Summary
- Labour has comfortably won its first parliamentary byelection since Jeremy Corbyn became leader, storming ahead of Ukip by 10,835 votes in Oldham West and Royton in Greater Manchester. As Helen Pidd reports, Jim McMahon, the 35-year-old leader of Oldham council, will swap the town hall for Westminster after persuading 17,322 people to vote for him. Turnout was 40.26% – not an embarrassment on a very rainy Thursday in December. McMahon increased Labour’s share of the vote to 62.27%, up 7.49% from the general election in May. Ukip’s John Bickley, a Cheshire-based businessman, was runner-up, on 6,487. It was his fourth second place in Greater Manchester in less than two years, having lost out to Labour in byelections in Wythenshawe and Sale East in February 2014 and Heywood and Middleton in October 2015, failing again there in May’s general election.
That’s all from me for tonight.
I will be blogging again tomorrow, with analysis of Labour’s byelection win and reaction.
Thanks for the comments.
Nuttall says Labour's victory 'an affront to democracy'
Paul Nuttall, the Ukip deputy leader, said earlier that the conduct of the election was “an affront to democracy”. (See 00.45am) He made two particular complaints which he said were related.
- Nuttall said postal voting undermined democracy. He used various arguments to justify this. He said that, if people voted in advance of polling day, then late-stage campaigning became pointless.
I must congratulate the Labour party for running a very successful postal vote election. But I think it does throw up in the air the whole question of democracy because, why do we bother having polling days? This election was probably over a week before the election took place. I think we should go back to the system where people have to sign up for postal votes and need a good reason [to get a postal vote] .... What we shouldn’t have is postal votes on demand because I think it’s an affront to democracy.
He also claimed postal voting gave an advantage to the incumbent.
It gives a great advantage to the incumbent and those who run the council, because they know where their voters are.
But he also complained about postal votes being cast on polling day (rather undermining his point about early voting). He said that by Wednesday only 55% of postal votes had been used. But but Thursday night 70% of them had been used, because people were handing them in at polling stations.
I must also say that I have never seen anything like this in my life in terms of postal voting. The postal vote went up 15% on the day.
He also suggested postal voting was open to corruption. “There are boxes out there, postal votes, where Labour are getting 99% of the vote,” he said. He said there had been problems in Tower Hamlets and Birmingham, and he said he could “foresee more problems, particularly in these northern seats in the years to come”. He said the government should launch an investigation into how postal voting works.
- He accused Labour of being over-reliant on the support of British Asians.
If you are going to focus your campaign on one particular part of the community, I think you will end up in hock to that community, particularly if your MP has been elected on the back of votes, postal votes, particularly from within that community. I think that’s wrong, I think that’s an affront to democracy.
This reflects what Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, said earlier about Labour relying on an Asian ‘bloc vote’.
Full election results
Here are the full election results, with all the percentages, from the Press Association.
Jim McMahon (Lab) 17,322 (62.27%, +7.49%)
John Bickley (UKIP) 6,487 (23.32%, +2.71%)
James Daly (C) 2,596 (9.33%, -9.65%)
Jane Brophy (LD) 1,024 (3.68%, -0.00%)
Simeon Hart (Green) 249 (0.90%, -1.05%)
Sir Oink-A-Lot (Loony) 141 (0.51%)
Lab maj 10,835 (38.95%)
2.39% swing UKIP to Lab
Electorate 69,009; Turnout 27,819 (40.31%, -19.32%)
Result in 2015: Lab maj 14,738 (34.17%) - Turnout 43,137 (59.63%) Meacher (Lab) 23,630 (54.78%); Arbour (UKIP) 8,892 (20.61%); Ghafoor (C) 8,187 (18.98%); Harkness (LD) 1,589 (3.68%); Hart (Green) 839 (1.94%)
Farage questions result of the byelection, saying postal voting was 'bent'
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, is claiming that postal voting in the byelection was “bent”.
As a veteran of over thirty by-elections I have never seen such a perverse result. Serious questions need to be asked.
