Oldham East byelection will be test for all parties

Tories deny soft-pedalling as Lib Dems hope to avoid kicking in seat stripped from Labour's Phil Woolas
Phil Woolas, who was thrown out in an unprecedented electoral court ruling
Phil Woolas was thrown out in an unprecedented electoral court ruling for cheating in the election campaign. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, is to step up campaigning before the Oldham East byelection on 13 January amid signs that a Conservative campaign is slipping back in what could have been a three-way race.

The byelection is a political curio as the first in the context of a coalition government for decades, and the first caused by the Labour MP being thrown out in an unprecedented electoral court ruling.

Few can predict how voters will react to these circumstances. Do they give Labour a kicking for cheating in the local general election campaign, or reject the coalition cuts? And if they do, is Nick Clegg or David Cameron made the chief culprit?

Clegg, who admitted today that his party had been on a white-knuckle ride, would be delighted if he overturned the small Labour lead at the general election, but will be relieved if his party avoids falling into third in line with national polls.

A third place for the Liberal Democrats would put the first serious pressure on Clegg's leadership before the bigger electoral test of the May local elections. Liberal Democrats at national level say they are determined to defy media predictions that this will be the first of many Clegg kickings this year.

Clegg has portrayed his party's candidate, Elwyn Watkins, as a street fighter willing to take Phil Woolas to electoral court. Clegg described Woolas's behaviour as "lying and cheating and stirring up racial hatred. We have not had any apology from the Labour party." Clegg will visit the seat after his Spanish holiday.

Michael Fallon, the Conservative vice chairman, today sought to dispel suspicions that the Tories were soft-pedalling in the seat to protect Clegg. He pointed out that Cameron will be visiting the seat.

He denied the primacy of coalition meant normal rivalries between his party and the Liberal Democrats had been suspended. But both parties are learning how to fight one another while defending a joint programme. Some Tory cabinet members privately admit they would like to see the Liberal Democrats win the seat as a precursor to a wider election pact in 2015.

David Smithson, the Liberal Democrat north-west region campaigns officer, certainly has been unimpressed by the initial Conservative commitment. He told the Guardian: "We took the decision to be ready from 5 November when we won the first court case. We had a flying start. The Conservatives have a history in byelections of being slow out of the blocks and they were here."

The Conservatives were fewer than 2,500 votes behind in the general election. Their candidate, Kashif Ali, is placed third by bookies, with no local polls on which to base their odds. Labour's worry would be if Tory supporters defected to the Lib Dems to beat Labour. But Labour, running a traditional "send the government a message" campaign, believes there is enough anger about Liberal Democrat broken promises to prevent such a surge.

Labour has not focused on the betrayal of tuition fees, but instead on a range of other cuts, including Building Schools for the Future, cuts in the council budget and the loss of more than 1,000 police officer posts in the Greater Manchester force.

Watkins campaigned hard in the May 2010 election, as did the national party, promising an extra 155 police officers capable of stopping 1,500 crimes in the Greater Manchester area.

Watkins's team say the frontline officers are not being lost, but it is a difficult message to sell.