Brown gets a break | Plan to appease voters | Peter Riddell's commentary | Story of the night | Advances for UKIP | Leading article | Libby Purves | Lord Falconer: Labour needs a new leader

Gordon Brown suffered humiliation in the polls last night as the British National Party achieved its biggest electoral breakthrough.

The far-right party took its first two seats — including one for its leader Nick Griffin — in the European Parliament as Labour endured sharp falls in its vote across the country.

The Prime Minister will face a critical meeting with his MPs tonight after a night of unrelieved gloom that saw his party’s share of the vote slump to 16 per cent or below. The Conservatives were well ahead. The results were so bad that Labour rebels may be tempted to have one last try to oust the Prime Minister. There were threats early today to publish a list of names of MPs wanting him to go.

Times Archive, 1931: Labour Party rout

Labour was swept completely out of the large cities and what were regarded as some of its strongholds were captured

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The Times learnt last night that Mr Brown is to slow down the sale of Royal Mail in an attempt to appease unhappy MPs. He will say it is not commercially in taxpayers’ interest to sell part of the business at the moment. An inquiry into the Iraq war will also be announced within days.

Labour was trailing the UK Independence Party, while the Conservatives made a remarkable comeback in Wales, finishing on top. It was the first time that Labour had lost the popular vote there since 1918.

The Liberal Democrats were also having a bad night — in fourth place overall. The Green Party won a seat in London.

But in perhaps the biggest blow to the governing party, the BNP took the last of six seats in Yorkshire, with Andrew Brons securing 120,000 votes. Mr Griffin took a seat in the North West from Labour.

There will be dismay among Labour MPs that the party’s vote has fallen so sharply that it has opened the door for the far Right. Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, said that it was “deeply uncomfortable” to see the BNP polling in such large numbers. He blamed an “anti-politics mood” since the expenses scandal.

In Labour’s North East heartland the party saw its share of the vote drop by 9 percentage points.

With 55 out of 69 seats declared, the Conservatives were leading on 28.6 per cent, UKIP second on 17.4 per cent, Labour on 15.3 per cent and the Lib Dems on 13.9 per cent.

The Scottish Nationalists outpolled Labour by a clear margin north of the Border. Their 29 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 21 per cent comfortably achieved the target set by Alex Salmond, the SNP leader.

Labour beat off a challenge from the Greens to hang on to a seat in the Eastern region of England where the Conservatives topped the poll with 500,331 votes and kept three MEPs. UKIP was second with 313,921 votes and kept two MEPs and the Liberal Democrats one.

Labour dropped into fifth place in the South West, losing its only seat.

In an apparent sign of leadership confidence about Mr Brown’s prospects, Nick Brown, the Labour Chief Whip, challenged Labour rebels to make their move or rally behind their leader.

The Prime Minister had appeared to be seeing off his critics yesterday, with Labour MPs clearly hesitant to sign an e-mail calling on him to quit. The threat from the Cabinet appeared to have gone, as ministers and MPs accepted that Mr Brown’s demise would inevitably mean an early general election.

However, Downing Street remained nervous over the impact of last night’s results and Lord Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, became the latest senior figure to call on the Prime Minister to go. In an article in The Times today he says it will be hard to unify Labour under its current leader. A leadership election involving people like David Miliband, Alan Johnson, Jon Cruddas and Harriet Harman would be a chance for Labour to decide its future direction and lift the “cloud of despair and disunity” threatening the party. “More of the same is no longer tenable,” he says.

There was also a surprise when Tessa Jowell, Mr Brown’s new Cabinet Office minister, said that the general election would be in May, ignoring the convention that such matters are for prime ministers to announce.

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