Long-serving Julian Fulbrook watches the count as he loses his seat in Holborn and Covent Garden

LABOUR 30
GREENS 11*
LIB DEMS 10
CONSERVATIVES 3
CAMDEN PEOPLE’S ALLIANCE 1

THE Labour Party has clung on to its majority at the Town Hall – despite a bruising set of council elections in which the leader of the council lost his seat.

The script in Camden normally ends with a stage full of winning candidates with red rosettes, but this time there were too many battlefronts to cope with. As Labour used its resources to defend seats where it was facing a clear threat from the Greens, it left the back door open for shock losses in wards normally considered safe territory. Two fell in Kilburn, one in St Pancras & Somers Town, one in Bloomsbury and all three in Holborn & Covent Garden.

The Greens’ triumph in the latter unseated Richard Olszewski, the council leader who had traversed the length of the borough in search of a safe seat after moving from Fortune Green. He had been accused of a “chicken run” to avoid the Liberal Democrats in his home ward in the north west of the borough, but lost anyway.

The 30 winning Labour councillors who will be at the Town Hall for an induction event today will have the pressing issue of finding a new leader at the front of their agenda. Hopefuls will already be judging whether they have the numbers to take control.

Whoever gets the job will be looking across a very different council chamber from their predecessors, but it could have been worse for Labour after some close shaves across the borough, where only handfuls of votes kept the Greens out in a string of close shave contests.

The slim majority will change the complexion of life in the council chamber and means an uncompromising demand for councillors to be at every vote, and the list of “apologies for absence” will have to be kept to a minimum.

That said, it will not be simple on the other side of the chamber either, due to the mix of parties represented.

Provisionally, the Greens are the official opposition after leaping from one seat to 11, but an asterisk has to be put next to one of their wins in Regent’s Park. It was quickly discovered that one of the successful candidates, Muhammad Abu Naser, is a teacher at a Camden secondary school – employment which the rules say bars him from being a councillor.

A by-election for this seat is now almost certain to take place to resolve the issue. It was in this ward where former council leader Nash Ali, cabinet member Nadia Shah and the long-serving Heather Johnson lost their places to the Greens. Camden will also need a new chair of planning following Ms Johnson’s defeat.

The Greens did not seem to know whether to be happy or disappointed – having narrowly missed out in target wards while still creating their biggest ever group in Camden. They have never had more than three councillors before.

The Liberal Democrats also moved up by claiming all of West Hampstead and Fortune Green, although gains in South Hampstead eluded them. Meanwhile, the Conservatives remain stalled on just three seats, despite animated challenges in Belsize and Primrose Hill.

The last result of the count – announced late yesterday evening after a full recount, once the stage had more or less been dismantled – was the one in St Pancras & Somers Town, where Labour councillor Edmund Frondigoun lost out by a handful of votes and the Camden People’s Alliance got its first councillor elected.