Mr Livingstone said he had been “quite angry” about the criticism directed at Mr Corbyn but that, in the wake of Labour’s victory in the Oldham West and Royton by-election, the recent “tensions” in the party should ease a little. UKIP, which has always been forecasting a big breakthrough against Labour in northern seats like Oldham, also increased its share of the vote, but only by three points to 23.8%. In May’s general election, he won the seat by 14,000 more votes than UKIP’s candidate.
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However Ukip leader Nigel Farage said he would be lodging a formal complaint over alleged abuses of postal voting system, saying the result raised questions about the conduct of elections in constituencies with large ethnic minority communities. The other candidates are: Liberal Democrat Jane Brophy, Conservative Party James Daly, Green Party Simeon Hart and Sir Oink A-Lot of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.Corbyn, in his speech urging lawmakers to oppose Cameron’s bombing plans, said that public opinion was “moving increasingly against what I believe to be an ill-thought-out rush to war”.
Yet the Labour leader had not campaigned in Oldham West, partly because of his preoccupation with the Syria vote in the House of Commons on December 2nd.
“It means effectively that in some of these seats where people don’t speak English and they sign up to postal votes, effectively the electoral process is now dead”.
Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson has dismissed Momentum, a pressure group accused of targeting opponents of Jeremy Corbyn, as a “bit of a rabble”.
Mr Watson told the BBC that these remarks were “not particularly helpful” at a time when the party should be trying to present a more united face after the infighting and recriminations over Syria. It was a decisive victory with our share of the vote going up.
If May fails to bring their wished for electoral disaster, Labour MPs may have to get used to the idea of Corbyn leading them into the next general election.
However Mr Wrack – a long-time ally of Mr Corbyn whose union recently re-affiliated to Labour – said MPs could not expect to be selected at the age of 25 and then remain “for the next 40 years without having to have some dialogue and debate with the people who put them there”. 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. 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.
Mr McMahon said: “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”.
Ahead of the poll, most party sources feared Labour’s majority could be slashed, with Ukip claiming Mr Corbyn was “toxic” on the doorstep.
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Chancellor George Osborne offered Mr Corbyn his congratulations over the Oldham result in person, after they bumped into one another on a train. We won every ward hands down.
