A catastrophic electoral defeat for Britain's beleaguered leader, and for his Labour Party IN THE days before the parliamentary by-election in Glasgow East on Thursday July 24th, Labour ministers seemed quietly confident that they would win it. After all, the seat was Labour’s third safest in Scotland and 25th safest in the whole of Britain; at the last general election, Labour held it with a majority of 13,507. The confidence turned out to be misplaced. The Scottish Nationalist Party won, narrowly but spectacularly, in one of the greatest by-election shocks of recent history. British newspapers rushed to comment that Gordon Brown, the prime minister, who is also Scottish, had received a “Glasgow kiss”—local parlance for a headbutt. In the immediate aftermath of the poll, Labour ministers trotted out the usual post-defeat...
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