What a difference a day makes for Phil

ELECTION 2010

Labour Minister Phil Woolas is facing life in a hung Parliament today after pipping his nearest rival by 103 votes following three exhausting election counts on Friday.

After the first result led to two recounts, Liberal Democrat loser Elwyn Watkins conceded the Oldham East and Saddleworth seat when the marathon 13-hour decider ended late on Friday morning.

Mr Watkins left the count without speaking to the media and aides said he had gone home for some sleep.

Mr Woolas scraped into his even-more marginal seat as the national results indicated a hung parliament.

But the 51-year-old Immigration Minister said it was too early to say if he expected to have a new ministerial post in the next Government.

“Let’s get back to Westminster in a couple of weeks’ time and worry about that,” he said.

“It has been an exhausting campaign and an exhausting night.”

The constituency turn-out was up by 4 per cent to 61.6 per cent compared with five years ago, which he said reflected the vigorous campaigns of all three main parties and the closeness of the polls.

But it still meant one in three people did not vote, he said, adding: “We still need to get the core working-class vote out and that is something I will mention to my boss when we get back to London. And I expect that will still be Gordon Brown.”

The campaign had been hard, he said, particularly after the Prime Minister’s “bigot” remarks in Rochdale, even though Labour won there. He added: “It damaged my campaign and took attention from his (Mr Brown’s) visit to Oldham.”

Mr Woolas said his win was down to good campaigning over many years which had paid dividends.

He was pleased that the Asian vote in Oldham had been spread across all three parties, and praised his Conservative opponent Kashif Ali, after the Tory vote rose by almost 4,000.

He added: “He did well as an Oldham-born Asian man, adopted by the Conservatives, which is a good thing for politics. He got support from right across the constituency.

“The thing that really resonates is that Asian voters did not vote on racial concerns, but voted for parties and all three parties picked up votes.”

Kashif Ali made it a three-horse race by increasing the Conservative vote from 7,901 to 11,773.

Mr Ali said: “Our vote has increased by 50 per cent. We have taken a 10,000 difference between us and Phil Woolas at the last election to one that’s 2,500 now.

“The myths that the Tories can’t win here or that it’s a two-party race between Labour and Lib- Dems have gone now. It’s a three-horse race.

“It would have been fantastic to have got a bit more and taken it, but It’s a forward step and we are feeling confident and strong that we are going forward in a positive fashion. Always in elections there are 100 things you could have done more but the team was fantastic and worked very hard.

“We started from a historically low base and we have changed that. I’m delighted and wouldn’t change anything.”

View the general election results here