Labour heading for overwhelming victory in three byelections

Labour look set to win all three of yesterday's by-elections, with victory already declared in Manchester Central and Cardiff South and Penarth.

They are also favourites to take back Corby from the Conservatives, in what is a classic marginal constituency.

Louise Mensch, who stood down from the seat in order to move to New York to spend more time to her family claimed yesterday that if Labour win it will her fault and not the party's.

She tweeted: "Election result will not be a verdict on either Christine, or the Conservatives, but only on the decision I took to step down mid-term".

Turnout in Corby appears to be much higher than elsewhere with at over 40%.

The result in Manchester came after just 18% of constituents voted. It's believed to be the lowest in turnout in post war by-election history.

The Conservatives beat Ukip into fourth by just five votes in Manchester with the Liberal Democrats coming second almost 10,000 votes behind Labour's Lucy Powell.

The poor turnout couldn't spoil the mood for Powell, who celebrated her comprehensive victory on Twitter.

"Honoured and thrilled to be elected. Big vote for Labour and huge rejection of Tory-Lib Dem gov. Off to bed now #PuttingMCRFirst" she said.

Stephen Doughty won the Cardiff South poll with a comfortable majority in the notionally safe Labour seat with an impressive eight per cent swing away from the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats held on to third, but lost a massive 11% swing.

Doughty was the head of Oxfam Cymru before his selection as Labour candidate and will now take over from Alan Michael who stepped down to fight the PCC elections.

But a surprise result may be in store in Bristol's first ever poll for an elected mayor, with independent candidate George Ferguson doing well in early counting.

Ferguson says he was forced to set up his own 'Bristol First' party in order to get hold of electoral information and he otherwise wouldn't have been able to put his logo on the election paper.