Politics live blog - Friday 14 January

Rolling coverage of all the day's developments including reaction to the result of the Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection

8.47am: Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has given his first response to the Oldham result. Like Yvette Cooper (see 8.28pm), he was quite measured in his assessment when he spoke to reporters outside his home in north London.

This a first step in a long journey for Labour ...

He also said that the voters had indicated that the government should "think again".

They said to the government 'think again on VAT, think again on the trebling of tuition fees, think again on the police cuts that are going to affect their communities'. And I think part of what it should be about in this country is listening to the voters. I think that's what David Cameron and Nick Clegg should do.

8.28am: Yvette Cooper, the shadow foreign secretary, has been putting the Labour case. She said the result "reflects the anger that there is among voters about what the government is doing" and she said it disproved David Cameron's claim at PMQs this week that that Ed Miliband was a "nothing".

But, interestingly, she avoided any triumphalism. According to PoliticsHome, this is what she told Radio 5 Live.

We know we've still got a long way to go, its only 8 months after the general election, as a party we keep having to learn about the things that went wrong for the Labour party and also really stand up for people.

8.25am: Simon Hughes has been speaking for the Lib Dems this morning. The Lib Dem deputy leader looked a lot more cheerful than Warsi but that might have something to do with the fact that he was in a studio, while she was interviewed standing in the cold in a road in Uppermill, Saddleworth. This is what Hughes had to say.


We had an excellent candidate, we had people coming from around the country. The mood of the campaign was very good, and in a seat that's always been Labour! , we pus hed up our share of the vote.

Actually, we had the same share of the vote yesterday that Labour won with at the general election just a few months ago. So, had the Labour vote not moved, we would have brought it home. We didn't. Labour got the protest vote, they got the anti-government vote.



Hughes said that government parties have only gained seats in byelections four times since the second world war. And he said the Lib Dems would eventually benefit from being a party of government.

The Liberal Democrats now a party of government, will take our responsibilities seriously and seek to earn the respect of the British people. Nobody can ever say in future that a vote for us is not worth casting because we're not in government we are in government, and we're going to do that job of governing well.

Hughes said he hoped the result would encourage some Conservatives to rethink their opposition to the alternative vote. In Oldham East and Saddleworth, the Tory vote got squeezed. With AV, that would not be a problem, Hughes said, because voters would be able to rank parties in order.

8.14am: Lady Warsi, the Conservative chairman, has been on the airwaves to explain why the result wasn't that bad for her party after all.

According to PoliticsHome, this is what she said.

First of all, the turnout was low. Secondly, this is a byelection, and thirdly we started this byelection in third place.

If you look at by-elections from 2001-2005, where on average Labour lost up to 18-20% of their vote, they still went on to win the 2005 election. We fought this election robustly and strongly and with a strong candidate.

We fought this seat to turn out every possible Conservative vote in the constituency. But let's be clear about one thing we started off in third place, and finished in third place. Of course our vote share went down. If you look at the pattern of byelections when a party is in government, it is! inevita ble that the party that is third at the start of the byelection will have its vote squeezed.

7.57am: We got the results of the Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection a few hours ago. Labour's Debbie Abrahams held the seat, with an increased majority and an increased share of the vote. Elwyn Watkins, the Liberal Democrat candidate who was just 103 votes behind Labour at the general election, lost by more than 3,500. But his share of the vote actually went up. Here are the key figures:

Debbie Abrahams, Labour: 14,718 (42%, up 10 points since the general election)

Elwyn Watkins, Lib Dem: 11,160 (32, up 0.32 points)

Kashif Ali, Conservative: 4,481 (13%, down 14 points)

Labour majority: 3,558

Turnout: 34,930 (48%)

I was live blogging from the count, and here is the assessment of what the results mean for the main parties that I filed as soon as the figures were announced.

For Labour: This is a good, solid win. Debbie Abrahams has got a bigger majority than Phil Woolas achieved in 1997, at the high water mark of New Labour. It's not an all-time-great historic victory, and the next general election is probably more than four years away, but nevertheless Labour are entitled to feel thrilled. It could have looked iffy for Ed Miliband. But the party ran a very professional campaign and it won handsomely.

For the Lib Dems: Funnily enough, I'm inclined to agree with Tim Farron. (See 12.50am.) This was a Dunkirk moment for the party. It was a defeat, but the fact that they did not get wiped out will make it feel to them like a victory. In fact, the Lib Dem share of the vote has actually gone up.The anti-Lib Dem swing was far less here ! than it is in the national polls. This doesn't mean that Nick Clegg doesn't still face monumental problems. But it does show that, with a strong local candidate, the party can hold its vote.

For the Conservatives: A dismal result. But the Conservative-led government, as Miliband wants us to call them, has just put up VAT and David Cameron made it clear that he was not really trying anyway. And they haven't held this seat since 1995. Andy Burnham was suggesting that this could provoke an anti-Cameron backlash in the party. One day, perhaps soon, there will be an anti-Cameron backlash. But not over this, I think

That was an instant verdict. But now we've got all day to pore over the results. I'll be blogging all morning, reporting on all the reaction to the result, as wel l as bringing you the best comment from the web.


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