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) December 4, 2015
Evidence from an impeccable source that today's postal voting was bent.
— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) December 4, 2015
McMahon says his sole focus is on 'what is best for Oldham'
Here’s a statement from Jim McMahon, the new MP for Oldhamd West and Royton.
I am delighted to have been elected tonight. Michael Meacher was a close friend of mine and he was admired by people across the country as someone who worked tirelessly for the causes he believed in. I will do my best to live up to those high standards.
My sole focus has always been on what is best for Oldham, I want to make our town a better place for my sons to grow up in and make it somewhere they can be proud of, my priority will always be Oldham.
We also need to remember what is currently at stake under this Tory government. While everyone is looking the other way they are quietly pushing through cuts that will change the face of towns like Oldham.
The sooner we kick the Tories out and get a Labour government back in the better for all of us. The hard work starts now.
This is much the same as the statement he read out from the platform after the result was announced, but I will post the full quotes from that if they are different.
Here are the results in full.
Labour (Jim McMahon) - 17,322
Ukip (John Bickley) - 6,487
Conservatives (James Daly) - 2,596
Lib Dems (Jane Brophy) - 1,024
Greens (Simeon Hart) - 249
Monster Raving Loony (Sir Oink A-Lot) - 141
Updated
Labour wins with majority of 10,845
Jim McMahon won with 17,332 votes. John Bickley, the Ukip candidate, got 6,487.
That’s a majority of 10,845.
Paul Nuttall, the Ukip deputy leader, has just accused Labour of relying disproportionately on Asian voters in Oldham and on postal votes. He claimed this was “an affront to democracy”.
I will post the quotes in a moment.
Labour and Ukip are now starting to engage in a slanging match.
This is from Paul Nuttall, the Ukip deputy leader.
Ukip deputy leader Paul Nuttall says Labour signing up postal votes in Oldham West by-election is a "disgrace"
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) December 4, 2015
Ukip deputy leader Paul Nuttall accuses Labour of engaging in "dangerous identity politics" in Oldham West and Royton campaign
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) December 4, 2015
The Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, hit back.
Labour MP Debbie Abrahams says there have been "underhand goings-on" by Ukip in by-election
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) December 4, 2015
And this is from the Raheem Kassam, a former senior adviser to Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader.
You should ask her how 49 people postal vote for Labour from one house in Oldham https://t.co/fUEBWFdJMa
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) December 4, 2015
The Labour candidate, Jim McMahon, has arrived at the count.
Jim McMahon arrives at Oldham count pic.twitter.com/TjPdWp6K87
— AndrewSparrow (@AndrewSparrow) December 4, 2015
There were 7,115 postal votes cast, it has emerged. They account for 25.6% of the votes cast.
When Jim McMahon decided to throw his hat in the ring following Michael Meacher’s death in October, it took many by surprise. Having impressed many in Greater Manchester and beyond since taking over as Oldham council leader in 2011 when he was just 28, it was widely assumed he would stand to be the region’s first elected mayor in 2017.
Yet he couldn’t resist the opportunity to represent his adopted home town in parliament (he was born and brought up down the road in Miles Platting, a deprived area of north Manchester). He insists he would only stand in Oldham, pointing out he’s never tried to run elsewhere. And in an interview with me last week he admitted that he may find being an opposition MP frustrating.
“I know for a fact I’ve got more power and resources now than I will if I become a backbench MP,” he said in an interview at Oldham College, where he went back to study after leaving school at 16. “But I’m looking to the future, saying: what does my town look like in 10, 15, 20 years? And I can say there’s only so much we can do as a council when the money is coming out as quickly as it is, when public services are being decimated.”
He continued: “Look around now, you see the police stations closing, the magistrates’ court closing, the county court, the job centre is likely to close and we’ve only got one. HMRC [tax] offices are likely to close. They’ll take jobs into central Manchester and have a bare bones of a council service here or get people to go online. So I see as a council leader I can do more immediately today but what I can’t do is have the money to get the infrastructure in place to get the decent quality jobs that Oldham needs, and the only way I can see that happen is with a decent Labour government and I want to play my part in seeing that.”
