It’s not all smiles at b’day bash

Late in the night in Straw’s constituency, Blackburn, as elsewhere in the country, Labour watched the Liberal Democrats clawing into their leads, even as the Tories seemed to have made a resurgence.

Straw had to get a mufti to help him on Thursday to get the voters vote Labour. In Blackburn, it was the historic King George’s Town Hall which was the venue of the counting. In sharp contrast, to the Indian electoral experience, it was a quiet affair, with just handful of Asians waiting outside the counting centre; the media and select party supporters inside.

At the end of the day, Jack Straw made it to the winning post with a reduced victory margin and thanks to a decisive Muslim vote.

But that was not the case in Bethnal Green and Bow, where Labour candidate Oona King was defeated by slim margin by George Galloway, a Labour rebel once accused of supplying secret documents to Saddam Hussein.

The first Muslim woman to enter the Parliament on a Labour ticket —— Yasmin Qureshi —— too attributed her win to the fact that she had distanced herself from Blair’s Iraq policy.

In Sedgefield, after Tony Blair made this victory speech, he and his wife had to hear out Reg Key, the father of a British soldier killed in Iraq who contested the elections and won ten per cent of the votes.

‘‘This campaign, I dedicate to the British soldiers killed in Iraq, I would have like to grieve for my son, but instead have to complain,’’ said Keys.

Keys and other campaigners have vowed the war will remain a political issue. The wiry former paramedic with a pencil moustache is driven by anguish over the killing of his son Tom by an Iraqi mob four days short of his 21st birthday.

‘‘I hope in my heart that the prime minister might be able to say sorry to the families of the dead,’’ said Keys, 53. (With Reuters)

A former topless model stood next to Blair on the stage at the count, the pun ‘BLIAR’ emblazoned on her cap. ‘‘I think that Reg Keys is the most honourable man in this room,’’ she declared when her turn came to speak.