DAVID CAMERON promised that the modernisation of the Conservative Party would go faster and farther after the election of more than 300 new Tory councillors.

Allies said that the result “totally vindicated” Mr Cameron’s strategy and would silence critics on the Right who said the campaign was lightweight.

The poor performance of the Lib Dems was particularly gratifying for the Tory leader. Their rise as a political force, buoyed by voters who had backed Labour in 1997, had held back the Conservatives for years.

In straight fights against the Lib Dems the Tories made net gains of 39, showing that for the first time since 1997 some swing voters at least believed that they were an alternative to Labour. However, there was disappointment that gains were confined to London and the South of England.

At the start of the campaign Mr Cameron said that his goal was a Tory revival in Manchester, Newcastle and Liverpool. But a big push in a few carefully selected wards in Manchester has yielded nothing and there are still no Tory councillors in the three big northern cities. However, the Tories won 40 per cent of the vote, the target required for a majority at a general election. In London the party seized control of a host of town halls, including Hammersmith & Fulham, Harrow and, more surprisingly, Ealing, which was not even a target.

In the South East it won Croydon, Crawley and Hastings. But momentum fizzled out north of the Home Counties. The performance was patchy in the Midlands: the Tories seized Coventry but made few gains in Birmingham, where Labour remains the biggest party.

The 7 per cent swing to the Tories from Labour in the general election in Birmingham was cut to 2 per cent in the local elections, with only two wards changing hands. “The green campaign has served us well in London and the South East but has clearly had less resonance further north,” a party figure admitted.

Francis Maude, the Tory Chairman, played down the scale of the victory, mindful that under Michael Howard the party polled 38 per cent the year before a general election defeat. “None of us is throwing a hat into the air and saying we are about to storm into Downing Street,” he said. “We have started to build from a low base and have a long way to go, but this is a good start. It looks like we are at the top end of people’s expectations, but none of us believes that this is anything other than the beginning of a long haul.”

Mr Cameron immediately embarked on a tour of new Tory-held councils, including Hammersmith & Fulham and Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire.

“There’s plenty more to do, and plenty more change to be made and work to be done, but I think this is a very important step forward,” he said.

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In the next few months the modernising message will be underlined as a host of constituency associations choose their general election candidates. Thursday’s success will enable Mr Maude to put more pressure on associations to put up women and ethnic minority candidates. “He can argue that choosing the same old middle-aged men would undermine the success we have managed so far and undermine the modernising message that has clearly worked,” an ally said.

It could even allow Mr Cameron to distance himself from a pledge to remove Tory MEPs from the federalist European People’s Party grouping in the European Parliament, an obsession of rightwingers.

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