World Crisis Online

By Eddie Buckle and Gonzalo Vina

March 4 (Bloomberg) — U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said his Liberal Democrat party will bounce back after it slumped to sixth place in a special parliamentary election.

The opposition Labour Party candidate, Dan Jarvis, held the Barnsley Central seat in northern England, with 61 percent of the vote yesterday, up 14 percentage points from the May 2010 general election. The Liberal Democrats’ Dominic Carman took 4 percent, down from 17 percent in May when the party came second.

“I have no doubt people will try to use this single result to write off the Liberal Democrats. They have done it in the past and we have proved them wrong and we will prove them wrong again,” Clegg told reporters today. “In government, nationally, we will continue to do what I think is absolutely vital for the long-term benefit of the country, namely sort out the economic mess we inherited from Labour for the long-term benefit of Great Britain.”

Labour attacked Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative-led government during the campaign for cutting the budget deficit at a rate that it says will damage public services and endanger the economic recovery. Liberal Democrat ministers have been forced to defend changes of policy since they went into coalition, including the ditching of a pledge not to increase student tuition fees, a step that led to riots in central London.

The U.K. Independence Party, which advocates British withdrawal from the European Union, came second yesterday with 12 percent of the vote. The Conservative candidate was third with 8 percent, down from 17 percent in May. The Liberal Democrats lost the 500-pound ($812) deposit that candidates forfeit if they fail to take 5 percent of the total vote.

‘Fed Up’

Speaking in Barnsley today, Labour leader Ed Miliband said voters had sent “a very clear message” to the government that they are “fed up” with the cuts and the squeeze on living standards.

“Nick Clegg posed a year ago as the great champion of the new politics,” Miliband said. “He is now breaking his promises every day.”

Voters across Britain go to the polls on May 5 in a referendum on whether to change the first-past-the post voting system in parliamentary elections in favor of the alternative- vote system. That allows voters to rank candidates in individual districts in order, with the second preferences of lower-scoring candidates redistributed until someone has the support of 50 percent of electors.

The referendum was a key demand of the Liberal Democrats for joining the coalition with Cameron last year. The prime minister and other leading Conservatives are campaigning for a ‘No’ vote.

There will also be elections to the Scottish and Welsh legislatures and some English local councils the same day.

Yesterday’s vote was called after Eric Illsley, the Labour lawmaker who previously held the seat, was convicted of making false expenses claims. Illsley was imprisoned for a year on Feb. 10 for fraudulently claiming 14,500 pounds.

–With assistance from Thomas Penny in London. Editors: Andrew Atkinson, Leon Mangasarian

To contact the reporters on this story: Eddie Buckle in London at ebuckle@bloomberg.net; Gonzalo Vina in London at gvina@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net