Feltham by-election

The results, out earlier than expected because there were so few votes to be counted, confirm much of what this blog and EURef, as well as others, have been saying. Labour held the seat, as was expected. Turn-out was 28.8 per cent, the lowest in 11 years. That is not a good sign for anything.

Results as listed by the Guardian:

Seema Malhotra, a former adviser to Harriet Harman, retained the seat for Labour after a swing of 8.56% points from the Tories.

Malhotra increased Labour's majority from 4,658 to 6,203 when she won with 12,639 votes. Mark Bowen, the Conservative candidate, came second with 6,436 votes. Roger Crouch, the Liberal Democrat, fought off a challenge from the UK Independence Party to hold third place with 1,364 votes. UKIP won 1,276 votes.

Labour majority is 6,203, which is, weirdly, higher than the 4658 it was in 2010. On the other hand, the low turn-out does not exactly show that the voters of Feltham and Heston are enamoured of the Labour Party, though Ed Miliband remains safe for the time being.

Certainly, we have seen no sign of the voters being so very pleased with Cameron's performance in Brussels but, I suppose, it is possible that they have heard nothing about it in Feltham. The only party that must be reasonably happy are the Lib-Dims as they stayed in third place, if only just.

Conversely, the most disappointed party must be UKIP who were set to beat the Lib-Dims as recently as last week. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that UKIP has done badly for one reason only: their astonishing inability to confront the Boy-King of the Conservative Party over the non-veto of the phantom treaty. Accepting the man's word and semi-supporting him was a ridiculous idea. I wonder who thought of it.