Date set for Brown poll test

Last Modified: 06 Oct 2008
Source: ITN

A critical by-election which will be the latest test of Gordon Brown's popularity is to take place on November 6, it has been confirmed.

The date of the Glenrothes by-election, in the next-door seat to Mr Brown's, emerged at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party in London.

It will be formally announced in the constituency on Tuesday by Jim Murphy, who became Scottish Secretary in last Friday's Cabinet reshuffle.

The seat, where Labour is defending a majority of 10,664, fell vacant with the death of MP John MacDougall.

November 6 is a date which had been widely predicted and the SNP accused Mr Brown of trying to "bury" the poll in the publicity over the US elections, which will take place two days beforehand.

SNP MP Mike Weir said: "In Glasgow East Labour held a snap by-election hoping voters were on holiday, and now in Fife they are hoping to bury the by-election in the aftermath of the US presidential elections.

"It is an incredibly desperate move by Gordon Brown, and tantamount to an admission of defeat.

"The reality is that this by-election in Gordon Brown's backyard will generate massive interest because there are huge issues at stake."

The SNP is hoping for a repeat of its Glasgow East triumph, where it captured a nominally safe Labour seat in its Scottish industrial heartland.

In 2006, Labour suffered a spectacular humiliation in another corner of Mr Brown's political backyard, when the Liberal Democrats captured Dunfermline and West Fife - another nominally impregnable Labour seat - from his party.

Bookies have already made the SNP 1-4 favourites to win.

But Mr Brown may be able to regain ground for Labour by pointing to the need for stability in the whirlwind currently battering the British economy.

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