Cameron apologizes for his party's rout

LONDON, May 4 (UPI) -- British Prime Minister David Cameron apologized Friday for his Conservative Party's rout in local elections. He said the party "inherited" a bad economy.

About 5,000 seats on local councils were up for grabs in Thursday's elections. With about half the results in, the Labor Party had picked up at least 470 seats and gained control of 22 of the 181 local councils, The Guardian reported.

Labor seemed likely to win a net gain of 700 seats once all the votes are counted. Conservatives seemed likely to lose 350 and the party's coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats, about 200.

Cameron visited Conservative headquarters in London to apologize to the "hard-working" local officials who lost their seats. He also made a jab at the Labor government he ousted in 2010.

"These are difficult times, and there aren't easy answers," he said. "What we have to do is to take difficult decisions to deal with the debt, the deficit and the broken economy that we inherited. We'll go on making those decisions because we've got to do the right thing for our country."

One of the few bright signs for the Conservatives was in London, where Mayor Boris Johnson was running ahead of former Mayor "Red Ken" Livingstone, the Evening Standard said.