Brandwood 1

BORE - "FIGHTBACK STARTS HERE" AS LABOUR TAKE BRANDWOOD

21-09-2007

Birmingham's Labour leader Albert Bore heralded his party's victory in last night's Brandwood by-election victory saying "the fightback starts". The seat was previously held by Conservative cabinet member Ken Hardeman who died in July.

Victorious candidate Mike Leddy (previously a councillor in Perry Barr) romped home with a majority of 335 over his Tory rival Ken Axford.

Labour now have 42 seats compared to the Conservatives 43, and although there's no immediate immediate prospect of the ruling Tory-Lib Dem coalition being overturned, Bore believes a sea change is taking place in the city and the wider West Midlands.

"As you'd expect, I'm extremely pleased" Bore said. "The fightback starts here. You'll see that we also won through in Nuneaton last night and we took a seat in Worcester to take control of the Council.

"With our new leadership we're looking at electoral success which a few months ago looked very doubtful.
"In Brandwood, with Mike the local people are going to get a very good campaigner, who will be very effective in taking their issues forward."

Other interesting notes from the by-election: the BNP beat the Lib Dems into fourth place, and the Greens beat Independent council house campaigner.

Here's the result in full:

Ken Axford, Conservative Party Candidate 1663
Keith Axon, New Nationalist Party 25
Frank Chance, Independent 157
Francois William Teissier Jones, UKIP 64
Michael Patrick Leddy, Labour Party 1998
Anna Lucille Masters, The Green Party 193
Brian Alec Peace, Liberal Democrat 285
Robert Purcell, British National Party 290