British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour Party easily won a by-election in Glasgow on Thursday, in what is likely to be the embattled leader’s last test at the ballot box before the general election.
Labour comfortably defeated the Scottish National Party, winning almost three times as many votes, to hold its stronghold of Glasgow North East in Scotland’s biggest city, official poll results showed.
“Tonight the people have had their say and they backed Gordon Brown and his efforts to secure our economic recovery,” Labour candidate Willie Bain said. “People in my community have spoken not just for the constituency but for the country. The message for the general election is clear, game on.”
Labour had been widely expected to win the seat, which was made vacant by the resignation of Michael Martin, the parliamentary speaker, over his handling of a lawmakers’ expenses scandal that rocked British politics this year.
The win, however, will still come as a relief for Brown, who is struggling to revive miserable poll ratings and avoid a widely-forecast defeat to the opposition Conservatives in the general election due by next June.
Labour secured 12,231 votes or 59.39 percent of the vote in the seat, which the party has held for 74 years. The Scottish National Party (SNP), which forms a minority government in the devolved Scottish Parliament, won 4,120 votes or 20 percent.
The far-right British National Party was beaten into fourth place with 1,013 votes or 4.92 percent behind the Conservatives.
Brown has broken with prime ministerial tradition and campaigned in Glasgow North East — which adjoins Glasgow East, snatched from Labour by the SNP in a stunning by-election victory last year.
Former sheet metal worker Martin, 64, held the seat for 20 years from 1979.
Among the 13 candidates were two former BBC journalists, a blind former reality TV show contestant and John Smeaton, who famously roughed up a fleeing terror suspect during the 2007 Glasgow Airport attacks.
Voter turnout was low at 33 percent.
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