Well, this is a turnup for the books – the Lib Dems have pulled off a shock victory in the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, overturning a Labour majority of over 11,000:
Willie Rennie overturned a huge Labour majority in a neighbouring constituency to Chancellor Gordon Brown’s.
Returning officer Douglas Sinclair declared that Mr Rennie had secured 12,391 of the votes.
Labour’s Catherine Stihler received 10,591 votes. The SNP’s Douglas Chapman was third with 7,261 votes and Tory Carrie Ruxton secured 2,702 votes.
This is a real shot in the arm for the Lib Dem party, especially in the light of the party’s recent troubles.
It seems to show that the Lib Dems electoral popularity hasn’t really been dented, despite their fall in the polls following leader Charles Kennedy’s resignation after it was revealed he was an alcoholic, and the subsequent troubled leadership campaign. The voters in Dunfermline and West Fife decided they didn’t want Labour, took a look at the two alternative parties (in this case the Lib Dems and the Scottish National Party) and decided that the Lib Dems were the best choice to represent them.
I wonder what impact it will have on the leadership campaign? Will it dent Chris Huhne’s campaign, as the party rank and file decide that radical reform is no longer needed?
Update: Nick Barlow, by the way, has a quick overview of last night’s Question Time debate between the three Lib Dem leadership candidates:
If you were scoring Question Time as a simple debate, I’d say Simon won on points from Chris, with Ming third.
But will it be enough to pull Simon Hughes back into the race, or is it too little too late?
Darling is this what you do all day at work?
It also occurs to me that you might be interested to know that I am now single handedly responsible for securing the ongoing supply of VIAGRA to needy chaps in Serbia and Montenegro! This is what I do all day.