Two good results for the Lib Dems on Thursday with swings against Labour and two embarrassing third places for David Cameron’s Conservatives. That’s our line - but what does the press think? Here’s a handy guide…

Daily Express, Saturday 21st
“Leading Britain is a grown-up job for a serious politician. Voters have had quite enough of windmills, bicycles, sledges and huskies. They do not care for the dilettante Notting Hill Set which surrounds Mr Cameron. Part-time spokesmen who prefer to make money moonlighting rather than mastering their briefs should be swept away.”

Simon Heffer, The Daily Telegraph, Saturday 21st
“Frankly, if you can’t even come second in by-elections halfway through the third term of another party’s time in power, things aren’t just wrong. They are catastrophically wrong. The worst mistake Dave can make now, though, is to imagine they can’t get worse. They can. They can get a lot worse.”

Tania Branigan, The Guardian, Saturday 21st
“The third-place finish is a personal blow to David Cameron, who toured the west London constituency five times with political newcomer Tony Lit. The Liberal Democrats also squeezed the Conservatives into third place in Sedgefield.”

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Over on other sites, both Stephen (Guardian) and myself (New Statesman) have pieces about the by-election results. I don’t think either of us are 100% keen on the headlines used

In a quiet moment in Ealing (no sniggering at the back), I thought it would be interesting to see how much the various parties are using social networking site to support their efforts in the two parliamentary by-elections - and whether my sneaking suspicion that the Liberal Democrats are making the best use of it are true. It’s possible that the other parties have secret groups we don’t know about, but based on what we cansee, here are the stats* - represented for your viewing pleasure in traditional bar chart form, with exciting added 3-D perspective:

In the Ealing Southall by-election, four parties have publicly listed Facebook groups. Labour don’t appear to have one, but I thought it only fair to include them in the chart as they did previously hold the seat doesn’t have a publicly listed group, but there is one in existence (thanks James Graham for spotting it). Both the Greens and Respect have small groups, and the Conservatives appear to be making steadily more use of Facebook, but the Liberal Democrats’ largest group has more members than the rest of the groups put together - and is more than twice the size of the Tories’.

There is a similar story in Sedgefield, where the Liberal Democrat group again has more activists than the others put together. The Green Party doesn’t have a group (and Respect aren’t fielding a candidate), and the Conservatives group is very small. It looks like only Labour can beat the Liberal Democrats here.

*For ease of charting, I’ve based this on the size of the largest public group I could find, but the figures are similarly ordered if you add up all of the groups and events for each party.

No, it’s not Ealing this time. But rather the 2005 Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Tottenham is backing UKIP in the Sedgefield by-election.

The story particularly caught my eye because I slightly know the person - William Macdougall - from when he was a Conservative councillor in Haringey (yes, they used to have some!) up until 2002. We mainly had some dealings over the redrawing of ward boundaries, as the Lib Dems, Tories and Greens got together to put in a joint proposal. As, in addition to having held senior posts locally and stood for election at both local and Westminster level, he has also given significant sums to the Conservatives in Haringey over the years (there’s over £11,000 of donations listed on the Electoral Commission’s website) the electoral impact on the Tories may well turn out to be greater in Haringey than in Sedgefield.

One thing you can say about these by-elections, they’re not dull.

“The Tories, a poor second in 2005, are nowhere. But the Liberal Democrats are closing the gap rapidly on Labour … Labour’s fixers are worried”

Paul Routledge in The Mirror. I think you can guess from the rest of the piece that he doesn’t really like us

And in news from the other parties in Sedgefield … there’s this clip on YouTube of a confrontation between Labour activists, David Cameron and a hoodie.

Handy hint for Labour person on the right - holding the poster the right way up helps.

So this is how Labour gets posters up.

Meanwhile, Greg Stone has launched his Sedgefield by-election campaign, where yet another photo of Blair and Bush is getting regular use. Look out for the man in the background.

Sedgefield Liberal Democrats have selected Greg Stone to be their candidate for the parliamentary by-election to succeed Tony Blair. The Sedgefield Liberal Democrats website reports:

Greg is a senior Liberal Democrat Councillor and has lived in the North East since graduating from Newcastle University. Greg is 32 and currently works as an expert in regeneration including eco-friendly projects in the Sedgefield constituency. He previously worked at the University of Teesside.

Commenting, Chief Executive Chris Rennard said:

“I am delighted that Greg Stone has been selected; I am sure that he would be an outstanding MP, worthy of the trust of the people of Sedgefield.

“Many people will now want a full time dedicated local MP and Greg will be that person.

“The Liberal Democrats will be challenging Labour hard to return Greg Stone as the MP on 19 July.”

Greg Stone said:

“If elected I will be a local MP living in the constituency and working full time for the people of Sedgefield.”

Meanwhile, the UK Independence Party has selected Toby Horton, a former Conservative, to fight the seat. He was the Tories’ candidate against Tony Blair when the latter was first elected back in 1983 and ran William Hague’s constituency office in the 1990s.