 The result gave the Labour Party its first gain in a by-election in Britain since 1971.Yet while Labour had regained the seat which it had lost in 1979, the Conservatives were reported to be delighted at only narrowly losing given that the seat had been their third most vulnerable based on the 1979 results.Norman Tebbit, then a Conservative Cabinet minister, noted his party had come "within an ace of holding one of our most marginal constituencies" and argued that the results in Northfield and the by-election held on the same day for the Peckham constituency showed that the intervention of the Alliance allowed Labour to win.