Feltham and Heston by-election result Lab hold
Seema Malhotra Labour 12639 (54%, +11)
James Hockley Conservatives 6436 (28%, -6)
Roger Crouch Lib Dems 1364 (6%, -8)
Andrew Charalambous UKIP 1276 (5%, +3)
David Furness BNP 540 (2%, -1)
Daniel Goldsmith Green 426 (1%, +1)
Other candidates 543 (2%)
Total votes: 23299 Turnout: 28.8% Majority 6203
LABOUR breathed a sigh of relief after comfortably holding Feltham and Heston in a by-election at the end of a tough week.
Seema Malhotra, the successful Labour candidate, easily retained the seat for her party, winning 12,639 votes (54.42%) for an increased majority of 6,203 over the Conservatives' Mark Bowen (6,436, 27.71%).
Turnout was just 28.8%, the lowest in a by-election for 11 years since the West Bromwich West poll in November 2000 attracted just 27.6% of voters.
And the Liberal Democrats suffered another by-election nightmare following last year's disastrous performance in Barnsley Central where they lost their deposit.
Roger Crouch (1,364, 5.87%) did not quite face that ignominy this time but it was a close-run thing, and indeed the Lib Dems only just held onto third place after a strong challenge from UKIP (1,276, 5.49%).
The poll was yet more proof that being in government has severely harmed the electoral appeal of Nick Clegg's party.
But the same cannot be said of the Conservatives who will head into the Christmas recess in a decidedly chipper mood.
For, against the odds, the Tories have established a consistent, if rather narrow, opinion poll lead for the first time this year, seemingly in a direct consequence of Prime Minister David Cameron's veto on Europe.
Mr Cameron's refusal to bow to pressure from France and Germany to sign up to changes to the EU's Lisbon Treaty has chimed well with an increasingly Eurosceptic British public.
And the PM followed his self-styled victory in Europe with a strong performance in Westminster at the last Prime Minister's Questions of the calendar year.
Responding to a jibe from Labour leader Ed Miliband about the split in the coalition over the Eurozone crisis, Mr Cameron retorted: "No one in this house is going to be surprised that Conservatives and Liberal Democrats don't always agree about Europe.
"But let me reassure him he shouldn't believe everything he reads in the papers. It's not that bad. It's not like we're brothers or anything!"
It was a cutting put-down which clearly hurt Mr Miliband whose leadership remains very much defined by his act of political fratricide in September 2010.
Polling suggests that Mr Miliband has already blown his chance with the British public who have failed to warm to him, though he has not been helped by a Labour party still in the process of renewal.
Indeed, Labour's lack of clarity on an alternative policy really harms them on weeks like this one, and it was difficult to pin down their own position on the EU veto.
Similarly, when it comes to trust over the handling of the economy, the Labour team of Mr Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls is favoured by just 29% over the current duo of Mr Cameron and George Osborne.
That view comes despite the fact that the public thinks that slowing cuts would boost growth (69%), Britain is getting a worse place to live (47%), and the economy will be worse next year than this (41%).
Of course, British pessimism about 2012 should come as no surprise following Mr Osborne's Autumn Statement in which he announced a sharp downgrading of growth in this year and the next.
Meanwhile, in other depressing news this week, unemployment rose to its highest level for 17 years with 2.64 million people now out of work.
And so, against this dreary background, it is quite extraordinary - not to say, a damning verdict on the Labour opposition - that the Tories hold a poll lead, even if it turns out to be a transient one.
Even in traditional strongholds north of the border, where the Conservative presence is so small as to be inconsequential, Labour trails in second place.
Today saw the election of Johann Lamont as the new Scottish Labour leader, a direct result of the Scottish National Party's thumping victory in the Holyrood elections in May.
Ms Lamont should not underestimate her task with a recent poll from MORI suggesting the Nationalists' surge has continued.
Oddly, if the SNP's presence in the Scottish Parliament was replicated at Westminster, the Conservatives could yet still be denied a majority in a general election.
The main consequence of another SNP landslide would be for them effectively to replace the Lib Dems as a strong third party in the House of Commons.
And the only way that the Tories could combat the third-party presence from Scotland is by taking more seats off Labour and the Lib Dems in England.
Of course, when it comes to the latter, it could be said that they are already receiving all the help they can get.
This has been a year to forget for Nick Clegg and his increasingly disenchanted rabble of Lib Dems.
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