Fight for votes as Oldham by-election looms

It’s easy to make jokes about Nick Clegg so let’s get on with it. He says it’s a two horse race in Oldham this Thursday, the trouble is he’s not riding either of them.

Mind you this first real test of party popularity since the General Election holds fears for all of the funboy three Nick, Dave and Ed. Lets remember that a year ago none of them expected to be here.

David Cameron was banking on a Dave-led Tory Government, Ed Miliband was banking on a brother David-led Shadow Cabinet and Nick was banking on still being in Spain on holiday with his in-laws.

Instead Dave finds he needs Nick to stay in power. Nick needs Dave to be in power and Ed needs both of them to give him a chance to find out how to get power. It’s against this background that the results of the by election in Oldham East and Saddleworth will be judged.

It should have been a shoo-in for the Lib Dems. After all it was they who exposed the dirty tricks of Labour MP Phil Woolas to have the by-election called, it’s they who have the same candidate so narrowly beaten last May and it’s they who set the date for the contest. But thanks to the Coalition all bets are now off.

The latest opinion poll put support in the country for the Lib Dems at an almost unbelievable low of 7 per cent. The last time it was anywhere near this bad was when the Libs backed Labour in 1978 and that almost wiped them out in the election of 1979. There are now even fears that they could come third in Thursdays contest. Nick, looking more grey faced every time he pops out in public, got a whiff of this when he toured the constituency last week desperately trying to find people to shake his hand rather than his throat.

It is said that all by-election results are protest votes. All you have to do on Thursday is work out what is the protest, who are the protestors and what are they protesting about.

With his MPs now split between those who have gladly taken the Government shilling and those who haven’t and a party unhappy with his apparent determination to win the award as most loyal of Dave’s loyal disciples third place would raise more than eyebrows.

It is common political currency now to talk of the General Election result as if the ballot papers had a box marked “Coalition Government”. It didn’t then and it doesn’t on Thursday, but the voters do have a chance to offer their first opinion and that’s why Dave and not just Nick is under the cosh.

Looking sleeker than ever as he effortlessly slips into the role of head boy the Prime Minister should have nothing to worry about. After all if Nick and his lot get thrashed then surely they will have to cleave even harder to him as they have nowhere else to go .But not so ,as Vince Cable let slip in his Mata Hari moment recently. If the going gets tough the Lib Dems might indeed get going, right out of the Coalition…whether Nick likes it or not.

And if they did go then Dave knows it would only be a matter of time before the recidivist wing of his own party put the arm on him to turn as right as possible. Indeed the wing’s honorary president Lord Tebbit has called on voters on Thursday to vote UKIP to give both Labour and the Lib Dems a bashing.

Embarrassed by allegations from his own side that he wants Nick to win to take the heat of the coalition, Dave made a rare trip north to rally the Tory faithful. In a whistle stop tour so marked by underwhelming enthusiasm even the press hardly saw him he eventually conceded an astonishing political truth that may mark the campaign .”If we get the most votes, we can win”. (Mind you he thought the same last May).

So just to clear things up the leader of the Conservative Party would like the leader of the Liberal Party to win on Thursday to keep the Coalition going. The Liberal leader would like to win so he can continue to support the leader of the Conservative Party. But many members of both parties would like a humiliating defeat to allow them to give their respective leaders a good kicking.

So that just leaves Labour to romp home under its new leader, triumphant, united, with everything to go for. After all who could have a better script. The biggest economic crisis for 80 years, a Coalition government in disarray over tuition fees, Europe, Trident, bank bonuses etc etc and the prospect of worse to come.

Sadly it’s against this backdrop that Ed Miliband finds himself not much better off than the other two.

Not quite ready Eddie has had a bit of a hard time since he fell into power less than four months ago. As that noted 19th Century socialist Napoleon Bonaparte used to say: “Give me generals who are lucky”. At the moment Ed’s luck is on a par with Nigel Pargetter’s in The Archers.

Indeed recent polls show his personal standing with the public near that of the sadly selected Michael Foot .Even Conservative Ian Duncan Smith, ominously ousted even before he had the chance of leading his party in a General Election, was more popular.

The Labour Party itself is ahead but that’s no more than to be expected. There’s still four years to the next General Election say his supporters in defence of his stuttering start, but that belies the fact that his critics have no plans to give him breathing space.

Brother David, whose wounds must be licked to death by now, remains the king over the water for the Blairites whose contempt for Ed easily matches that of Dave and Nick’s enemies. It’s said David sees himself as the thinking woman’s Piers Morgan but a TV career is still, like the Labour leadership, work in progress.

It had been hoped that Ed was picking up his game following recent additions to his team but a disastrous appearance on a Radio Two phone-in last week put the lie to that and again raised questions about his contact with the voters. He was lambasted on everything from not being married registering the birth of his first child to stabbing his brother in the back.

“I know I have a journey to go on”, he said, although clearly not quite as far as some of the listeners, and indeed some of his MPs, had in mind.

It is said that all by-election results are protest votes. All you have to do on Thursday is work out what is the protest, who are the protestors and what are they protesting about.

Peter McHugh is the former director of programmes at GMTV and was this year awarded the Royal Television Society Lifetime Achievement Award. Contact him at: peter@quiddityproductions.com