The Tories got 19% of the vote at the general election in Oldham West and Royton. Now their share of the vote is down by about 10 percentage points, according to the Lib Dems.
According to a Lib Dem source, Labour is heading for 62% and Ukip 23%. That would give Labour a majority of around 10,800.
If the percentage figures emerging are correct, Labour are heading for a majority of around 10,000.
Lib Dem sources are now saying they think Labour have got more than 60% of the vote.
UKIP sources say they wouldn’t be surprised if Labour win 50% and UKIP end up on 25%
— Emily Ashton (@elashton) December 3, 2015
Lib Dems are saying they and the Greens have lost their deposit and Labour got over 50% of the vote in Oldham West & Royton byelection.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) December 3, 2015
And 27,795 votes were cast.
Turnout is 40.26%
Turnout is 40.26%, it has just been announced.
Multiple Labour sources are now saying that they are confident they’ve won.
Updated
Jonathan Ashworth, a Labour frontbencher, told Newsnight that Labour had to find a way of responding to the Ukip threat in its heartlands. He said:
Ukip did well at the general election. They didn’t take seats but they certainly took votes off Labour.
If they have done that tonight then we need to think about how we take that on.
But Jim McMahon is a superb candidate and he is going to be a superb MP if he gets elected.
'We will win', says Labour source
“We will win,” a Labour source tells me.
And Labour sources are claiming they have won.
Labour "confident" of winning Oldham West & Royton by-election.
— Arif Ansari (@ArifBBC) December 3, 2015
Labour confident that it has won in Oldham: but have had a wobble over low postal vote turnout, low turnout generally
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) December 3, 2015
Ukip has lost, says a party source
A Ukip source says the party has lost.
"We've clearly lost", a Ukip source tells me at the Oldham West & Royton byelection count.
— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) December 3, 2015
A Lib Dem source says Labour could win with more than 50% of the vote. “They’’ve smashed it,” he says. “Ukip will come a poor second and everyone else is struggling to save their deposit. It’s massive. You can call it now,” he claimed.
At the general election Labour had 55% of the vote, Ukip 21%, the Tories 19%, the Lib Dems 4% and the Greens 2%.
Turnout on the day could be under 20%, according to the Manchester Evening News’s Jennifer Williams.
Whispers earlier of a turnout well below 20pc, but now Labour people saying into the 30s due to strong postal vote
— Jennifer Williams (@JenWilliamsMEN) December 3, 2015
Ukip claim that a high postal vote turnout will be bad for them. A source said that he thought the party had probably “won on the day” (ie, on votes cast today), but that he feared Labour were ahead on postal votes.
Labour are saying they expect the overall turnout to be in the mid 30s. They believe the turnout for postal votes was in the mid 60s, suggesting that the actual turnout on the day has been very low indeed.
Party sources are playing down the Mirror speculation (see 10.37am), but they are not producing their own figures. However, they do seem to accept that their majority will be sharply reduced. “A lower turnout always means a lower majority,” said a source.
The Daily Mirror is reporting that Labour’s majority could be reduced to under 1,000. A party figure I spoke to earlier seemed rather more confident than you would expect if that forecast were accurate, but the Mirror figures are broadly in line with this prediction from the elections expert Ian Warren.
Prediction: Lab: 8,912 (41.9%) / UKIP 7,780 (36.6%) / Con 3,381 (15.9%) / LD 801 (3.8%) / Greens 373 (1.8%). Make that a 14.5% swing. 1/2
— @election_data (@election_data) December 3, 2015
This is Jim's victory if my prediction is correct. I use those words carefully.
— @election_data (@election_data) December 3, 2015
But someone seems confident of a Labour victory.
Betting markets seem convinced Labour has won #OldhamWest . Just taken a £1,000 bet at 1/12. pic.twitter.com/JazxnX65NP
— Ladbrokes Politics (@LadPolitics) December 3, 2015
Labour’s candidate in the byelection is Jim McMahon and he has been described by most observers of the campaign as a dream candidate. In byelections it is particularly important to field a local council and McMahon is leader of Oldham council. But he is not just a run-of-the-mill council leader. Oldham is seen as an innovative authority and McMahon is leader of the Labour group on the Local Government Association. Not bad for the son of a truck driver who left school at 16 and who is still only 35.
