In the early hours of Friday morning, (1st Oct 2004), Jody Dunn secured a 19% swing from Labour to come extremely close to taking Peter Mandelson's old seat.

Jody and her team ran a magnificent and positive campaign which the whole party can be proud of. Labour had almost nothing to say except negative attacks on Jody personally. By contrast, we had many positive messages about our policies over a wide area.

I know that Jody and her agent, Richard Pinnock, would join me in sending our many thanks to everyone who helped the campaign.

Working together, you gave the party a fantastic result. Many thanks also for all the messages of goodwill to Jody, who as you may know was attacked by another candidate whilst making her speech at the count. Her determination and professionalism in going on to give a full set of media interviews and thank yous to all our helpers was very impressive.

Dramatic though the collapse in the Labour vote was, perhaps the biggest story was the Conservatives being pushed into fourth place.

Here is just some of what the media are saying:

"[The Tory] fourth place in Thursday's parliamentary election in the northern seat of Hartlepool was the first time since World War Two that a main opposition party has finished outside the top three." (Reuters)

"The shadow defence secretary, Nicholas Soames, today described the Tories' fourth place in the Hartlepool byelection as "a f****** awful result".
(The Guardian)

"Michael Howard was delivered a devastating eve of conference blow."
(Evening Standard)

The full result was:

40.7% Iain Wright (Labour): 12752 votes (-18.5%).

34.2% Jody Dunn (Liberal Democrat): 10719 votes (+19.2%).

10.2% Stephen Allison ( UK Independence Party): 3193 votes (+10.2%).

9.7% Jeremy Middleton (Conservative): 3044 votes (-11.2%).

1.8% John Bloom (Respect - The Unity Coalition): 572 votes.

0.8% Iris Ryder (Green Party): 255 votes.

0.8% James Starkey (National Front): 246 votes.

0.4% Paul Watson Fathers-4-Justice (Independent Candidate): 139 votes.

0.3% Christopher Herriot (Socialist Labour Party): 95 votes.

0.3% Richard Rodgers (Common Good): 91 votes.

0.3% Phillip Berriman (Independent Candidate): 90 votes.

0.3% Alan Hope (Monster Raving Loony Party): 80 votes.

0.1% Ronnie Carroll (Independent Candidate): 45 votes.

0.1% Edward Abrams (English Democrats Party): 41 votes.

The four parliamentary by-election campaigns over the last year, the local/London/European elections and our successful Conference have all improved the position of the party considerably as we prepare for the General Election next year.

Thanks again to everyone who helped in very many ways to support this campaign.

Best wishes,

Chris

Chief Executive

Liberal Democrats