Liberal Democrats Defy Expectations

3.33.02am UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 10th Feb 2006

The winning candidate, Willie Rennie

Commenting on the sensational result in the Dunfermline & West Fife By-election early this morning, Ashford Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate Chris Took declared "the Liberal Democrats have shown that we can win all across the country."

At the start of this campaign, many political commentators thought that the Liberal Democrats would be fighting to retain the second place that they narrowly gained over the SNP in 2005 - or even fighting to stay ahead of the Conservatives. The result was a sensational Liberal Democrat victory.

The result has proved that:

• three party politics is here to stay across Great Britain

• people want a better choice than Labour or Conservative

• the appeal of the Liberal Democrats for a fairer, greener and more democratic Britain has growing support.

This was our 243rd most winnable constituency at the last election. Ashford was not far behind as 311th on the Liberal Democrat target list.

Last night, Liberal Democrats achieved a huge 16% swing against Labour - enough to gain another 20 seats from Labour in Scotland alone. If this swing was repeated across Great Britain more than 200 Labour seats would fall to the Lib Dems.

The Conservatives lost even more support than their average drop in support in parliamentary by-elections since 1997. If this result was repeated across Great Britain, the Liberal Democrats would gain 40 seats from the Conservatives.

Labour have suffered a massive blow in the seat where Gordon Brown lives and in a campaign in which he featured most prominently.

Winning candidate, Willie Rennie, declared in his acceptance speech "People want a change - but they do not want to go back to the Conservatives.

This by-election has shown that the Conservatives are irrelevant in much of Britain. This is a terrible result for David Cameron - the Conservatives continue to decline."