VIEWPOINT

Yesterday's press pictures of Iain Duncan Smith reaching for his wallet to put £120 on a Conservative general election victory at odds of 3/1 told us only one thing - that the Conservative leader should not take up gambling if he loses his present job. Those who study the political form book would probably want odds of at least 5/1 before parting with their money. Unless, of course, Mr Smith knows something that we don't know for instance, that the Tory stable has a dark horse in training and someone else will be sporting the blue colours when the runners go to the starting gate in two or three years time, someone with a better chance than he will ever have! Insofar as the results of Thursday's local elections have any relevance to a general election, this much can be said: that the Conservatives did well enough to safeguard their leader's personal position in the short-term but not enough to suggest that the party is yet regarded as capable of forming a government; that the Liberal Democrats, as usual in local elections, made steady progress which they still do not know how to transform into significant parliamentary strength; and that, as expected, Labour lost many of the seats which it won in the last comparable local elections - a familiar swings and roundabouts outcome The lesson for Labour - or, rather, for Mr Blair - is that international leadership is not what Labour loyalists want; they want to see the money being poured into public services producing better outcomes than it is at the moment.