The results were spectacular as McMahon, on admittedly a lower turnout than May, had been able to increase Labour’s share of the vote in Oldham West and Royton.
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Father of two Jim McMahon, 35, the son of a lorry driver from neighbouring Miles Platting, in Manchester, can look forward to a long career at Westminster – though he’ll be hard put to match the longevity of Left-winger Michael Meacher, who was MP for the constituency for 45 years until his death in October.
Nigel Farage, the UK Independence Party leader, says he’ll file a formal complaint over alleged “abuses” in the election regarding the number of postal votes cast.
Nigel Farage blamed postal voting and mass immigration for his party’s failure.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn: “It shows the way we’ve driven the Tories back on tax credits, on police cuts, on their whole austerity agenda and narrative”.
In a rousing finale, he told his fellow MPs: “We are here faced by fascists – not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in the chamber tonight, and the people we represent”.
“We also need to remember what is now at stake under this Tory government. But this first electoral test in the new parliament has made clear Labour is the real alternative for Britain”. “It was a decisive victory with our share of the vote going up”, he said.
Voters were not asked to vote for or against what was happening in London, seemingly a million miles away, but for a part of their local community. “If the reports are coming in that they think they are doing better than expected then obviously as a Labour Party we are going to have to think about that and decide how to respond to Ukip”.
Labour Party candidate Jim McMahon gestures as he stands with his partner Charlene Duerden after winning the Oldham West and Royton by-election, December 4, 2015.
Mr Meacher had a majority of 14,738 in May, but UKIP points to the party’s strong performance in last year’s Heywood and Middleton by-election as evidence that it can shock Labour in its Northern heartlands.
Mr McMahon, the leader of Oldham Council, dismissed Mr Farage’s accusations of irregularity.
He pointed the finger at a large postal vote, of around a quarter of the total, and claimed that much of it came from local residents of Bangladeshi and Pakistani origin.
His deputy Paul Nuttal branded the postal voting system an “affront to democracy”.
Tory James Daly was third with 2,596, 9.37pc of the vote, while the Liberal Democrats lost their deposit after Jane Brophy secured 1,024 votes, a 3.7pc share. That would make it fair again.
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“Unfortunately, some of the people who pretend they act in his name and some of those who have surrounded him are doing things that he finds fundamentally unacceptable and they should respect his views as well as those of ordinary people in Britain who just don’t think that this kind of behaviour is acceptable”. Even the relatively supportive Daily Mirror had assumed the worst in its print edition, with an overnight article headlined “Dark night of the polls for Jeremy”.
