May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair overhauled his Cabinet after a setback at the polls in England as two weeks of scandal damaged voter support.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke and Secretary of State Jack Straw will be replaced, BBC said. No successors were immediately named. Labour forfeited 255 seats in local council elections across England, and the Conservatives gained 250, the British Broadcasting Corp. said, citing incomplete results.
The election losses are ``the warning shot we've got to address,'' Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said on BBC radio today. ``There's always a danger when a party has been in power for nine years. We've got to renew ourselves. That's what the debate will be about: how the Labour Party will renew itself. I relish the challenge.''
In the two weeks leading up to yesterday's vote, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said he had an affair with his diary secretary, Clarke apologized for freeing 1,023 foreign criminals who should have been considered for deportation and Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was booed by union members protesting job cuts in the National Health
Conservative Party leader David Cameron, 39, vote also is the first test for David Cameron, 39, elected leader of the Conservatives in December, and Menzies Campbell, 64, who took over the Liberal Democrats in March.
176 Councils
With 163 of 176 council results declared, Labour held control in 24, a loss of 18; the Conservatives had power in 67, an increase of 12, and the Liberal Democrats held 13, a gain of 1. There was no overall control in the remaining councils that have declared.
There were 4,361 seats at stake, including all of those in 32 London districts. There 19,579 councils council throughout England, with a fourth to a third contested each year. Council elections in Scotland and Wales are held separately.
``A reshuffle is not going to hide these losses for Tony Blair,'' George Osborne, the Conservative's lawmaker in charge of finance policy, said on Sky News.
Prescott will lose his job in the Cabinet changes, the Guardian newspaper reported today, without citing anyone.
On May 2, Blair said ``nine days of headlines should not obscure nine years of achievements'' and urged voters to judge Labour on the strength of the economy and improvements to schools and hospitals. An ICM Ltd. survey for the BBC showed 36 percent of voters want Blair to resign now.
Parliament
Yesterday's vote won't have an impact on Labour's command in Parliament, where Blair's party has 353 of the 646 seats. Instead, this vote affects local party activists whose support builds a national network of followers.
Results so far show the Conservatives' vote winning 40 percent of the vote, the Liberal Democrats 27 percent and Labour 26 percent, the BBC said.
At local elections in 2004, the Conservatives won 38 percent, the Liberal Democrats 30 percent and Labour 26 percent. In the general election a year later, Labour won with 36 percent of the vote, the Conservatives got 33 percent, and the Liberal Democrats got 23 percent.
All 32 boroughs in London are up for election, and the Conservatives have a chance to gain control of more districts than Labour for the first time since 1986, when the party was led by Margaret Thatcher.
Local Matters
Britain's councils have control over matters such as road repairs, garbage collection and aspects of policing and education. Losing seats can damage a party's ability to win seats in the Parliament.
In Liverpool and Manchester, the two largest cities in northwest England, the Conservatives have no council members, a weakness reflected in the national Parliament. In the 2005 general election, the Conservatives finished a distant third in both cities, not winning a single seat.
During the campaign, Labour aimed its fire at Cameron, portraying him as ``Dave the Chameleon'' in TV ads that claimed he changed his message according to his audience. The Conservatives focused on environmental issues, as Cameron sought to appeal to the younger voters his party has failed to win in recent elections.
