United Kingdom opposition Labour Party wins by-election

Labour has seen off the challenge from UKIP to win the Oldham West and Royton by-election with a majority of more than 10,000 and a bigger share of the vote.

Labour candidate Jim McMahon romped to victory last night (3 December) with 17,209 votes, 10,835 ahead of his nearest challenger – Ukip’s John Bickley who won 6,487 for the populist right-wing party.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has accused Labour of election fraud in the Oldham West and Royton by-election, describing the overwhelming result for Jeremy Corbyn’s party as “seriously bent”. Moreover, Mr McMahon, a successful and pragmatic leader of Oldham’s council, is a centrist who is nearly as far removed from the Corbynistas as anyone could be.

“As a veteran of over thirty by-elections I have never seen such a perverse result”. He claimed there were “abuses” of the postal vote system, threatened to file an official complaint, and suggested “ethnic changes” had undermined Bickley’s performance at the ballot box.

The result was a deep personal humiliation for Mr Corbyn: 66 Labour MPs, a quarter of the party’s total, ignored their leader and voted with the government.

He said Oldham’s Asian population had voted for Labour in large numbers, even though, he claimed, some did not speak English but were signed up for postal votes.

Mr Farage has made a series of visits to Oldham, while Mr Corbyn has only campaigned there once – and was forced to cancel an appearance last week as he dealt with internal divisions over air strikes on Islamic State in Syria. “It’s a clear demonstration that Labour is the party working people trust”, he said in a posting on Facebook.

Ukip targeted the apparent split in its campaign and Mr Farage said the poll “could well be within a few hundred votes”. ‘The hard work starts now’. “Tonight will deliver the first proper electoral verdict on Mr. Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, it wrote, adding, “It is also a timely reassessment of [UKIP leader] Nigel Farage’s aspirations to make UKIP a credible alternative to Labour in the urban North of England”.

But complaining about the process after the election could sound like sour grapes.

Mr Watson said: “If this was a referendum on Jeremy Corbyn, then he has won”.

William Hague has warned Jeremy Corbyn not to get “too excited” about Labour’s victory in Oldham – because he knows personally how an Opposition can go on to lose general elections.

In his victory speech from the platform at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in Oldham, the new MP – who backed Liz Kendall for Labour leader in the summer – said there was a long way to go.

“I hope our MPs look at this result”.

Mr McDonnell told the meeting that Momentum was “not a sectarian group…it’s not about deselecting people or targeting people”, but later told attendees they would “eventually be able to ensure that the people selected represent you”. What’s happened since Jeremy became leader and I became deputy leader is we have focused on issues that affect the working people of Britain. Other people supported him.