Labour GAIN from BNP - 4 comments

Good news, via.

Keighley West by-election

Labour 1,819 (47.37%)
BNP 1,216 (31.42%)
Con 627 (16.20%)
LDem 208 (05.38%)

Lab maj. 603 (15.95%) over BNP

Jo posted about the campaign yesterday, and The Guardian covered it too:

Sitting in the upstairs room of a terrace house, surrounded by leaflets and streetmaps, Angela Sinfield says she knows only too well what is at stake when she takes on the British National party in a byelection today.

Two years ago her teenage daughter, who had been groomed for sex by a local gang, was used by the far-right party to whip up racial tension in her home town of Keighley. The BNP portrayed her daughter's case as an issue of race and religion - Asian men preying on "local" white girls - and the fallout saw the far right make its first breakthrough in Bradford, winning four seats on the city council. Since then Keighley has become known as a BNP town, with BNP leader Nick Griffin singling it out as his number one target in last year's general election.

But today Ms Sinfield, whose campaign against grooming inadvertently let the BNP secure a foothold in the Yorkshire town, will do her best to drive the far right out. "I've never thought of myself as a politician, but why not stand up to these people? I'm a local woman, I know a lot of people and I know what damage the BNP are doing round here," she told the Guardian.

Also covered here.

Update: The previous results are here. I can't give you a swing, as three councillors were elected in 2004, and this is a by-election for one seat. The BNP only put up one candidate in 2004 - she came top, but with only 14.57% of the total votes. Labour came second and third, with a total of 23.34%.