On 23 July 2004, the Member of Parliament for Hartlepool, in England, Peter Mandelson (Labour), was nominated as the United Kingdom's new European Commissioner for Trade. On 8 September, he accepted the office of Steward of the Manor of Northstead, thereby disqualifying himself from Parliament, and causing a by-election. Polling took place on 30 September. It was the last of six by elections held during the 2001–2005 Parliament. Results Out of a registered electorate of 68,517, there were 31,362 valid votes, making a turnout of 45.77%. This was the highest by-election turnout since the Romsey by-election in May 2000. The Labour Party candidate Iain Wright won the seat with a majority of 2,033, a substantially reduced majority. The Liberal Democrat vote more than doubled, leaving that party a close second. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) held its deposit, and beat the Conservative Party into fourth place. This marked the first time UKIP had come third in a by-election (and followed a successful European election in June 2004, in which countrywide it had come third and won twelve seats). It would be over six years before the party improved on this position, when it took second place at Barnsley Central in 2011. It would go on to win a by-election for the first time a little over a decade after the Hartlepool contest, in Clacton in October 2014. The Conservative vote in Hartlepool dropped considerably, leaving the party in fourth place for the first time in an English by-election since Liverpool Walton in 1991. Robert Kilroy-Silk of UKIP initially suggested he might stand but later ruled this out, as did Hartlepool and Middlesbrough mayors Stuart Drummond and Ray Mallon. Preceding by-elections had seen the Liberal Democrats come from third place to beat the Conservative Party, and in Brent East and Leicester South take seats from Labour. The seat was safer (judging by the 2001 result) than Leicester but was vulnerable to swings such as achieved in Brent, or in Birmingham Hodge Hill where the Liberal Democrats narrowly failed to win. In the event, the Liberal Democrats were not quite able to repeat these performances. Their campaign suffered from the choice of a candidate who was not from Hartlepool, while the Labour candidate had been born and brought up in the town. In addition, the Liberal Democrat candidate made reference, on a campaign blog, to having canvassed a street where everyone