London-England Ken Livingstone Unseated as Mayor

Britain's ruling Labor Party takes a drubbing in Friday's local election

Boris Johnson last night notched up the Tories' greatest electoral success since John Major's surprise victory in the 1992 general election when he unseated Ken Livingstone as mayor of London.

Ecstatic Conservatives cheered at London's City Hall, at the end of a count lasting more than 15 hours, as the man who had been dismissed as the Bertie Wooster of British politics took charge of one of the biggest political offices in Britain.

Johnson won just over 1m first preference votes to secure 42.48%; Ken Livingstone came second with 893,877 first preference votes (36.38%); Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat candidate, came third with 236,685 votes to give him 9.63%.

Bertram Wilberforce "Bertie" Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the Jeeves novels of British author P. G. Wodehouse. A minor British aristocrat, member of the "idle rich" and the Drones Club, he appears alongside his gentleman's personal gentleman, Jeeves, whose genius manages to extricate Bertie or one of his friends from numerous awkward situations. As the first-person narrator of ten novels and over 40 short stories, Bertie ranks as one of the most vivid comic creations in popular literature.

He came only fourth in last year's deputy leadership contest but Labour MPs now say he would win a duel with former Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

One leading rebel said: "It's not about who has most friends but who has fewest enemies.

And that's where Hilary scores."

Boris Johnson stacked up the votes in the outer London boroughs to counter Ken Livingstone's efforts to get his supporters to the polls in strong Labour areas.

Despite being beaten, Livingstone got more first-preference votes, 894,000, than he had in either 2004 or 2000. But Boris Johnson's well-organised troops got over 1MILLION first-preference votes. In third place, marathon running Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick lagged well behind his main rivals.