Labour And Tories Suffer At Polls

Labour has failed to win back a former stronghold in one Commons by-election and been beaten into fourth in another.

Bookies have Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck to win the next General Election.

Independent Dai Davies won the Blaenau Gwent seat in south Wales, which Labour lost in 2005 to Independent Peter Law when he overturned its 19,000 majority.

The Conservatives held Bromley and Chislehurst, in south-east England, but their 2005 majority was slashed from 13,342 votes to 633 by the Lib Dems.

Labour came fourth behind the UK Independence Party.

The Blaenau Gwent by-election was called following Mr Law's death in April. Mr Davies had been his election agent.

Mr Law, a former Labour MP, produced one of the big upsets of last year's General Election in winning the seat.

He had left Labour in protest at the introduction of a female-only candidates shortlist. He was diagnosed with a tumour during his election campaign and died this April.

Mr Law won the seat last year with a 9,000-vote majority.

In Thursday's Blaenau Gwent vote, Labour came second, with Owen Smith trailing Mr Davies by just under 2,500 votes.

Mr Smith said there was a need to "reach out to those people who left the party and try to heal some of the rifts that were here".

Bob Neill, who won in Bromley and Chislehurst for the Conservatives, replaces the late Tory MP Eric Forth, who had held the seat since its creation in 1997.

He received 11,621 votes, edging him just ahead of Liberal Democrat Ben Abbotts with 10,988.

Labour's Rachel Reeves was pushed into fourth behind UKIP candidate, MEP Nigel Farage.

Mr Farage said the result "sends a very loud message that it's time Mr Blair went".

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell praised his party's near-miss as a "stupendous result" in "one of the safest Conservative seats in the country".

"It shows that there is no confidence in Cameron's Tories in the Conservative heartlands," he said.

Sir Menzies added that the results in both Blaenau Gwent and Bromley were a "complete rejection of the Labour government".

Following his win, Mr Neill accused the Liberal Democrats of fighting their election campaign with the "most vigorous and underhand example of cynical personal abuse" that he had encountered in his 30-year political career.

There was a 50.5% turnout for the parliamentary election at Blaenau-Gwent and 49.6% for a Welsh Assembly election.

The Assembly election was won by Trish Law, widow of Mr Law.

Meanwhile, the turnout for the Bromley and Chislehurst by-election was 40.5 % - a marked reduction from 64.9% in 2005.

Mr Neill is the Conservative leader on the London Assembly and has been in politics since 1974, when he was elected as a councillor in the east London borough of Havering.

The Bromley and Chislehurst constituency is on the border of south-east London and Kent.

Victor Chandler are offering odds for the next General Election at:

Labour 5/6

Conservatives 5/6

Liberal Democrats 66/1