NO MATTER what face-saving gloss their spin doctors apply to the local election results, the truth is that the Tories still took a terrible pounding at the polls last night.

For there is no way that the loss of 560 council seats across the country can be dressed up as a positive development.

True, this is not quite as bad as last year's wipe-out of the Tories in the town halls.

Nor did the losses reach the watershed that might have sparked a leadership challenge for John Major.

And, yes, there was a crumb of comfort in the Conservatives' 27 per cent share of the vote being up three points on last year.

But, overall, just as they are in East Lancashire, the results are still very bad for the Tories.

So where now for them?

Arguably and logically, the only way is up. But the climb is steep.

Labour's 43 per cent slice of the vote last night might be far from enough to make them sure of a general election victory or a clear margin if they do win.

But what is significant is how far the Tories are behind - some 17 points.

They will need every minute they can muster to close that gap, and time is running out.

Stand by, then, for a clinging-on Conservative campaign as the party and its spin doctors seek to scatter "feel good" across the country and the Chancellor scrapes wherever he can for tax cuts ammunition.

But even if, in the meantime, death, defection or defeat in the Commons do not conspire to make John Major, with his Westminster majority now down to just one, go to the country much sooner than he wants, it may be all to no avail.

For though low inflation, rock-bottom mortgages, falling unemployment and crime, and a stirring in the housing market are all "feel good" elements that might be topped off by tax cuts in a giveaway budget in November, the Tory recovery strategy this coming year - even if they manage a whole 12 months in which to employ it - may be undone by the party's record since 1992.

That, surely, has plunged it to the depths of the unpopularity where it languishes now.

And last night's results were not just a snapshot verdict of that situation, but part of a critical continuum underlined by the previous local government election disasters for the party, the Euro-election maulings and the string of by-election slayings.

It seems, then, that the "feel good" tide is being held back by a sea-change in the voters' mood - an unforgivingness based on the tax increases, on job-security jitters that are a hangover from the recession that so shocked the Tory heartlands in the south, on negative equity and on sleaze at Westminster.

It is a sentiment that last night reached all the way to Basildon, the Essex town that in the 1980s symbolised Tory appeal with the southern working class and guaranteed its grip on Westminster.

Now Labour rules the council there and the Conservatives are left with just one seat.

Basildon last night was symbolic of the sea-change that, by their own hands, the Tories have wrought.

It is a telling token, too, of how uphill their comeback path now is - and all with the time running out.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.