UK News 19-09-2003 Bloody Nose For Blair who: Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather what: Overturns Labour majority to win shock Brent East by-election where: LONDON when: Last night snippet: Labour has lost one of its safest seats. 29 year-old Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather overcame a 13,000 Labour majority to win 8,158 votes and oust the Party from Brent East by 1,118 votes. It`s the first time since 1994 that Labour has lost a seat and The Sun calls the defeat "the lowest point of [Tony Blair`s] Premiership". "Labour`s loss of a supposedly safe seat in one of its inner-city heartlands will increase the pressure on the prime minister to change the party`s direction," says Jean Eaglesham in The FT. "The party gained only 33.8 per cent of the vote in the north-west London constituency, compared to 63.2 per cent in the 2001 general election." The message from "disillusioned Labour voters" could not have been clearer, says the BBC`s Nick Assinder. "Time and again during the campaign, the issues of trust and the backlash at the war and the way the prime minister led Britain into it emerged as key issues," he writes. "And this disastrous result may just mark the point at which Labour backbenchers start questioning whether their once infallible leader has finally become a liability." "There was bad news too for Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith," says The Guardian, "whose candidate Uma Fernandes was knocked into third place in a seat where the Conservatives came second in the 2001 general election." [... more]

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