By-Election Boost For Miliband As Tories Are Criticised For Lacklustre Campaign

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12191431

Ed Miliband's leadership has been given a boost after Labour safely held the seat of Oldham East and Saddleworth in Thursday's by-election.

Although the Liberal Democrats did increase their share of the vote on last May's General Election result, Labour's Debbie Abrahams romped home with a confortable majority with the Tories a distant third.

There is no doubt that this will be seen as an endorsement of the new Labour leader, who has received a lambasting in the mainly Tory-backed press for his performance so far, with them still refusing to see Mr Miliband as anything other than the man put at the helm by the unions.

This is, as the Labour leader said after the result, the first step on Labour's path back to power, but nobody is under any illusion that there is an extremely tough road ahead for the party. 

Although the Tories were never going to come near to winning this seat, they should certainly be worried about their share of the vote and the Party's co-chair Baroness Warsi has been forced to deny that they deliberately fought a lacklustre campaign to help the Liberal Democrats.

With there being considerable anger amongst voters about the rise in student tuition fees and the huge hike in VAT, amongst other things, this result has to be seen as the first of many damning verdicts on the Coalition's performance.