Embattled British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's ruling party appeared to be headed for a major drubbing in key local polls, as results poured in on Friday amid forecasts it faced its worst showing for decades.

The vote is the first with Brown at the Labour Party's helm, and partial results suggested the government could slip into third place nationally in terms of poll support, and lose as many as 200 local council seats.

According to BBC projections, the Conservatives captured 44 percent of the popular vote nationwide, while Labour slumped to just 24 percent, behind the Liberal Democrats on 25 percent.

Labour was also locked in a tight race for London's mayor, with incumbent Ken Livingstone running neck-and-neck with maverick Conservative Boris Johnson, the results of which will be announced Friday evening.

"Nobody is going to pretend this is our greatest night," said Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell.

But former Europe minister Geoff Hoon told the BBC: "There's no crisis. This isn't something that's going to affect the fundamental stability of the government.

With results officially declared in 95 councils, Labour had suffered net losses of 134 councillors and had lost control of five councils, according to BBC tallies.

The main opposition Conservatives, meanwhile, gained a net total of 133 councillors and control of six councils.

If the projections prove accurate, The Guardian newspaper said they would represent Labour's worst showing at a local election in 35 years.

"If the national picture is replicated in London, then clearly this is going to be very serious," Martin Bright, the political editor of the left-wing New Statesman weekly magazine said on Sky News.

Labour has seen support plummet to its lowest since Margaret Thatcher's heyday in the late 1980s after Prime Minister Tony Blair stepped down in June, and the local poll results are seen as one indicator for how the government will fare in a general election, which is due within two years.

In all, some 13 000 candidates fought for more than 4000 seats on 159 municipal councils in England and Wales as well as the 25-member London Assembly. Polls closed at 10.00pm (9.00pm GMT) Thursday.

The big political prize

It is the capital, however, that is the big political prize: its mayor controls an annual budget of more than £11-billion ($22-billion) and his decisions affect 7.5-million Londoners plus millions of visitors.

A Conservative Party victory over Livingstone would be a symbolic boost for the centre-right Tories at a time when they are riding high in the opinion polls, and hoping to gain a reputation as a government-in-waiting.

A third consecutive four-year term for Livingstone, however, could reassure centre-left Labour that their recent dip in form is only temporary and they can recover before the country goes to the polls by May 2010.

Brown has admitted his government faces a hard time as the global credit crunch hits the housing market and economic growth, alongside rising food and fuel prices.

In 2004, the last time the seats were contested, Labour came third in the national vote equivalent with a 30 percent share of the vote.

Then, the fall-out from Britain's involvement in the widely unpopular Iraq war hit them hard, but this time domestic issues, particularly the government's economic record, could be a factor.

There was widespread opposition to the use of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money to prop up Northern Rock bank, which collapsed in the global credit crunch and was later nationalised.

The abolition of a 10 percent tax threshold has also caused outrage in the Labour ranks, with claims the party had abandoned its core principles of helping the most needy.

Recent national opinion polls have put Labour between 14 and 18 percentage points behind the Tories, with one putting the gap at its widest since 1987, when Thatcher was in power.

AFP