Gordon Brown was dealt another huge blow last night when Labour lost all its remaining county councils in its worst ever local election results.

Counties turned from red to blue in quick succession as the Labour vote collapsed in its heartlands. Hundreds of councillors lost their seats and their share of the vote fell to 23 per cent.

Labour councillors blamed their defeats on the Government’s difficulties and the MPs’ expenses scandal as Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lancashire slid from Labour control into the Tories’ clutches.

Most of those counties had been held by Labour for nearly 30 years. Labour parliamentary seats in the North and North West look suddenly more vulnerable.

With results still pouring in yesterday evening, Labour had lost more than 300 councillors and was at risk of disappearing entirely in some southern counties.

The Tories were delighted by their strong performance in Labour strongholds and by seeing off the Liberal Democrats in the South West. By gaining Somerset and Devon from them, the Conservatives made big advances in areas where the Lib Dems have many of their Westminster seats. Later in the day they even pushed Cornwall, another Lib Dem stronghold, into no overall control.

“Labour have been wiped off the electoral map in key battleground areas,” Eric Pickles, the Tory chairman, said as his party looked set to win well over 250 seats. “We now have a lame-duck Prime Minister running a lame-duck Government. The country clearly wants change and the only way that can be delivered is through the general election.”

Mr Brown admitted the results were appalling for his party. “The elections yesterday were a painful defeat for Labour. Too many good people doing so much good for their communities and their constituencies have lost through no fault of their own,” he said.

The Liberal Democrats, who also lost more seats than they gained, admitted that they had had a mixed day. The party was pleased it took Bristol, a unitary authority, from no overall control and that it gained 28 per cent of the vote.

The share of the vote for the two other parties was down from last year’s council elections. Labour dropped to an historic low of 23 per cent, 1 percentage point lower than last year, while the Tories fell by 5 percentage points from a 43 per cent share to 38. Tony Travers, a local government expert at the London School of Economics, suggested that the Tories would have to do considerably better at a general election to get a convincing majority.

The Tories’ targeting of seats they needed to win, such as those in the South West and the northern counties, suggests the party has enough activists where it needs to make breakthroughs. Even now it still has no councillors in Newcastle or Liverpool.

A widespread protest vote against all three main parties as a result of the MPs’ expenses led to strong showings by the Greens and the UK Independence Party. The Green party gained five councillors in Norfolk, largely at the expense of Labour, forming the largest ever Green group on a county council. It also picked up its first two seats on Suffolk County Council and made gains elsewhere, including in Cambridgeshire and Gloucestershire.

The BNP failed to get a single seat in Essex, where it fielded candidates in all 75 seats. But it won its first ever county council seat in Burnley, Lancashire, bolstering the party’s hopes that its leader Nick Griffin will land the party its first seat in the European Parliament on Sunday. The BNP later took seats in South Oxhey, Hertfordshire and Coalville in Leicestershire, but only appeared to poll well where there were no alternatives — such as UKIP and the Greens — to the main parties.

It was a torrid day for Labour in Norfolk as the party lost 19 of its 22 councillors. Sue Whitaker, who was the Labour group leader but lost her seat yesterday, said that the expenses row had “swamped” the local campaign.

She added that there was a lot of anger about the treatment of Ian Gibson, the popular Labour MP for Norwich North barred from standing again over expenses revelations. “People have been saying if the party can treat a person like Ian Gibson like that, why should I vote for them?” she said.

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