As Gordon Brown watched the first election results on television at home in Scotland on Thursday evening, he soon decided it was time for an early night.

The would-be prime minister retired to bed at midnight and kept a low profile on Friday. Critics said he was doing his “Macavity act”, disappearing from view when the going got tough.

His rival David Cameron, in contrast, could not get enough of last week’s elections. He stayed up until 3.30 on Friday morning before heading up to the north of England to soak up a Tory success that surpassed expectations.

Brown was focused on Scotland, his backyard, to see if the nationalists would succeed. If the Scottish National party were to triumph, as the polls predicted, what would it mean for a Brown administration?

While the chancellor slept, seats were falling to the SNP. On Friday morning it looked as if Labour might cling on, but by Friday afternoon Brown’s fears had been confirmed – the SNP emerged as the biggest party, with 47 seats to Labour’s 46. So close, yet so far.

“If we’d held on to just one seat, the headlines would have been very different,” noted one Brown ally yesterday.

Now Brown is faced with a question. If the “big clunking fist”, as Tony Blair dubbed him, can’t win in his own backyard, what chance has he got at a general election?

Almost as damning for Labour north of the border was the scandal of the so-called “hanging Jocks”; the confusing ballot papers and technical failures that resulted in up to 100,000 ballots, about one in 20, being spoilt.

The Electoral Commission said yesterday it had begun an investigation “with immediate effect”. Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, said if he becomes first minister he would launch a full judicial inquiry.

The news for Labour got worse. John Reid, the home secretary, told election-night viewers Labour was doing better than expected and Blair claimed the results were “a good springboard” for the general election.

But as the results piled in, it became plain that Tory claims of “a real breakthrough” were justified. The party gained nearly 900 seats across England while Labour losses, almost 500, were every bit as bad as feared.

Even Labour’s claim to have made progress since last year was misleading. An analysis of the results by professors Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher of Plymouth University gives Labour a 26% share of the vote, unchanged from last year, while the Tories were up from 39% to 40%.

So who was the real winner of the “Super Thursday” elections? Where does it leave us placed for the next election? And how will the two main parties play it from here? THE Tories’ local government “godfather” is Eric Pickles, a rotund figure as maverick as his name. On Thursday night, he was holding court at Conservative Central Office, where Francis Maude, the party chairman, George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, William Hague, the former leader, and Cameron were gathered to watch the results.

Despite excitement in the air, there was no champagne. Tory spinners were anxious to ensure that a cameraman briefly granted access to the building did not snap them quaffing bubbly before all the results were in. Instead, the party’s high command sipped beer discreetly as Pickles – high on anticipation of good results – danced victory jigs.

By Friday night, the mood at central office was delirious and activists poured into the Marquis of Granby pub near their office to celebrate.

A jubilant senior party strategist said: “There’s nothing sweeter than watching Tories winning, nothing sweeter. The figure we’d have been happy with was 600 gains, so to get nearly 900 is just fantastic. Blair says Labour’s results are a ‘springboard’ – we say they’re a complete bellyflop.”

The Conservatives’ dismal performance in Scotland, where it holds just four constituency seats at Holyrood (plus another 13 under the regional lists), was glossed over.

Instead, Tory spin doctors focused on what they called an “incredible breakthrough” in the north of England, where the party now controls 20 councils and made net gains of more than 130 seats.

In contrast, the mood among Labour’s high command this weekend is sober but not yet suicidal. Privately Hazel Blears, the party chairman, who will launch her campaign for the deputy leadership tomorrow, is unhappy. She will start an urgent postmortem into Labour’s dismal performance in the south, amid fears that if the party can’t shore up its vote in Kent and the “M25 marginals”, it will lose the general election.

Despite her chirpy public demeanour, colleagues say she is seriously concerned that the party is doomed to lose unless Brown can raise its game.

A source close to Blears said: “There are now Labour MPs in the south who are totally isolated, without any councillors to back them up. They are the last redoubt. We need a hardheaded look at what’s gone wrong.”

She believes Labour is failing to reach “aspirant working and middle-class families”, with immigration a key concern.

It’s a fear Pickles thinks is well founded. “Middle England has left new Labour with a feeling of distaste up its nostrils. In the south, Labour has been teetering on the brink with just two or three councillors in many areas. Now there are 80 councils in which they have no coverage at all.”

LATE ON Friday night, over champagne and wasabi peas at members club Soho House, Downing Street officials and Blair aides gathered to mark the end of an era.

Among the revellers was the infamous former spin doctor Alastair Campbell.

But the setting for Blair’s departure as Labour leader this week is likely to be a far more humble haunt. At Trimdon Labour club last week, party activists were remembering the good old days over pints of beer.

“The one big blot was the Iraq war,” said Dennis Grimley, 64, an ex-miner. “Generally I think he’s been a good prime minister. Our health service locally has improved. At school the Sats results are up, the sporting facilities are quite good in Sedgefield.”

A friend, also in his sixties, said: “If he had not gone in to Iraq, he would have been all right. He should have looked after his own country.”

There may not be more Blair visits to Trimdon, as he carves out a lucrative career beyond politics. But his announcement will spark off some of the fiercest fighting in British politics for years.

