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UKIP’s Nigel Farage claims election was rigged after losing out

He claimed the postal voting system was “not fit for democracy right now”, while Ukip’s deputy leader Paul Nuttall said postal votes had “distorted the result” amid claims Labour had focused on the Asian community with an alleged surge in postal ballots yesterday.

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Ahead of the poll, most party sources feared Labour’s majority could be slashed, with Ukip claiming Mr Corbyn was “toxic” on the doorstep.

A related gripe from Mr Farage was that “people who do not speak English”, who were “have never heard of Ukip or the Conservative Party, they haven’t even heard of Jeremy Corbyn”. Its main challenger, the anti-European Union United Kingdom Independence Party, came second with 6,487 votes. The party’s anti-mass immigration policies and no-nonsense leader Nigel Farage would allow the Eurosceptics to win over white-working class voters in a bid to become the established alternative to Labour across the region.

Ukip leader Farage tweeted: “As a veteran of over thirty by-elections I have never seen such a perverse result”.

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.

“The new leader was also elected with an overwhelming mandate on a political programme that seeks to take the party in a direction that reflects the current views of party members”, he wrote.

“Clearly the Labour party has fought a very local campaign, a campaign in which Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t in the picture very much and the Labour candidate was”, he said.

Asked if he was going to follow Mr Watson’s suggestion that he should calm down, Mr Livingstone replied: “Absolutely, because I have been often quite angry at some of the criticism that Jeremy’s had”. However, Labour did secure a higher vote shares as the voting turnout was lower than that in May – which came in at the 40% mark.

Labour has held the seat for decades and in May’s national election, it won it with a majority of more than 14,000. “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”.

‘That would make it fair again.

Mr Corbyn’s supporters were quick to say that the result showed that he was nothing like as toxic a leader as his critics have been claiming. “That would make polling day actually mean something”.

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Tory candidate James Daly was third with 2,596 votes, while the Lib Dems lost their deposit after Jane Brophy only managed to secure 1,024 votes. Ukip would do well to cut the Tory vote in half but I doubt that it will win them all. Even in Heywood and Middleton, where Labour had a fright, its share of the vote held steady.

Labour candidate Jim McMahon left gestures as he stands with his partner Charlene as he celebrates victory after the Oldham West and Royton constituency by-election count in Oldham England Friday Dec. 4 2015. Britain's opposition Labour Party has