Conservative 20,539 (49.5%, +16.9%)
Labour 12,679 (30.6%, -18.2%)
Liberal Democrat 6,040 (14.6%, -4.0%)
UKIP 922 (2.2%)
Green 359 (0.9%)
English Democrats 275 (0.7%)
Monster Raving Loony Party 236 (0.6%)
Mark Walklake 217 (0.5%)
Cut Tax on Petrol and Diesel 118 (0.3%)
Gemma Garrett 113 (0.3%)

Conservative majority 7,860 (18.9%)

17.6% swing Labour to Conservative
7.1% swing Labour to Liberal Democrats

UPDATE: You can watch Elizabeth’s thank you message in the video box on the right.

There are just four hours til polls close in today’s by-election to decide who will succeed the formidable Gwyneth Dunwoody as MP for Crewe and Nantwich.

Everyone’s expecting a solid Conservative victory, which would be their first by-election triumph against the incumbent party since 1982. The key question seems to be: how big will be their majority? (Though, as this will largely be a factor of turn-out, the percentage swing away from Labour is the figure to look out for. An 8% swing is all that’s needed to change Crewe from red to blue).

Here’s what happened the last time the seat was contested, in 2005:

Labour (Gwyneth Dunwoody): 21,240 (48.8%)
Conservative (Eveleigh Moore-Dutton): 14,162 (32.6%)
Liberal Democrat (Paul Roberts): 8,083 (18.6%)

The real question for the Lib Dems is: will we be able build on our 18% vote, or will we end up being squeezed out by Labour and the Tories (as per the London mayoral election)? Might we also shed some of our votes to some of the minor parties - eg, Greens - contesting the election this time around?

Lib Dem by-election guru Lord Rennard isn’t giving much away, but did tell the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow - live-blogging Crewe here - that:

If you could have a ballot paper with ‘Not Labour this time’ on it, that would be the box that most people would tick. I would say there’s no positive enthusiasm for a Conservative government.”

Oops indeed as the BBC reports:

The Information Commissioner is launching an investigation after the Conservatives accidentally sent details of 8,000 people to a radio station.

The e-mail sent contained the names, addresses, telephone numbers and intentions of voters in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

Deputy Information Commissioner David Smith said the disclosure, to Manx Radio, raised “serious concern”.

The Conservatives admitted a “mistake” had been made.

The information, which had been gathered by the Tories during the campaign for Thursday’s by-election, was contained in three Excel files, and was sent in an e-mail to Manx Radio by accident, potentially breaching data protection laws.

Paul Linford has drawn an interesting parallel* with the Darlington by-election from the early 1980s which, against the odds, Labour held - so saving Michael Foot’s leadership of the Labour Party.

A defeat in Darlington would have quite possibly led to a change in Labour leader, and so at the very least a less disastrous 1983 general election.

So if you were a Labour supporter in Crewe & Nantwich, would you want to vote for Labour and risk prolonging Gordon Brown’s agony? Or vote for someone else in the hope of ending Gordon Brown’s premiership and getting a new Prime Minister in place?

* But, tsk tsk, overlooks that the Liberal Democrats have been arguing for decentralisation - and putting it into practice in local government - long before it became trendy amongst Labour or Conservative politicians to talk about the topic.

The folks from www.publicwhip.org.uk have just released a vote-match style website for the Crewe & Nantwich Parliamentary by-election. It serves up a number of different policy questions, and then tells you which party is the best fit for your answers.

As their news release says:

While activists are descending from all corners of the country to Crewe & Nantwich to help with their party’s by-election campaigns, volunteers from the Public Whip today launched an online questionnaire to help people make up their minds about who to vote for. The webpage http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/byelection compares people’s opinions to the way each party has voted in Parliament on a selection of important issues that have been in the news in the last five years. It uses the web-site www.theyworkforyou.com as a source of data …

We want people to remember the bigger issues and ask hard questions of the candidates about how they would vote after they are elected …

We want people to start using the internet more effectively to understand what their MPs are doing and to keep a close watch. Who knows, they might start doing more of what people want them to do, rather than their own thing all the time. That’s our idea of what democracy would look like.

Ah happy memories. Remember the glories of last summer and the Ealing Southall by-election when the Conservatives sanctimoniously threatened the Liberal Democrats with legal action over use of an image in a leaflet, saying that this was an outrageous breach of the law, would result in a huge financial penalty, the end of the world etc etc - all at the same time as putting out a leaflet themselves that, er…, did exactly what they were complaining of others doing?

You might have thought being caught out saying one thing whilst doing another would have resulted in a slight pause for caution during the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

But oh no.

Because the BBC reports:

The Conservatives took out a writ stopping Labour using a photo-shopped snap of Mr Timpson wearing a top hat.