Before the byelection was even called McMahon featured in a flattering profile in the Economist that suggested he could be a future Labour leader. Here’s an extract.
Where Mr Corbyn dismisses profit as a measure of iniquity, Mr McMahon relishes it. Passing a soon-to-open restaurant, he is waved in by Luke and Ata, two twenty-something entrepreneurs turning a grand old shop into a shrine to smoked meat with support from the council. Mr McMahon quizzes them on their progress, scrutinising the carpentry and the outdoor seating area: “You need to level out that, then put the railings there,” he says, pointing out of an upstairs window. Oldham’s council leader obsesses about business growth: “We got a quarter of a billion pounds after the problems,” he says, referring to race riots in 2001, “but have nothing to show for it because it did not boost the private sector.”
The profile was headlined “Jim McMahon, reluctant maquisard [French Resistance fighter]” and the Economist suggested that what McMahon (and others like him in local government) were resisting was leftwing Corbynism. That issued cropped up in another profile of him worth reading, by Joseph Charlton in the Independent on Sunday. Here’s an excerpt:
McMahon, 35, is certainly an eye-catching candidate. A councillor at 23, he was later appointed spokesman for every Labour councillor in Britain, and this year awarded an OBE for services to Oldham, as well as being tipped to become mayor of Manchester. Under his direction the council has tried to put an end to all-white schools – desegregation has been of massive importance here since Oldham’s race riots in 2001 – as well as establishing the first tramline between Manchester and Oldham.
Dressed in a long coat, sharp suit and leather gloves, he has the robust presence of an ascendant football manager, or a particularly well-heeled bouncer.
He voted for Liz Kendall in the Labour leadership election, so the big question today is where he stands on Corbyn.
At Eastern Pavilion Banqueting Hall, a Pakistani-Bangladeshi curry house hosting the Corbynistas who have been out-door-knocked that day, McMahon takes the stage, a garish red-and-white Momentum banner flying behind him. “I have no idea whether I’m to the left, the centre or shaking it all about,” he says, “but you can mark my words, Jeremy has my absolute full support.”
In normal circumstances having a candidate who is ideologically distinct from the party leader can be problematic, but in Oldham this seems to have worked to McMahon’s advantage. Ukip launched their campaign here with an attack on Corbyn’s patriotism. McMahon was able to respond to rebut that very effectively. This was his response:
My grandfather served in the army, my father and my partner’s fathers were in the Territorial Army. I raised money to restore my local cenotaph. On 18 December I will be going with pride to London to collect my OBE from the Queen and bring it back to Oldham as a local boy done good. If they want to pick a fight on patriotism, bring it on.
Updated
Here are two background pieces about the byelection worth reading.
- An All That’s Left analysis of the constituency. Here’s its conclusion.
A loss to UKIP though is still a possible outcome: next week is likely to see fast-moving news about the Syria vote and this could undermine the Labour vote further in the next few days. Corbyn’s decision to stay away from the by-election this weekend is partly due to him needing to be in London at this critical time, but I guess that McMahon’s team are relieved rather than annoyed by his absence.
If UKIP win, the pressure for Corbyn will grow and urstwhile supporters will edge a little further towards the door. Unfavourable polls are one thing, losing Meacher’s seat to the immigrant-phobic hard right quite another. A UKIP victory is likely to be the beginning of te end of Corbyn’s leadership.
- An analysis of the seat for the Guardian by Ian Warren. Here’s his conclusion.
[Ukip] will need to beat Labour among the white working classes while competing strongly with the Conservatives. Will it do so? Labour is certainly nervous. Its vote is soft, something that sends a chill up its spine. Labour canvassers and candidates will know all too well that such softness often leads to people staying at home. Then there are the “don’t knows”. They hate Corbyn, and Labour will worry that enough of them will express that sentiment by voting Ukip.
