Politics: Humiliating Defeats

David Watts, the sacrificial lamb sent into Newark as the Liberal Democrat by-election candidate must be feeling grim today. To represent what purports to be a major national party, whose strongest card until recently was its fearsome track record for winning by-elections, and to wake up on Friday morning having come sixth, with 2.6 per cent of the vote, is an experience to be forgotten.

However, it might cheer him up to be reminded of other spectacular by-election humiliations, starting with one featuring a candidate who is still very much in the public eye.

Bermondsey, Labour – February 1983

Bermondsey was one of the safest Labour seats in the country, where the sitting MP Robert Mellish scored 64 per cent of the vote in 1979. After he announced his intention to retire, he was furious that the local party selected as its candidate Peter Tatchell, who was young, very left-wing, and gay. Mellish stomped out, forcing a by-election in which homophobia ran rampant, and the result was the biggest swing against Labour there had ever been. The winner, Simon Hughes, has held the seat for more than 30 years. Tatchell never became an MP, but is a renowned campaigner for gay rights.

The Independent. 

Well, Saint Peter was gay-ish.

After many years of campaigning for gay rights, he went back into the closet.

I believe that during the election campaign, his sexuality was first brought up, not by the right-wing tabloids or political rivals, but by journalists from Gay News.