Conservatives' London win shows taste for change

By Katherine Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) - Boris Johnson's triumph in the London mayoral poll shows a thirst for change among voters that does not bode well for Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Johnson, 43, an irreverent Oxford University-educated MP who moonlights as a TV comedy quiz show host, defeated incumbent mayor Ken Livingstone in a huge boost to the opposition Conservatives and a blow to Brown's Labour Party.

Victory in London mirrored Conservative gains in local councils across England and Wales in elections on Thursday, as voters concerned over rising food and energy prices, higher mortgages and a possible housing market slump handed Labour its worst local election defeat on record.

Londoners overlooked Johnson's inexperience and his privileged background, choosing to give him a chance over a practised administrator who had run London for eight years.

Conservative leader David Cameron -- who studied with Johnson at Oxford and at exclusive private school Eton -- can now hope Britons' will give him a shot at the premiership over a party that has been in power since 1997.

The next general election is due by mid-2010 at the latest.

Johnson's win "will give them (the Conservatives) a fillip -- it's the most important directly elected post, of huge influence and very high profile," said Dominic Wring, a political analyst at Loughborough University.

Some analysts said Johnson won on an anti-government tide. Wring, however, cautioned against assuming a direct link between the mayoral vote and the next national poll.