Next week, on January 13^th, elections are being held in Oldham East and Saddleworth (two regions of the UK) to choose a minister to replace Labour Party minister Phil Woolas.  Woolas technically won the position of minister for this area in May, but a special elections court stripped him of the seat when it was discovered that he had publicly lied about another candidate, Watkins.  Watkins had come in second place, only 103 seats behind Woolas, something that could only happen in a first-past-the-post voting system.  Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband has been helping to campaign for Debbie Abrahams to win the spot.  During campaigning Milliband has been using the Conservative Party’s recent announcement of an upcoming increase in VAT as ammunition against them.   The VAT official rose yesterday (Tuesday January 4^th) by 2.5%.  Miliband has pointed out that this will add an extra 7.50 pounds of money spent by the average family a week and that it could cause inflation once stores begin to place discounts on their products to convince the people to buy.  Chancellor of the Exchequer, Osborne insists that this will help bring the country out of Labour’s “record debts,” but Miliband points out that it will just lessen the people’s ability to make purchases and support themselves.  He says that government is going “too far and too fast” and that Conservatives are “going back on promises.”

This election is important to politics for many reasons.  For one, it will be the first public opinion reached since Miliband was put in place as head of the Labour Party.  It will help to show the effects of his work so far and if the Labour Party is making any positive ground.  This election will also be indicative of the status of the coalition between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives.  Recently, Senior MP Mark Pritchard has been expressing concern for the fate of the two parties.  It is unclear if the two will go on working in tandem or if they will separate and go their own ways.  The far left Liberal Democrats and far right Conservatives do not want to continue their work together because they feel their parties are losing their sense of identity.  The leaders of both parties have made it clear that they will each be fighting alone in the next elections, but it would prove to be very difficult to split apart, as the two parties share the same history.  Yet it has not been ruled out that the two could help each other win.  There have been claims that the Conservatives are going easy in these elections to help the Liberal Democrats to win.  Elections can reveal a lot about the politics of a country and the relationships between different parties and important players in government.  The results of this election will help to determine the Labour Party’s power as of now, the people’s response to the increase of VAT, and the relationship between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives.