Election loss deals bitter blow to UK's Brown

Britain's ruling Labour Party lost one of its safest parliamentary seats, results showed yesterday, deepening doubts within the party about Prime Minister Gordon Brown's ability to win the next election.

The pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) snatched a slim 365-vote majority in the Glasgow East constituency, overturning the huge 13,500 majority enjoyed by Labour at the 2005 election.

Defeat leaves Mr Brown facing a bleak political weekend as the party's main policy-making forum meets to try to figure out how to win back disillusioned voters.

"This is a huge protest vote. But I am still sceptical about whether it will lead to any serious attempt to unseat him although he is going to have a difficult time this weekend," Wyn Grant, professor of politics at Warwick University told Reuters.

"The trade unions will increase the pressure on him and say 'the agenda we have here is one that will restore you the core Labour vote'," he added.

The election was called after the Labour incumbent stepped down due to ill health.

The 22 per cent swing from Labour to the SNP - many traditional Labour supporters switched sides - is not just a political but also a personal blow to Mr Brown, a Scot. But the result barely dents Labour's 62-seat majority in Westminster.

However, following a series of recent Labour election defeats, the result will strengthen expectations that the party's 11 years in power may be nearing an end and that it could lose the next general election, due by early 2010.

"This SNP victory is not just a political earthquake - it is off the Richter scale," jubilant SNP candidate John Mason said. The seat was considered Labour's third safest in Scotland.

Defeat adds to the deepening sense of crisis enveloping Mr Brown, whose popularity has slumped since he took over as Prime Minister from Tony Blair 13 months ago.

Mr Brown and Labour have been hurt by the credit crisis, which has hit economic growth and sent house prices sliding, as well as by rising food and energy bills.

He has also made blunders, pulling back from calling a snap general election last year and pushing through tax reforms that hit low earners before he was forced into concessions. At the Warwick University meeting this weekend, Mr Brown will face not just dismayed party loyalists but disgruntled leaders of the trade unions on which Labour relies for funding. Many of them are in open revolt saying the party has forgotten the poor.

Unions have brought a long list of demands to the table - including more powers to strike and free school dinners.

The broad strands of the Labour movement - from socialists to modernisers - are increasingly at odds about where to go next and how to win a fourth term.