In the small hours of this morning, an incorrigible New Labour friend sent me an email from America. Did I remember the memo he sent last year suggesting the Guardian might like to do a profile of a promising Labour star in local government, a fellow called Jim McMahon?
Of course, I didn’t remember, national newspaper reporters like me don’t treat local government with the respect it deserves. But now we’ve all heard of Jim McMahon, the triumphant winner of the Oldham West and Royton byelection to succeed the late Michael Meacher.
Perhaps it’s prosecco all round then for Jeremy Corbyn’s team, who secured a win in difficult and divisive circumstances for the Labour leader in his first electoral test; a test that Nigel “Bad Loser” Farage hoped Ukip’s serial local candidate, John Bickley, might carry off. But don’t think anti-Corbynites in Labour’s ranks won’t claim McMahon’s victory too. That’s where my New Labour friend comes in. “McMahon is young and smart. He was only elected a Labour councillor in 2003 and became Oldham leader in 2011; he’s now become leader of the Local Government Association Labour group as we take over from a decade of Tory control,” the 2014 memo explained. McMahon’s CV was impressive even before he became the party’s newest parliamentarian.
He was clearly a pretty good candidate; on hand in the former Lancashire mill town to step into the shoes of veteran leftwinger Meacher. But there’s more. My pal’s memo added: “Jim’s also interesting as someone who didn’t go to university and is the sort of person there should be more of in politics.” The son of an Irish truck driver, he left school at 16, a rare scenario for the majority of those in Westminster politics now.
On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the Labour deputy leader, Tom Watson, suggested the result was a victory for both Corbyn and McMahon, who campaigned against tax credits cuts in the interests of “ordinary working people”, just as Corbyn has been doing in office. Farage’s complaint about the pro–Labour scale of the postal vote being fraudulent was just “sour grapes”, Watson said.
Why didn’t Farage tell the police of his suspicions sooner, asked Watson, who sounded cheerfully emollient towards both Labour factions over the Syrian vote despite John Humphrys’ best efforts. He denied “for the millionth time” that he “ever, ever wants to be Labour leader”. This is true. Watson told me as much long before he won September’s contest. The essential requirement of a successful No 2 was not wanting the top job, he explained.
But byelection victories for beleaguered parties are always a dangerous time because the wrong lessons can sometimes be drawn and it’s rarely clear what the right lessons should be. For instance, does McMahon’s victory confirm the Corbynistas’ belief that their critics in the party, the media and elsewhere are all way off target? That Corbyn’s uncompromising stance against austerity, against “bouncing the rubble” in Isis-controlled Syria as well as Iraq, is getting through to voters who matter?
That’s a reasonable conclusion. Corbyn is a breath of fresh air. He is not business as usual, he’s not an Oxbridge-educated technocrat fast–tracked to cabinet rank in the Blair/Brown years like his leadership rivals. He’s different. No one denies that. Little wonder that genuine enthusiasm as well as uglier passions are so visible.
Corbyn’s critics argue that McMahon was a popular local council leader, moderate, pro-business and one whose strategy did not include much mention of the party’s North London leftwing leadership. The Oldham win was despite Jeremy, not because of him, the moderates (can we yet call them “Hilary Bennites”?) are saying.
I am old–fashioned enough to believe that candidates matter, especially in byelections. In the pre–internet era of steam–driven byelections, where local newspapers mattered more than 24/7 TV, and press conferences were staged every morning to let the BBC’s much-loved Vincent Hanna show off, professional election agents (they all seemed to chain smoke) reckoned a good candidate might be worth 1,000 votes. Some even called the candidate the LN, which stood for “legal necessity”. It was the party that people voted for, not the individual, they would explain. As the media landscape changed they conceded that a candidate who was good on telly and knew how to use social media might be worth 2,000 votes.
Cynical brutes. In every election good people who are respected – even loved– in their communities beat the swing and the odds to hold or take a seat. McMahon (whom I’ve never met as I haven’t been to Oldham since the Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection in 2011) seems to be an exemplary choice for the area.
My worry for him is that a serious local government talent might be wasted in the flashier ego trip of Westminster politics. Greater Manchester, embarking on “northern powerhouse” experiments in city regional government, needs all the elected political talent it can get. For every David Blunkett who thrives at Westminster there is a Clive Betts (his successor on Sheffield council) who just ticks over.
Council leaders are not always popular, so McMahon must have done something right, not least in attracting volunteers to canvass and help get out the vote. All the same it’s worth warning partisans on both sides not to read too much into one byelection result. A canter through their potted history is enough to recall false signals. Losing Eastbourne in October 1990 was enough to panic some Tory MPs into ditching Margaret Thatcher a month later. Hanging on to Darlington in March 1983 helped save Michael Foot for slaughter at her hands a few weeks later.
By the same token, George Galloway’s victory in Bradford West in 2012 didn’t signify much. Nor did Andy Sawford retaking Corby for Labour after flakey Louise Mensch’s resignation in the same year. The two Tory Ukip defectors, Mark Reckless and Douglas Carswell, won their 2014 resignation byelections, but only Carswell survived the 7 May general election cull.
But the collapse of Labour in Scotland, the most significant development in electoral politics for decades, was only faintly visible in the byelection tea leaves of recent years. You never can tell. Only one bottle of prosecco for Team Corbyn and Team Hilary Benn then. Best to share it.
