Number crunching

Christina Speight sent me this from the Private Eye:

- 42% Drop in Labour vote in Glasgow East by election, which was apparently Gordon Brown’s worst moment in June.

- 37% Drop in Labour vote at Glenrothes by election, which was apparently Gordon Brown’s finest moment last week.

Tee hee.

Problem is, although Labour did indeed poll about 40% fewer votes in the Glasgow East by-election than it did in 2005, in Glenrothes it obtained 19,946 votes (55.1%) in 2008 and 19,395 (51.9%) in 2005. So that second statistic is complete hogwash.