New Labour era over, says Cameron

He said he was confident his party would be able to replicate in a Parliamentary contest the success it has seen in the English local council elections.

Mr Cameron reflected on the local council outcome on Saturday as he enjoyed a day relaxing with his family.

He was with wife Samantha and children, Ivan, six, Nancy, three, and one-year-old Elwen, as he opened a miniature gauge railway at Cotswold Wildlife Park near his Witney constituency in Oxfordshire.

Mr Cameron said: "This is a very, very good set of results for the Conservatives. We have really broken through in the North. We have many more councillors now than people expected."

He said voters had been influenced by "a mixture of local and national issues", but added: "This was not a protest vote because if it was we would have seen the Lib Dems doing better and they didn't. This is a move towards the Conservatives.

"The New Labour era of Brown and Blair is drawing to a close. I want to make sure that we are the ones who are ready with a new approach to politics when that happens."

He said he believed people were "fed up with top-down state control" and said the Conservatives were the party to offer them an alternative to that.

Speaking about the coalition negotiations now going on in Scotland and Wales, Mr Cameron said that any decision to work with other parties would be a matter for the Scottish and Welsh Conservative groups.

"In both Scotland and Wales the party will want to maximise their influence. How they do that will be a matter for them," he said.