So at the same time as complaining about breach of copyright, you’d have thought the Conservative leaflets would all be squeaky clean on this score perhaps?

You’d be wrong. In literature and in news releases the Conservatives have made repeated use of a Google Map based image about the Labour candidate living in Wales. Bit of an issue then that the terms and conditions for that image only allowed it to be used for free for private or internal use. A political party’s leaflet delivered through lots of letterboxes isn’t really either is it?

In the interests of consistency, I look forward to the news that the Conservatives have taken out a writ against themselves

UPDATE September 2008: the story below accurately reported that Stephen O’Brien’s website stated it was paid for by Parliamentary funds. It’s since been pointed out that at the time the website was in fact no longer being paid for by Parliamentary funds and the statement to the contrary has been removed from his site.

Trouble brewing for Conservative MP Stephen O’Brien, who has been promoting Edward Timpson - Conservative candidate in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election - on his website. The problem? The website is paid for by the Parliamentary funds. And that’d be funds for which the rules expressly forbid such campaigning. Tsk tsk.

A formal complaint has now been lodged with the Director of Finance and Administration of the House of Commons by Gwyn Griffiths, one of the local Liberal Democrat councillors. The key part of his complaint says:

On his website Conservative MP Stephen O’Brien promotes Edward Timpson, the Conservative candidate for Crewe and Nantwich, Stephen Mosley, Conservative candidate for Chester and Graham Evans, Conservative candidate for Weaver Vale.

He also uses the site to promote the policies and advance the cause of the Conservative Party in breach of the explicit rules laid down by the House.

Paragraph Seven of the ‘Rules and guidance on Members’ Websites funded from the Communications Allowance’ clearly states that it must not be used to fund party political activity or campaigning.

7. You must not use your website:
to campaign on behalf of or against any person seeking election
to advance perspectives or arguments with the intention of promoting the interests of any person, political party or organisation you support, or damaging the interests of any other such person, party or organisation.

On his website, Mr O’Brien states that it is paid for out of his parliamentary allowances.

Please launch an investigation into Mr O’Brien’s use of his Incidental Expenses Provision and Communications Allowance to promote the Conservative Party and their candidates.

Meanwhile, happy news from Tim Farron MP, who has been out meeting farmers and getting a very warm response for Elizabeth Shenton:

As I blogged about a few days ago, the Labour Party in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is attacking the Conservative candidate for opposing “making foreign nationals carry an ID card”. As I said then,

The use of the word “foreign” there seems to come with some rather unpleasant overtones in this context, the implication being that ‘ooh, foreigners - they’re terribly nasty aren’t they - so surely you can’t be against keeping tabs on them now, can you?’

But - as Alex has reminded me - there’s more to this than that. Because, you see, making foreign nationals carry an ID card hasn’t until now been Labour policy. Indeed, as the Home Office’s own website says at the time of writing:

Will it be compulsory to carry a card?
No.

That’s pretty clear really, isn’t it?

So what does this all mean?

One explanation of course is that Labour have got so desparate their leaflets are departing from the script and attacking other candidates for views that actually the Labour Party itself holds. Perish the thought.

The alternative? Well, that Labour have used the by-election to introduce a hasty change in their ID cards policy and gone for an (even more) macho anti-foreigner stance.

I do wonder, in that case, how many people in the Labour Party have been told that their policy has been changed in this way. Do you think, for example, that all the visiting Labour MPs have been told about this change? And I wonder if they are all happy with this extra anti-foreigner turn of screw slipped out during a by-election campaign?

It’s gone largely unremarked so far, but Mark Walklate, who is standing as an independent candidate in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, is a former Conservative activist.

He stood for the Conservatives in both the 2006 and 2007 local elections. Moreover, his nomination papers look to have been signed by two prominent local Conservative activists. All in all, that doesn’t seem like a happy ship.

P.S. It’s always unfortunate if you get your own phone number wrong in your leaflets. It’s doubly so when the wrong phone number turns out to be for the member of another party. But it’s quite nice of the Conservatives to be pointing their supporters at a Liberal Democrat member.

An excellent day yesterday with Nick Clegg and a lot of press interest. We’ve got a big operation going and had a very good number of helpers in today already.

This is a really important weekend - the team proved yesterday that we are well set up to deal with large numbers. We just need lots of people every day!

The news from the doorsteps is encouraging. It’s been a pleasure to be out and about. The big Elizabeth Shenton posters are going down a storm - as is Elizabeth herself with both the team and the public.

I’ve seldom come across a candidate who engages more naturally with the public. The other parties clearly don’t have that advantage.

Personally, having knocked on quite a few doors, I haven’t found a determined Labour voter yet, and most Tories seem far from convinced by both their candidate and their leader.

