BRITAIN:David Cameron's Conservatives will take victory in the Crewe and Nantwich byelection as the cue to force an early poll in London mayor Boris Johnson's seat of Henley in Oxfordshire.
That was the prediction last night even before the polling stations closed in Crewe and Nantwich, and as the Conservatives played down expectations of their margin of victory over Labour's Tamsin Dunwoody.
Labour, meanwhile, was pulling out all the stops in a determined effort to at least avoid the ignominy of trailing third behind the Liberal Democrats in a seat it has held since the second World War.
An against-all-odds win for Labour would have offered Gordon Brown a lifeline as he battles to re-establish his authority and credibility and restore calm to a Labour Party increasingly fearful its time is running out.
But Downing Street was instead braced yesterday for another weekend of inquests, recrimination and speculation as Labour MPs prepared to calculate their own "at risk" factor after the expected fall of Crewe and Nantwich, a seat which ranks 165th on the Tory general election target list.
The Conservatives required a swing of 8.2 per cent to win yesterday's contest and so claim their first by-election gain from Labour since Ilford North in 1978, a year before Margaret Thatcher first general election victory. A smaller swing of 6.9 per cent would give Mr Cameron an overall majority in a new House of Commons.
Following the Conservatives' success in the English and Welsh local elections earlier this month, triumph in Crewe and Nantwich would again confirm double-digit leads in national opinion polls suggesting Mr Cameron is on course for Downing Street.