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By Hasan Suroor
LONDON, JULY 16. The Labour Party today suffered a major electoral embarrassment when it lost one of its safest seats in the predominantly Asian constituency of Leicester South in a by-election, while just about managing to hold on to a seat in Birmingham, another Asian stronghold. This is the latest in a series of setbacks for the party after it lost a by-election in Brent East, London, a few months ago, and was virtually routed in the European Parliament elections recently. Both in Leicester and Birmingham, voters registered their protest at the Prime Minister, Tony Blair's Iraq policy which, despite local issues, came to dominate the campaign. The Liberal Democrats were rewarded for their strong and consistent anti-war position as they wrested the Leicester South seat from the Labour by a good margin, and did well enough in Birmingham to take the second position. The Tories, too, paid the price for their support to the Iraq invasion and were relegated to the third position in both constituencies. They are now trailing the Lib-Dems in many of the areas where traditional Labour voters are looking for an alternative — a bad sign for the Tories, considering that a general election is less than a year away. In Leicester South, which the Labour had won in 2001 by a margin of more than a 1,000 votes, the Lib-Dem candidate, Paramjit Singh Gill, defeated the Labour candidate, Peter Soulsby, by a comfortable margin. In Birmingham Hodge Hill, the Labour candidate, Liam Byrne, barely hung on a traditionally party stronghold in a close contest which saw Labour's 2001 victory margin drop sharply. "Tony Blair has lost the trust of the British people,'' said the Lib-Dem election organiser, Lord Rennard, predicting a vast improvement in his party's prospects in the next general election. The outcome added to the Mr. Blair's embarrassment after the Butler committee's damning verdict on his Government's handling of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.
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