Most troubling for Labour is the fact that in byelections all the swing happens in the last five days as voters’ minds are concentrated on what is before them. If Ukip has already made significant inroads into the Labour lead, then the next five days will only confirm this trend.
What will constitute a good result for Labour?
At the general election Michael Meacher had a 14,738 majority for Labour. Two weeks ago, in an article for Prospect, the YouGov president and political commentator Peter Kellner said a majority of anything less than 4,000 would be “terrible” for Jeremy Corbyn.
What, though, if Labour wins, but only narrowly? Corbyn may express delight, but he shouldn’t. A majority of less than 4,000 would be a terrible result. It would mean that Labour lost more votes than in any by-election in an English Labour seat during Ed Miliband’s time as party leader. It would be an early warning of bad results next May. If that is the outcome, it will provoke a short, fierce dispute inside the party to own the narrative, and determine whether the result is seen by Labour MPs as a famous victory or a near-disaster averted by the choice of a popular local candidate.
Today LabourList has also had a go at setting benchmarks, and they just describe a majority of less than 4,000 as “worrying”. But it it goes below 2,000, that would be “extremely worrying” for Labour they say.
Labour officials are, publicly at least, refusing to play this game. But Ukip were more forthcoming. Ukip got 20.6% of the vote at the general election (Labour 54.%) and a party source told me they started out with the ambition of getting their share of the vote up to 30% (which would be a 50% in increase on the general election proportion). He also said that getting the Labour majority down to 4,000 would be “a massive win” for Ukip, because the party would have cut Labour’s lead by 10,000 votes.
Here’s the scene from my perch on the press balcony.
Press room at the Oldham byelection pic.twitter.com/RfJnFTd6v4
— AndrewSparrow (@AndrewSparrow) December 3, 2015
If you have watched John Harris’s film (see 9.16am), you will have seen that the weather in Oldham can be less than ideal. Tonight it’s dreadful; raining very hard. No one is expecting a great turnout.
There was a time, five years ago, when we could have had a byelection in a place like Oldham West and Royton and we would not have bothered with a live blog. Andrew Neil would have been able to do his Thursday night This Week show without having to tack a byelection special on the end, and we would have all gone to bed at a sensible time and got some sleep.
That is because in those long-lost days Labour could defend a safe seat in the north of England without having to worry about being defeated by Ukip. But around the middle of the last parliament Ukip started coming second regularly in byelections and in October last year, in a result that took the Westminster press corps completely by surprise (we were focusing more on the Clacton byelection taking place the same night) Ukip came just 617 votes away from taking Heywood and Middleton, a safe Labour seat.
Oldham West and Royton (where the byelection has been caused by the death of the Labour veteran Michael Meacher) is next door to Heywood and Middleton and in some respects it’s very similar. Meacher had a majority of almost 15,000 over Ukip at the general election (with the Tories close behind in third place) and Labour are still expected to win, but we’ll be staying up late tonight because there is the possibility of a colossal political upset.
Oldham is also being seen as the first electoral test of Corbyn’s popularity. In some respects this is unfair, because Labour started losing votes to Ukip long before anyone had ever heard of Corynmania and the Corbynistas. (The figures are here, in this House of Commons library note with the results of all byelections from the last parliament [pdf], for those of you who like data.) But there have been multiple reports of Corbyn having a negative effect on the doorstep in Oldham (more about this later) and so it would be foolish to pretend he isn’t an issue. As the night goes on I will be considering what might be a good or bad result for Labour, and what factors might be responsible.
I’m in the press balcony at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in Oldham. Voting is still going on. Polls close at 10pm, and counting starts here soon afterwards. The result is expected around about 2am, but these estimates are notoriously unreliable.
Before we get going, here are two reports from Oldham. My colleague John Harris spent two days in the town recording one of his Anywhere but Westminster videos and the result (like all his videos) is well worth watching.
And my colleague Helen Pidd, the Guardian’s North of England editor, has made repeated visits to the town during the campaign. Here is her most recent report.
If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
