The Conservatives were celebrating yesterday after they scraped home in the Eddisbury by-election by a slim majority of 1,606 votes after a fierce battle with Labour.
The party leader, Mr William Hague, accused the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, of "shameless exploitation" of concerns over fox-hunting in a largely rural constituency during the election campaign. "He raised the whole question of banning hunting. . . then within a few minutes of the polls closing he says he isn't going to ban fox-hunting," he said.
But increasing its majority by only 421 votes on the 1997 general election vote means the Conservative victory was far from decisive in what should have been an easy win in a safe Conservative seat.
Mr Stephen O'Brien, the new MP for Eddisbury, may have hailed his victory as an endorsement of Mr Hague's leadership and as a clear message to Mr Blair that Eddisbury's voters were disillusioned with the Labour government, but in defeat Mr Blair was already picking holes in the Tory victory.
"This has never been a Labour seat and here we are in mid-term government and the Conservatives couldn't advance on that position," he said.
In the Commons, the Tories fired another shot across Labour's bows when six MPs put down a Commons motion accusing a Labour MP of blocking a supermarket planning application while working as a consultant for a rival food group.
The Labour MP in question, Mr Peter Bradley, used parliamentary privilege this week to expose a US Drug Enforcement Administration document connecting the Tory party treasurer, Mr Michael Ashcroft, to drug-trafficking and money-laundering in Belize.
The Conservatives maintain that Mr Ashcroft has "no case to answer" over his business interests in Belize and will not, for the moment be called to the party's ethics committee to explain his £3 million donations to the party.