Mr Major’s Comments on Local Election Results – 3 May 1991

Below is the text of Mr Major’s comments on the previous night’s local election results, made on Friday 3rd May 1991.

PRIME MINISTER:

[Mr Major was asked about local election results]

It is disappointing but bearable I think. The Liberals clearly did extremely well, they did better than we expected and I congratulate them on that. The silver lining is there is no evidence either in the ballot box or in the opinion polls that we saw last night that show that the Labour Party can win an election, indeed the evidence is quite strongly to the contrary. Here we are bumping along at the bottom of a recession, not yet coming out of it, and after all the difficulties that there have been in recent months and a recession, there is no lead for the Labour Party at all and at this stage in the Parliament if they were to win a General Election they should have had I would have thought quite a commanding lead. So that is a very substantial silver lining.