DESPITE the Labour party being pummelled in the European elections, local Labour politicians claim their Conservative rivals should now be “planning their exit strategy”.

Monday’s election result gave Labour its lowest vote share for 90 years — its 15 per cent taking the party to third place behind former fringe group UK Independence Party (UKIP).

Yet the leader of Enfield Council’s Labour group has claimed Enfield is bucking the trend — and even said Labour is now on target to win back control of Enfield Council.

He said: “Whatever the results of the European elections in the rest of the country, in Enfield the results were far worse for the Conservatives than they were for the Labour Party.” He said the latest showing for Labour in Enfield is an improvement on the local election results in 2006, when he claims Labour won 42.7 per cent and the Conservatives 57.3 per cent of the vote.

To reach this conclusion, Councillor Jeff Rodin used a complex calculation in which he picked the candidate with the most votes for each ward, collated the votes for the Labour and Tory parties, and eliminated the results for minority parties.

On this basis, he says Labour has marginally increased its share of the votes in the European elections to 43.1 per cent at the expense of the Tories on 56.9 per cent.

He said: “Given that the Labour Party’s position will undoubtedly improve over the next 12 months, Labour is on target to win back control of Enfield Council.

“If I was the Tory Leadership in Enfield, I would be planning my exit strategy and ordering the packing cases.”

He added that the Labour win in February’s Jubilee by-election was further proof the council was “unpopular”.

Conservative council leader Michael Rye responded: “The Labour claims are nonsense. The reality is we polled 31 per cent and Labour polled 23.5 per cent, and this is better than the Conservative average in London which is 28 per cent.

“There will be a new MP in Enfield North next time around and we will regain control of the council. It is a very clear, decisive result.”

The Conservatives won 20,345 votes, and the Labour Party 15,385 votes, which works out at 31 per cent and 23.5 per cent voting share.

Turnout in Enfield was 34 per cent, with 65,000 votes cast. The UK Independence Party polled third strongest with 12.1 per cent of the vote, the Green Party was fourth with 8.9 per cent, while the Liberal Democrats, who are not represented at the council, had 8.2 per cent and the BNP 4.8 per cent.