This is a by-election where there plenty of issues for people to get fired up about and plenty to talk about on the doorsteps. We have an exciting few days left ahead of us!

Hilary Stephenson is the party’s Director of Campaigns & Elections

An interesting snippet from some of the Labour material in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election: they are attacking the Conservative candidate for the (current, known to have changed a few times) Conservative policy of opposing ID cards.

However, from what I’ve seen of it, they’ve mostly given up on most of the arguments previously used and instead retreated into the following very narrow approach:

Do you oppose making foreign nationals carry an ID card?

The use of the word “foreign” there seems to come with some rather unpleasant overtones in this context, the implication being that ‘ooh, foreigners - they’re terribly nasty aren’t they - so surely you can’t be against keeping tabs on them now, can you?’

The more positive aspect of this slightly desperate approach is that it could indicate overall how badly the case for ID cards is going for Labour. The campaign group No2ID has been busy running online adverts in the constituency, which may be adding to the pressure on Labour.

UPDATE: It looks like some Labour members are pretty unhappy with this line too.

The usually very reliable Times political correspondent Sam Coates’ Red Box blog carried a rather bizarre posting yesterday, alleging the Lib Dems had more or less given up on Crewe. Party chief exec and by-election genius Lord Rennard soon put him right:

Just come to our HQ in Crewe and see us there for proof of our very serious intent! The Labour vote is very weak (as evidenced by our gains in Crewe South in the local elections) - so Lib Dems will aim to repeat earlier by-election successes.

And today the Lib Dems’ director of campaigns, Hilay Stephenson, issued this clarion call for assistance to party members:

It it is just 13 days to polling day in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

We’ve got off to a flying start with a tremendously strong by-election team and an exceptional candidate in Elizabeth Shenton, who has already made a strong impression on voters and the local press.

Here’s what the Crewe Chronicle had to say yesterday:

Elizabeth Shenton must be optimistic after her party pushed Labour into third place in the local elections. The Liberal Democrats took 25% of the vote nationally while Labour took 24%.

But we have a VERY short time indeed. We expect postal vote ballot papers to arrive with voters on Saturday and Monday, and this means we have a lot of work to do delivering and knocking on doors this weekend. Nick Clegg will be with us today to support Elizabeth’s campaign and we need your help to make a big splash right through this weekend.

Our canvass shows that the millionaire Tory candidate is failing to impress and Gordon Brown’s Labour candidate is not convincing the voters. There is all to play for. We just need enough people to come NOW to help us keep up the momentum.

Full details of how to get to our HQ are at www.elizabethshenton.com/help-elizabeth-win and you can read more about what an excellent person we have in Elizabeth at www.elizabethshenton.com/elizabeth-shenton-biography

The Henley contest will not be far behind and we are already in full swing there as well, with our HQ up and running and another very impressive by-election operation under way.

We know that the Tories will be bringing people in from all over the south this weekend. We know from experience that making an early impact is vital. We have lots of delivery and canvassing there waiting to be done. Please come and get our Henley campaign off to the flying start it needs. Full details of our HQ (in Thame) are at www.henleylibdems.org.uk/contact/

After all, what better way to spend a spring weekend than exploring the by-ways of Oxfordshire or Cheshire?

Both campaigns are giving us an excellent opportunity to push our positive agenda - and to really catch the attention of the public.

I look forward to seeing you!

Best wishes,

Hilary Stephenson
Director of Campaigns, Liberal Democrats

P.S. The weather forecast in both places this weekend is for a sunny weekend - perfect campaigning weather!

* sincere apologies for the headline.

Back last year when we had two Parliamentary by-elections going on at the same time, in Ealing Southall and Sedgefield, there was a concerted online campaign by Conservatives making comments around the web to claim that the Liberal Democrats were struggling in Ealing, had given up on winning and were instead concentrating on Sedgefield. My favourite was the supposed eye-witness account from someone in Ealing who claimed they saw people in the Liberal Democrat HQ there preparing lots of letters for Sedgefield.

It all seemed to dry up rather after the Grant Shapps 1234 incident but it looks as if the fairytale is raising its head again. For once more we have two Parliamentary by-election on at the same time (well, nearly - Boris Johnson has said he’ll quit as MP though he hasn’t announced his resignation yet), once again the Conservatives are worried about the Liberal Democrats, and once again the fairy tale comes out to play.

In this case, it’s Edward Timpson and his campaign blog, which spins the fairy tale that:

Chris Rennard, who runs all the Lib Dem campaigns, has also been spotted briefing journalists. The talk around all the journalists up here is that he doesn’t think the Lib Dems can get anywhere in Crewe and Nantwich and so he wants to divert all their resources to Henley instead.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Oh, and I think you’ll find that none of the journalists in Crewe who spoke to Chris Rennard today mentioned this at all. So much for it being what they’re talking about!