Labour - can it get any worse?

Even the BBC cannot avoid reporting the Henley by-election result, although they did their best to downplay it in advance. Today they have to don the black-armbands to tell us that:

"The Conservatives have won the Henley by-election, pushing Labour into fifth place on the day Prime Minister Gordon Brown marks his first year in office...Labour candidate Richard McKenzie lost his deposit as he trailed in behind the Greens and the British National Party.

The turnout was just over 50%, compared with 67.9% in 2005.

Mr Howell took the seat with 19,796 votes to the Lib Dem candidate Stephen Kearney's 9,680.

Labour's Richard McKenzie could only poll 1,066 votes, behind the Green Party's Mark Stevenson on 1,321 and the BNP's Timothy Rait on 1,243.

Both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats saw their share of the vote rise compared with the 2005 General Election while Labour's fell by more than 11%. "