Counterintuitive

Reading about Brent East this morning, a thought crossed my mind - if, as seems likely, the Tories come third in the by-election, isn't it in their best interests (in the short term, at least) for the Lib Dems to actually win?

Consider this: if the result is a Labour hold with the Lib Dems second and Conservatives third then the Lib Dems can say 'look, we've gone past the Tories' and Labour can say 'we held the seat and there's always a swing against the government in by-election but the Tories did really badly.' Labour won't have had a great performance but they can always spin it (even in these post-spin times) as an even worse result for the Tories.

But, if the Lib Dems win then no one's really going to be concerned about the Tory performance - the headlines will all be focusing on Labour having lost a safe seat. If there's any attention on the Tory vote it can easily be dismissed by talking about the 'Lib Dem by-election machine' and pointing out that their vote has held up as well or better than the Labour vote did in Lib Dem by-election victories in the 90s such as Newbury, Christchurch or Eastleigh.

Obviously, third place isn't good news for the Tories, but who's going to notice how many votes they get if the attention's on a Lib Dem victory and Labour defeat?

(And talking of the 'Lib Dem by-election machine', does this oft-repeated phrase conjure up for anyone else the image of Chris Rennard operating some giant Heath Robinson-esque contraption?)