Sunday, January 30, 2011

Oldham East And Saddleworth By-Election Result No Cause For Alarm

The Oldham East by-election result is not a reason for the Coalition to panic.
Many people will recall that shortly after Tony Blair came to power in 1997 with a landslide a by-election was held in Uxbridge West London.
The Conservative party who had just kept the seat at the general election saw their vote increase by some 7%.
As a pointer as to what may happen during the course of Parliament or at the next general election it was,meaningless, as at the next general election held four years later in 2001 Labour won rather convincingly.
If anything can be learned from political history it is simply that one should not rely at all on the outcome of a by-election particularly one which is held very early in the history of a parliament.
The succesful labour result at Oldham East and Saddleworth has been interpreted by many as confirmation of the choice of Ed Miliband as the party leader.
The result for Labour is that it retained a seat that it had won at the General election, a defeat would have been an utter disaster, but this result does not in any way secure Ed's leadership in exactly the same way that the Uxbridge result had not secure the leadership for our current foreign secretary William Hague.
Liberal Democrat Elwyn Watkins failed to take the Oldham East and Saddleworth seat, despite the sitting Labour MP Phil Woolas having been disqualified for lying about his opponent in the 2010 General election.
The Labour party election campaign was supervised by the Shadow education secretary Andy Burnham, who stated that Ed Miliband's decision to visit the constituency three times was a a determining factor for the victory.
Andy Burnham stated "While Ed was in the hills in Saddleworth, Tory ministers were on the skiing slopes in Klosters". Well I think he may be referring to George Osborne the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to be quite frank if I had his problem in sorting out the mess left behind by 13 years of Labour gross financial errors combined with their light touch of regulation of the banks I would be taking a well earned holiday as well!
Whilst Andy Burnham is sniping at Tory Ministers he fails to elucidate on the whereabouts of The Hon Member for South Shields Ed's brother David. There have been many suggestions that David Miliband may become the vice chairman of Sunderland Football Club.
Miliband senior has started a Limited liability company "The Office of David Miliband Ltd" following in the foot steps of Gordon Brown who with his wife has formed "The Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown Ltd" this all looks like people who have no real interest to serve their constituents but to use the gift of being in Politics to make money and gain influence from their various connections that they made whilst in power and that of course is what Tony Blair has been doing.
It has even been suggested that Miliband senior has approached the BBC with a number of programme ideas for Television. I do not know what titles he may have in mind but I suppose one could be "The Brothers" or a variation on those lines.
Michael Portillo made a good move into Television after he lost his seat in 1997 but he has real Gravitas and Charisma unlike the Miliband Brothers who appear to be more like androids than a TV personality or indeed a Prime Minister in Waiting!

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