Prime Minister David Cameron played down the significance of a special election in a northwest English parliamentary district in which his Conservative Party's share of the vote fell by more than half.
The opposition Labour Party candidate, Debbie Abrahams, held the seat in Oldham East and Saddleworth in yesterday's ballot with 42.1 percent of the vote. Elwyn Watkins, the candidate for Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats, was second with 32 percent. Kashif Ali, the Conservative, took third place with 12.8 percent, down from 26.4 percent in the May general election.
It was the first electoral test since Cameron took power in coalition with Clegg eight months ago. Their government is pushing through the biggest public-spending cuts since World War II. Labour, headed since September by Ed Miliband, is leading in opinion polls nationally.
"Government parties and governments rarely take by- elections off opposition parties; I think the last time it happened was 30 years ago during the Falklands War," Cameron told BBC News during a visit today to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, northeast England. "So this was not an unexpected result."
The special election was called after the Labour incumbent, Phil Woolas, had his win in May declared invalid by a court for knowingly publishing untrue information about Watkins, who also placed second then.
'Reflects Badly'
"In terms of internal Conservative Party politics this reflects badly on Cameron," Mark Wickham-Jones, professor of politics at Bristol University, said in a telephone interview. The result "demonstrates how much he has concentrated on keeping the coalition together by not attacking the Liberal Democrats at a local level."
While analysts had expected the special election to be a test of Clegg's policies since entering coalition with Cameron, it was the Conservatives who suffered the most at the hands of voters. Labour's share of the vote rose by 10 percentage points, while the Liberal Democrat share was little changed.
The ConservativeHome website, which tracks grassroots opinion within the party, published an article today arguing that Cameron should reassert his party's identity.
The prime minister should "now distance his party from the Liberal Democrats," wrote Paul Goodman, a former Conservative lawmaker. "Conservative backbenchers and party members alike want to see it retain its own distinct identity, and a sense that Liberal Democrat concerns are more important to Downing Street than their own helps to explain, at least in part, recent rebellions and discontent, and hence the government working less effectively than it might."
'Turnout Was Low'
Conservative Chairwoman Sayeeda Warsi denied that her party had fought a muted campaign in an attempt to boost the vote share of the Liberal Democrats.
"It was resourced properly, we had volunteers on the ground, we had professionals on the ground, we had a great local candidate, we had professional literature," she told BBC News today. "But let's be clear about a number of factors: first of all, the turnout was low. Secondly, this is a by-election, and thirdly we started this by-election in third place."
Turnout was 48 percent, compared with 61 percent in May.
The Liberal Democrats increased their share of the vote by 0.3 points in Oldham, even though support for the party nationally -- 8 percent in the most recent national poll -- is only a third of its general-election level. Last month, Liberal Democrat ministers ditched a pre-election pledge not to increase student tuition fees, a step that led to riots in central London.
Watkins had to defend the decisions made since his party entered Cameron's government during the campaign for yesterday's election, including an increase in value-added tax to 20 percent from 17.5 percent on Jan. 4 and cuts in police numbers.
'Big Ask'
"It was always going to be a big ask to take this seat from Labour, given the circumstances," Clegg wrote on his website. By the time of the next scheduled general election in 2015, "I hope that the people of Oldham and Saddleworth will see, like everyone else in the country, that the difficult choices we made were the right ones and that Britain is in better shape than when we entered government."
The Oldham result "sends a very clear message to this Conservative-led government," Miliband said at a meeting with Labour activists in Brighton on England's south coast. "When it comes to the rise in VAT, the trebling of tuition fees, the police cuts, this Conservative-led government should think again."
"I want to make sure that we do everything we can around this country, as we are taking difficult decisions, to go on explaining why those decisions are necessary and why they are in the long-term interests of everyone in our country," Cameron told the BBC.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net
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