British coalition faces test at the polls

The vote in Oldham East and Saddleworth, northwest England, is the first proper chance since May’s general election for voters to give their verdict on the coalition between Cameron’s Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

Polls show that the opposition Labour Party are set to win the seat comfortably, dealing a major setback to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s Lib Dems.

The Liberals are likely to be punished for their U-turn on a policy which will see a tripling of tuition fees for university students — a measure which has sparked demonstrations, some of which have descended into violence.

Labour beat the Lib Dems to the seat by just 103 votes in the general election, with the Conservatives trailing in third place.

But the winner then, former immigration minister Phil Woolas, was found to have made untrue statements about his Liberal rival Elwyn Watkins and was stripped of the seat.

The by-election has also been closely watched to see if the centre-right Conservatives and the left-leaning centrist Lib Dems keep their promise to compete with each other in elections despite their tie-up at national level.

There have been reports that Cameron ordered Conservative campaigning to be scaled back to help out his coalition partners.

The government has unveiled a package of deep spending cuts and tax rises in a bid to rein in Britain’s record deficit.

Polling stations opened in the constituency near Manchester at 0700 GMT and were set to close at 2200 GMT, with the result likely to come early Friday.

Woolas was forced to step down after Watkins successfully claimed his opponent had breached the Representation of the People Act 1983 by campaigning on false statements about his personal character. Woolas then lost a judicial review.

In what was the first case of its kind in 99 years, he was barred from holding office for three years and suspended from the Labour Party.

But rather than harming Labour’s challenge, Woolas is convinced that his treatment will help the party to storm to victory.

“People in the constituency did not like two judges coming up from London and telling them who to vote for,” he told the Manchester Evening News newspaper.

“What happened to me will work in Labour’s favour.”

Clegg dismissed the comments as “shocking and complacent”.

On a trip to Oldham on Tuesday, he insisted the Lib Dems were campaigning hard.

“I am not going to be foolish enough to predict the outcome but what I can say is that we are really in this contest and we are here to win,” he said.

He said he wanted “a fair, open contest to decide who they want to have as their local MP, that was so badly denied to them by the electoral lies of Phil Woolas at the last general election.”

The result will not have a significant impact on the coalition’s strength, as the government has a working majority of 84.

Of the 650 seats in parliament, the Conservatives hold 305, the Lib Dems 57 and Labour 253.