LABOUR at work in London continues to drag leader Neil Kinnock towards defeat in the country at large. It was 5000 people who beseiged Waltham Forest town hall last night, furious at the Labour authority's 62.3 per cent rate rise. But many many more voters will have taken note that they cannot afford to support such a party in government.

Some have already taken revenge, as in Lewisham yesterday, where Labour lost a seat they had held for 47 years to the Alliance, and could only manage a humiliating third place. There seems little Mr Kinnock can do now to convince anyone other than blinkered loyalists that his activists in the capital are not representative of his national team.