From this week, Cameron’s inner circle will be focusing all their attention on how to spoil Gordon Brown’s first days and months in office.

“What we’ve got to decide is how the hell we avoid him having a honeymoon period,” said one strategist. “If we focus too much on his personality, we risk looking nasty and petty. On the other hand, that’s his weakest point. We have to decide whether we have dedicated attack dogs to go for Brown, or whether we let Cameron do it and risk it back-firing.”

Brown, who will have seven weeks to wait before being confirmed as leader, has the harder job.

A new appeal to the middle classes in the face of the growing threat from the Tories is a theme Blears will push in her deputy leadership campaign.

Brown’s team are said to be drawing up plans for their “first 100 hours” in power. Instead of spreading eye-catching announcements across the traditional first 100 days, insiders say his camp want to create maximum impact in the first week. There is pressure to hit the ground running before parliament’s summer recess, which begins less than a month after Brown is expected to get the keys to No 10.

First they have to cheer up their man. “Gordon has been pretty down recently,” said one aide. “It’s partly just been down to nerves, that after waiting so long to become PM, his premiership would be doomed from the start.” Allies of the chancellor say he will resist the temptation to announce any big policy change on Iraq. However, he is likely to admit mistakes have been made and question whether the presence of British troops in some parts of the country is exacerbating the situation.

A source close to Brown said: “He recognises that it is a pivotal issue. He won’t be calling for a sudden withdrawal or anything like that, but we can expect to see him saying things about the war that Blair has not been able to say. It may not result in any change of strategy, but presentationally, it will be important.”

He is also expected to make “great play” of restoring the status of cabinet, with the cabinet once again making key decisions instead of Blair’s much criticised “sofa-style” government. Insiders say his first week in power will be marked by the “language of humility” and he will make it clear to Labour backbenchers – many of whom believe Commons debates have been seriously undermined in the Blair era – that they will no longer be treated as “lobby fodder”.

Whether any of this will be enough to convince an electorate that has turned against Labour is open to question. And Brown has the problems in his own backyard to divert him from his honeymoon period.

While the SNP was holding a celebratory party at the top of the Royal Mile on Friday, Brown was mulling over a recent conversation with Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader.

If Campbell, a fellow Fife MP and frequent companion of Brown on the Edinburgh shuttle, can put pressure on Nicol Stephen, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, to work for a third term with Labour, the SNP could yet be shut out of government despite being the largest party.

The idea is electorally toxic and Stephen knows it. If his party was seen to snub the winner and side with the loser, it would tarnish his party’s reputation and invite a voter backlash at the next election.

Such is the importance of Scotland to Brown, however, he will be desperate to float any means of escape from the prospect of a Salmond-led government in Edinburgh.

The chancellor already has a choice of successors on stand-by, notably Wendy Alexander, the intellectually daunting but socially clumsy sister of Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary.

The Scottish issue threatens to engulf Brown just when his attention needs to be elsewhere.

If Brown engages in the fight, as aides say he will, he risks squandering his honeymoon by appearing obsessed with his local difficulties at the expense of middle England.

John Major once won a general election by pledging to hold together the United Kingdom. Brown could lose the next one in his efforts to prevent it breaking up.

Cameron in reach of No 10

LABOUR support hit rock bottom last week as voters cast a damning verdict on the dog days of Tony Blair’s government.

In Scotland, Labour failed to top the poll for the first time since 1959; in Wales it had its lowest vote share for almost 90 years; and in England it has fewer councillors than at any time since the early 1970s.

In an exclusive analysis for The Sunday Times, we have examined votes cast by over 4m voters in 1,550 local wards to calculate how the parties would have fared if these elections had taken place in every part of the country. This analysis has the Tories on 40% (up one point since last year); Labour on 26% (no change) and the Lib Dems on 24% (down two points).

At a general election, such a result would put the Tories in power with a majority of 54 seats.

The Tories exceeded their own expectations in council seat gains (up almost 900 seats) and made a modest advance at the constituency level in both Scotland and Wales. However, they only just hit the critical 40% mark – seen as the minimum national vote share likely to be needed to win an overall majority in the House of Commons.

It is true that they still have no councillors in major urban authorities of the north such as Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle upon Tyne, but it is a myth that a general election victory requires them to break through there. By contrast, they made progress in the commuter estates and large towns surrounding northern metropolises that contain a number of crucial parliamentary marginals.

David Cameron trumpeted victories in places like Blackpool, Chester and South Ribble, and his party held on comfortably in councils such as Chorley, Rossendale and West Lancashire, which contain must-win constituencies.

Labour lost more than one in five of near2,500 seats it was defending and did particularly badly in places where the last local elections had been in 2003.

The party now faces so-called “no-go” areas in large swathes of rural England – 90 councils have no Labour councillor and a further 19 just one.

The other clear losers in these elections were the Lib Dems. Although they are likely to be the kingmakers in Scotland and Wales, they lost ground there compared with the last general election. In England they had their worst local election result since 1996, losing 250 seats.

Labour can take some comfort from the Tory failure to get above 40%; this is far less than the vote share Labour was registering in the years prior to the 1997 general election landslide. But overall it is not looking good for a fourth Labour term.

Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher

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