Mr Tony Blair's bandwagon faltered this morning as the Conservative Party won the Uxbridge by election. Mr John Randall defied the pundits, pollsters and bookmakers to hold the seat with an increased majority of 3,766 over Labour's Mr Andy Slaughter. On a 55 per cent turnout (as against 72.26 in the general election) Mr Randall polled 16,288 votes, against 12,522 for Mr Slaughter, with Mr Keith Kerr running third for the Liberal Democrats on 1,792.
Labour's defeat will be seen as a personal blow for Mr Blair, who last week defied a 30-year-old prime ministerial convention by campaigning personally in the byelection, caused by the death of Sir Michael Shersby, the former MP. Sir Michael suffered a heart attack one week after holding the seat - with a majority of just 724 - against the trend of Conservative collapse on May 1st.
While Mr Randall's victory will have no impact at Westminster, it provides a massive morale boost for Mr William Hague six weeks into his leadership of the Tories. Mr Hague, ironically, was the last Conservative to win a by-election when he took his Richmond, Yorkshire seat in 1989.
Labour, too, was pitching for a landmark victory - hoping to become the first governing party since 1960 to win a seat from the major opposition party in a byelection. Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, was in Uxbridge yesterday urging voters not to forget the "damage" caused by 18 years of Tory rule: "The country voted them out on May 1st. I say to the people of Uxbridge: don't vote even one of them back in."
Mr Prescott continued: "They don't deserve your support. They are out of touch, out of power and they have learned nothing from their crushing defeat. Not many constituencies will get a second chance. But in Uxbridge there is a golden opportunity."
But the West London voters spurned their "golden opportunity" and left Mr Prescott and Labour explaining that victory was never really likely in this once-safe Tory seat, given Labour's failure to claim it in May on a swing of 12.5 per cent.
While plainly exaggerating the impact of Mr Hague's election, and his early promise to reform the party, Conservative strategists will be delighted to discover that former supporters can be persuaded back into the fold.
More crucially they will detect in the Uxbridge result a readiness by voters to check a government Tories accuse of being already arrogant and over-mighty - and the potential, as economic and policy pressures change the political climate, to bring back to Westminster some of the high-profile casualties of the general election rout. Former ministers like Mr Michael Portillo declined to run in this contest, which at first seemed unwinnable. And Central Office opted to have the vote before the summer recess, to prevent a defeat overshadowing the autumn party conference.
But if Mr Portillo and other former cabinet ministers are now regretting their reticence, Mr Blair may draw some strength from his party's defeat. The final days of the by-election were fought against the first serious public criticisms of New Labour, led by an alliance of Mr Tony Benn and Lord Roy Hattersley, who attacked Mr Blair's plans to further reform the party and his alleged failure to make the new government a force for greater equality.
Having signalled his determination to further weaken Labour's links with the trades unions, the prime minister will use Uxbridge to reinforce his message that they will lose the trust of the British people unless the party elected as New Labour "governs as New Labour".