Peter in Denial.

I said in my last Post regarding the Oldham  East and Saddleworth By-election,. that I was

" looking forward to Peter Black and Subordinate Centre commenting because I am certain they and every other LibDem Bloggers will be trying to spin that they vote held up"

Good old Peter has managed to fulfill my prophesy ,  he has posted twice on the the subject here and here  in which he tries to look on the bright side . He concludes in his latest post that.

"The other misconception comes from the assertion by the new Labour MP that the voters in her constituency had sent a message to the coalition government.Given that the combined vote of the coalition parties was 15,641 compared to Labour's vote of 14,781 I think we are entitled to ask what precisely that message was". 

Er.... except the combined Con-Lib-Dem vote in the previous election was 25,856 which means a loss of 10,215 votes.. The Labour vote however increased by 532. This may not be a ringing  endorsement for Labour but it is a clear rejection against the coalition partners both of whom lost votes.

I am sure Peter will argue that I should not be combining the General Election vote as there was no coalition then but if he is the one whose playing with figures,  Unless of course there was a formal (or as many suspect an informal) pact between the parties during the by-election?.

This was a by-election that under the circumstances that it was called the Lib-Dems should  have won easily. The fact that they did not do as disastrously as they did does not paste over the fact that this was a bad result.  It a bit like New Zealand beating Wales 20-9 and  Warren Gatland claiming  that as this was not the drubbing the sports pundits had predicted, this was a bad result for both coalition partners..

Next May, we will be seeing the only the Lib-Dems can win here leaflets and their Little Bar Graphs.  but  on current t evidence I suspect the electorate will take them with a pinch of salt.