Labour fails in tricky Brent East

Labour failed to grab back one of its main targets in London last night - Ken Livingstone's old constituency of Brent East.

Despite fielding an anti-Iraq war Muslim candidate who could barely bring herself to mention Tony Blair during the campaign, Labour was unable to overturn a Lib-Dem majority of slightly more than 1,000.

Yasmin Qureshi, a Pakistani-born human rights lawyer, had been strongly tipped to bring the constituency back into the Labour fold after it was lost in a 2003 by-election.

But in a desperately disappointing night for the party in north London, Ms Qureshi's ambitions of becoming Britain's first female Muslim MP were swept aside.

The Lib-Dems won the seat with a swing of more than 30 per cent from the last general election. A jubilant Sarah Teather, who retained the seat with a majority of 2,712, said: "I am going back to work tomorrow as the MP for this area. It's a privilege to be doing so."

Minutes before the result was announced, Ms Qureshi had sat huddled with her campaign team, crunching the numbers. But there weren't enough.

Brent East has always been a thorn in Labour's side, and so it proved again. Eighteen months ago, the Lib-Dems won the bitterly-fought byelection. This time round, it was a seat that Labour desperately wanted to win back.

But throughout her campaign, Ms Qureshi was walking an almost impossible political tightrope: even though she was the official Labour candidate, she savaged the Prime Minister in a constituency which has the fifth highest concentration of Muslim voters in the capital.

It was a balancing act that did not work: the Lib-Dems maintained their monopoly of the anti-war vote.

Clearly crushed by her defeat, Ms Qureshi said: "We ran a good campaign on the issues that mattered."

Those issues, it must be said, were distinctly Old Labour: she had wheeled in veteran campaigners such as Tony Benn and former foreign secretary Robin Cook in an attempt to woo back disaffected Labour Left-wingers.

Mayor Mr Livingstone also supported her and put his considerable local knowledge at her disposal. It was to no avail. In the last few days of the campaign, as she tried to convince fellow Muslims to back Labour, Ms Qureshi thought she was in with a chance.

But as the long night rolled on at Brent town hall, the writing was on the wall - Mr Livingstone's chief- of- staf f Simon Fletcher nervously paced the corridors, mobile phone in hand as he spoke to his boss.

As the result became certain, his face was as long as the queue of family and friends commiserating with Ms Qureshi.

Some Labour supporters were clearly stunned by their failure to win back what they thought was safe Labour territory. "Where do we start?" asked Michael Shaughnessy from Wembley. "Iraq? Tuition fees?"

He stopped and peered at the long line of white ballot papers stacking up for the Lib-Dems. "Not our night, I think."