Labour Win In Oldham?

As we all expected, Labour won the Oldham East & Saddleworth by-election with a majority of 3,500 over the Lib-Dem. The turn-out was 48%, which is not bad for a by-election on a very cold and wet day in January. With the reduced poll, the Lib-Dem share actually increased slightly. It was the Tories who were the big losers. So, what can we conclude from all of this. The logical thing to conclude is, don't draw any conclusions at all. By-elections are opportunities for the disgruntled to express their dissatisfaction about something or other - and that was surely true here. There were the normal dissatisfactions with government policies on this, that or the other; primarily, at this moment, the row over university tuition fees. Then, it was important to the Lib-Dem leader that his party was not seen to be humiliated. For the health of the coalition government, that was important also for PM, David Cameron. Therefore, it was logical for the Tories to soft pedal in their campaigning. But Cameron could not say this and so became the first PM for many a year to go out campaigning in a by-election and knocking on doors. So the right wing of the Tory Party couldn't say that he hadn't tried. Anyway, most local Tories got the message and tactically voted for the Lib-Dems to try to keep out Labour. Are you still following? On top of all this was the reason why we were having a by-election in the first place. Phil Woolas, [picture above] a popular local MP, was barred from office by an election court after the Lib-Dems had protested about things he had said in his election literature about their General Election candidate - stuff, which they claimed was untrue. It seemed pretty mild stuff to me and if every politician that said something untrue during an election campaign was to be brought before an electoral court, we would be very short of MPs. So the electorate in Oldham East & Saddleworth would have been much peeved about being forced to turn out again on a wet January night in order to vote again to elect an MP to replace the one they were perfectly happy with in the first place. For those with good memories and/or a knowledge of history, there are many records of the electorate taking a rich vengenace on those who try to manipulate them. Politician's beware.

So, that's why, I don't think you should draw any conclusions at all from this by-election. At least that's the conclusion that I have reached. And I hope you feel suitably informed.

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