Glasgow East by-election.

To be perfectly honest I'd forgotten all about it. This was partly because it was in Scotland and partly because Labour's already proved itself to be incapable or unwilling to run the country regardless of whether they win or lose elections.

As you all know by now Labour lost Thursday's by-election. Although they only lost by the matter of some 300 votes this represented a disaster for them because Glasgow East was Labours 4th safest seat having returned a Labour MP in every election for the last 60 odd years. The loss represented a massive 23% swing of the vote away from the Labour party, if this was repeated nationally it would leave Labour with only four MP's and vying for the role of fourth largest party alongside the United Kingdom Independence Party.

The result is even more disastrous for Gordon Brown because there is a suggestion that the incumbent Labour MP for Glasgow East was encouraged to resign his safe seat in order to force a by-election that Labour would easily win. This would reversed the trend of defeats that has recently plagued Labour and taken the pressure off Brown ahead of the summer break by allowing him to make lots of speeches about how "The tide has turned!" and "Labour is back in control!". While this clearly didn't happened it hasn't stopped Labour MP''s and party members running around being utterly convinced that they can still their fortunes around. This utter failure to comprehend the obvious would be admirable if it wasn't such a destructive property in a leader.

The whole incident however is leading me to become more and more convinced that rather then being a Labour minister smug faced twat, James Purnell, is actually a fifth columnist sent by Tory party HQ to infiltrate the party and destroy it from the inside.

You see Glasgow East is one of the poorest and most deprived areas of the UK and is known locally by such nicknames as "Mogadishu" and "Gaza". The last of these is particularly apt because you are probably less likely to meet a violent end in the Gaza strip then you are in parts of Glasgow. Amist such poverty in what is supposedly a "developed economy" some 1 in four of the population of Glasgow east are either unemployed or receiving incapacity benefit. Therefore Mr Purnell's decision to announce that his government was going to war with these people on Monday, three days before the poll, was either a deliberate attempt to further isolate already pissed of voters or an act of crass political stupidity.

In other news I think a special award should be given to the TV newscaster who introduced the story of the Qantas jet accident with the words "400 airline passengers bound for Australia had a lucky escape when their plane landed in Manila!"