Britain's ruling Labour Party lost one of its safest parliamentary seats on Friday, deepening doubts within the party about Prime Minister Gordon Brown's ability to win the next election. Defeat left Brown facing a bleak weekend as the party's main policy-making forum met to try to figure out how to win back voters disillusioned by a string of political gaffes, rising inflation and a slowing economy.
Adding to the gloom, data published on Friday showed second quarter growth slowed to its weakest rate in three years as private housebuilding slumped, dragging the annual growth rate down to 1.6 percent from 2.3 percent in the first quarter.
The pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) snatched a slim 365-vote majority in the Glasgow East constituency with a 22.5 percent swing that overturned the 13,500 majority enjoyed by Labour at the 2005 election. If that swing against Labour was repeated in a general election even Brown could lose his seat.
"This is a huge protest vote. But I am still sceptical about whether it will lead to any serious attempt to unseat him although he is going to have a difficult time this weekend," Wyn Grant, politics professor at Warwick University, told Reuters.
Trade unions will increase pressure on Brown to lean towards their agenda, he said. "We'll support the party financially through thick and thin," Tony Woodley, joint leader of Britain's biggest union, Unite, told Sky news. "(But) if this prime minister and our party doesn't listen we'll have more Glasgow Easts and, God forbid, we might end up with the Tories (Conservative Party)."
The Glasgow East election was called after the Labour incumbent stepped down due to ill health. The constituency has pockets of extreme poverty scarred by unemployment, alcohol and drug addiction. "We understand and we hear people's concerns...We know that our role, when facing global economic challenges, is to be on the side of the people of Britain," Brown told the opening session of the policy-making forum at Warwick University.
"That is why over the next few months you will see in housing and in gas and electricity bills and in energy us doing more to help the hardworking families of this country," he said in an speech stressing Labour's past economic successes.
However, power utility EdF Energy, British subsidiary of French Electricite de France, said on Friday it was raising electricity prices by 17 percent and gas by 22 percent. Following a series of recent Labour election defeats, the result will strengthen expectations that the party's 11 years in power may be nearing an end and that it could lose the next general election, due by early 2010.
The Glasgow loss adds to the sense of crisis enveloping Brown, whose popularity has slumped since he took over as prime minister from Tony Blair 13 months ago. He has been hurt by the credit crisis, which has hit economic growth and sent house prices sliding, as well as by rising food and energy bills. He has also made blunders, pulling back from calling a snap general election last year and pushing through tax reforms that hit low earners before he was forced into concessions.
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