BRITAIN: A stormy British Labour Party conference seems in prospect following a stunning Liberal Democrat victory in the Brent East by-election which has also revived questions about the survival of Conservative leader Mr Iain Duncan Smith.
Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair and the Labour Party were the big losers on the night as they watched Lib Dem candidate Ms Sarah Teather overturn a Labour majority of 13,000 at the last general election to inflict Labour's first by-election defeat in 15 years.
Mr Blair's personal run of no by-election defeats since assuming power in 1997 ended in spectacular fashion in the early hours of yesterday, with a massive 29 per cent swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats. With 8,158 votes, Ms Teather (29) saw off Labour candidate Mr Robert Evans with a majority of 1,118, to become the youngest member of the House of Commons and her party's 54th MP.
While not the "defining" issue, the Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Charles Kennedy, said the war in Iraq had been a "significant" factor in Labour's defeat, feeding into questions of "trust" and "an awful sense of doubt both about Tony Blair personally and about this administration".
However, Mr Kennedy also hailed the result "disastrous" for the Conservative Party, whose candidate, Ms Uma Fernandes, was pushed into a humiliating third place with just 3,368 votes.
As one of Britain's leading pollsters warned that the electorate could come to consider the Liberal Democrats as a genuine alternative opposition to the government, former Conservative cabinet minister Mr David Mellor said: "This by-election proves that the Tories have no future while Iain Duncan Smith remains leader."
Labour managers tried to play down the significance of Thursday's rout on a turnout of 36.4 per cent. However, Brent East - the most ethnically diverse constituency in Britain, represented until 2001 by London Mayor Mr Ken Livingstone - was Labour's 58th safest seat at the last election. The collapse in Labour's vote from 24,000 to just 7,040 prompted respected commentators like Mr Peter Kellner to compare Labour's defeat with "the hammering" suffered in the more sensational by-elections of the Thatcher and Major years.
Labour Party chairman Mr Iain McCartney acknowledged that the defeat was "very disappointing" but insisted the backdrop of the Iraq war had made this the party's most difficult by-election contest in 20 years:
Predicting that Labour would reclaim the seat at the next general election, Mr McCartney added that "a disproportionate number of Labour voters staying at home was also a key feature" in his party's defeat. However, there was no disguising the scale of the party's disappointment and surprise following a campaign which saw some 200 Labour MPs and half the cabinet deployed in support of a Labour candidate whom the leadership believed would successfully hold off the Lib Dem challenge.
And Mr McCartney - chairman of a party renowned, if not notorious, for its presentation skills - fell back on the suggestion that the government (more than six years in power) had failed to get across the message about its unprecedented investment in health and other public services.
Interestingly, while Mr Kennedy was careful not to characterise the Iraq war as the "defining" issue, former cabinet minister and Blairite loyalist Mr Stephen Byers told BBC Radio that the various issues surrounding Iraq had been "a key factor" in Labour's defeat. Such candid admissions from the Blair camp inevitably fuelled speculation that continuing doubts and divisions about the war will manifest themselves during Labour's Bournemouth conference which starts next Sunday.
A jubilant Ms Teather said the message for Mr Blair from Brent East was that people wanted him to "listen" and "to deliver".
However, again signalling no retreat in the Prime Minister's commitment to "drive through" public service reforms, Number 10 yesterday seemed to translate this into a more urgent need "to listen and explain". But Downing Street would have had no difficulty hearing Ms Teather's message for Mr Duncan Smith: "The tide may be turning against Tony Blair and New Labour but the tide remains far out for the Conservatives in this country."