British Prime Minister Gordon Brown suffered another serious blow to his leadership yesterday after his governing Labour Party lost one of its safest seats in a by-election in his native Scotland.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) reversed a majority of 13,500 in Glasgow East to snatch Labour’s 25th-safest seat in Britain, prompting more questions about how long Brown can remain in Downing Street.
Although he has only been in the job for a year, Brown has already suffered a string of terrible results in by-elections, local elections and London’s mayoral election, when Labour incumbent Ken Livingstone was beaten by Boris Johnson of the Conservatives. The latest hammer blow prompted Conservative leader David Cameron to call for a snap general election.
PHOTO: AP
“It’s obviously a truly dreadful result for Labour and Gordon Brown,” Cameron told reporters.
“What I wonder is whether we can really put up with this for another 18 months ... I think the prime minister should have his holiday but then we should have an election,” he said.
Brown, who is due to start his summer holiday next week, constitutionally has until the first half of 2010 to call a general election.
He has been under increasing pressure amid economic problems and widespread criticism, including from Labour lawmakers, of his leadership style and presentation skills.
But the loss of Glasgow East in Labour’s traditional central Scotland heartland is being seen as one of the biggest political upsets of recent times.
Questions are now being asked about how long Brown can stay in the job, even though there seems to be no obvious contender waiting in the wings.
Sky News television political editor Adam Boulton wrote in his Internet blog that there was unlikely to be “any sudden panic” which would lead to a leadership challenge.
But he added: “This will plunge Labour activists into even greater doom. Over the next few months, many will be wondering whether changes at the top could at least limit the damage when the general election comes.”
The victorious SNP candidate in Glasgow East, John Mason, won 11,277 votes, a majority of 365 over Labour’s Margaret Curran, who suffered a drop of 19 percent in vote share on the last general election in 2005.
“This SNP victory is not just a political earthquake, it is off the Richter scale,” Mason said in his acceptance speech. “It is an epic win, and the tremors are being felt all the way to Downing Street.”
Turnout in the by-election, sparked by the resignation of Labour’s David Marshall on health grounds, was around 42 percent, higher than expected, prompting commentators to suggest traditional Labour voters had switched to the pro-Scottish independence SNP to punish Labour.
Brown, who was born and raised in Glasgow, would lose his own seat in Scotland were the 22.54 percent swing replicated in a general election, Britain’s Press Association (PA) news agency said.
In that scenario, Labour would be left with just one member of parliament in Scotland compared to 40 after the 2005 election, PA calculations show, meaning ministers including Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling would lose their seats.
Douglas Alexander, international development secretary and a key ally of Brown, said voters had been expressing frustration at global economic conditions, adding the prime minister should not shoulder all the blame.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS