serve their sentences.
Mr Clarke brushed off demands for him to resign, after the revelation that he knew that murderers and rapists had been released for three weeks before he told the Prime Minister. He said that the pressure he was under “doesn’t remotely compare to the pressure of 7/7 and the subsequent decisions of that time and how we protect ourselves against the threats that are there”.
The grieving mother of a man murdered by a convicted Jamaican drugs dealer last added to Mr Clarke’s problems by calling on him to resign.
Dorothy Gayle’s son, Donovan, 25, was stabbed to death in Birmingham in April 2005 by Mark Wright, 24, who had previously served nine months in jail for drugs offences. She believes her son’s killer should have been deported when he was released from prison.
“I think he should resign. Somebody has to do it. He has to carry the buck,” she told Sky news. “I am the one that is grieving for my son, nobody else. I am the one day after day getting up and facing life.”
A Home Office spokesman said it was investigating whether Wright had been recommended for deportation.
Mr Clarke continues to have support among most Labour backbenchers, though one former Government minister accused him of political folly in not informing the police sooner about the prisoners who had been released.
“Clarke should have been alive to the charge of political embarrassment. The criticism that can be rightly levelled at him was that he did not think this through and see how it would be potrayed if the news came out,” the former Government minister said.
“I do not think telling the police sooner would have had any implications for public safety. But from a public perception point of view he has failed, as it looks terrible."
