Joy. It will be a campaigning Christmas, now that the Oldham by-election is likely to be
held on 13th January. The Labour party is much exercised. The permanently outraged Chris Bryant says it is a
‘disgrace’ that politics will sully the ‘major Christian festival of the year’ – the lapsed cleric seems to have forgotten the election’s proximity to Easter.
More importantly, fewer students will be in Oldham on 13th January to serve ‘judgement’ on the government, as Hilary Benn put it in the Commons this morning before adding that the
government is ‘running scared’.
By-elections are determined by local issues, as one would expect. But Benn’s statement perhaps reveals how Miliband intends to use the campaign to define his leadership. ‘Friend of the students’ is an effective pose for the opportunist. I don’t expect Miliband to be as naive or fanciful as successive Liberal Democrat, not least because he has to commit to a policy other than straight opposition.
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