DEBBIE Abrahams won a seat in Parliament – just 252 days after finishing third in the Colne Valley.

The Labour woman triumphed in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election early yesterday morning – a mere 36 weeks after being beaten in the general election in the fight for the Colne Valley seat.

Mrs Abrahams won 14,718 votes, finishing 3,558 ahead of her Lib Dem rival Elwyn Watkins on 11,160.

Conservative candidate Kashif Ali came a distant third, taking 4,481 votes.

Mrs Abrahams said: “I’m humbled that the voters of this borough have put their trust in me.

“My promise to you is I will always do what’s best for the borough not what’s best for Westminster. And I keep my promises.”

She added: “It is magnificent, it really is, but there’s a lot of work to do. We know it is a first step on a long road for Labour and we will be working very hard.”

Mrs Abrahams was congratulated yesterday by Conservative MP Jason McCartney, who defeated her in the Colne Valley contest during last May’s general election.

He told the Examiner: “I will look forward to welcoming Debbie to Westminster and I will shake her hand and congratulate her.

“She fought hard in Colne Valley last year but her campaign was positive and fair and I appreciate that.”

Mr McCartney added: “I was disappointed that our man Kashif didn’t win because he’s a good lad and he would have made a good MP.”

The by-election was called after an electoral court ruled that Oldham’s Labour MP Phil Woolas had knowingly lied about his Lib Dem rival during May’s general election.

The former immigration minister held the marginal seat with a majority of just 103 votes over Mr Watkins.

But the Lib Dem took the result to the courts, claiming Labour leaflets in the run-up to the poll had accused him of pandering to Muslim militants.

Mr Watkins increased the Lib Dems’ share of the vote on Thursday from 31.6% in the general election to 31.9%.

After the result he said: “We have done well here but not won, our vote held up but not enough to defeat Labour.”

University of Huddersfield politics lecturer Dr Pete Woodcock believes the result will boost the new Labour leader.

He said: “People had been talking about Ed Miliband’s leadership and about him not having done much.

“I think Labour will be quite pleased with the result but they won’t be partying in the streets.”

Dr Woodcock said the Lib Dem performance was “not nearly as bad as they would have expected”.

He added: “I don’t think they will take any pleasure from the result but I don’t think it’s something which will add to their woes.

“It’s possible that Conservative voters switched to the Lib Dems as they were seen to be the stronger of the coalition parties.”

The Huddersfield academic said yesterday that the Tories had not tried hard to win the seat.

“I don’t think they will care that much about the result,” he said.

“Oldham East and Saddleworth is not high on their priority list and they didn’t waste a lot of time, effort or money fighting for the seat.

“The Conservatives got out of this what they put in – virtually nothing”.