CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM
Anybody who has followed UKIP’s recent performances in council by elections would not have been surprised at the resounding victory by Labour over UKIP at Oldham West, the seat held by the late Michael Meacher MP.
Once again the Westminster Parliament appeared out of touch with local reality when it assumed that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership would mean the end of Labour as a serious fighting force and a close run result at Oldham, heralding a revival for UKIP.
The combination of a popular young local candidate in Jim McMahon, the leader of Oldham Council, and the fact that the Labour Party has had a surge in membership meant that the party was well placed to win.
The serious loser is Nigel Farage who ran a vicious anti Corbyn campaign using the worst of the deluge of bad press coverage, expecting a big boost from white working class voters in Oldham. But it didn’t happen – hence his outrageous attack today on Asian voters for keeping Labour in poll position.
This is a real problem for Farage because his entire strategy is to get the votes of mainly white working class voters in the North so he can replace Labour as the official opposition by winning swathes of Northern seats.
This is clearly not happening in Oldham. Despite I suspect some switching from the Tories to UKIP – resulting in the Tories very bad performance where their share of the vote dropped to under 10 per cent.
If you analyse the UKIP bad run of council by-election results – it shows they are falling back everywhere except in their traditional heartlands in the Fens, Kent and Essex. They are making no headway in London
The Oldham West result was preceded by a similar UKIP slump in a council by election in Chorley in Lancashire. In Chorley Labour recorded a 12.7 per cent swing –taking the seat with 57.3 per cent share of the vote and winning with 697 votes. The big loser was UKIP whose share of the vote dropped by 12.4 per cent – getting just 76 votes.
And there have been similar bad performances – including two last night -one in the London borough of Newham where there was an 9 per cent swing to Labour and UKIP got only 3.9 per cent of the vote.Labour got 1440 votes, UKIP, 78.
The other was in the Malvern Hills – a Tory heartland – where UKIP was pushed into third place, halving their share of the vote, to 13.3 per cent from 27.7 per cent. They got 56 votes. Labour, standing for the first time in the ward, got nearly 23 per cent of the vote, 96 votes with the Tory winning with 268 votes.
Where UKIP do have presence – their effect has been to hit the main parties without winning outright. In Ashford, Tories took a seat from Labour by two votes and in Rochford, Essex, Labour took a Tory seat by four votes.
However pundits or commentators want to play it.- this was a good result for Labour, a bad result for UKIP, and an appalling result for the Westminster Establishment who had written the Labour Party into the history books.
The full result
Jim McMahon (Labour) – 17,209 (62.11%)
John Bickley (UKIP) – 6,487 (23.41%)
James Daly (Conservative) – 2,596 (9.37%)
Jane Brophy (Liberal Democrat) – 1,024 (3.70%)
Simeon Hart (Green Party) – 249 (0.90%)
Sir Oink A-Lot (Monster Raving Loony) – 141 (0.51%)
Westminster Confidential 
For weeks the press have been portraying this by-election as a test of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party… now its been won, “this was nothing to do with Jeremy Corbyn” Or “Labour won despite Jeremy Corbyn”.
So all this was about Jeremy Corbyn, until he won… now, not so much. Seriously, WTAF!
Also how come no one in the press is mentioning the near collapse of the Cun’servatives vote. (from low, as you would expect, in a Labour safe seat, to f**k all)
And how that the Kippers who were supposed to trounce, or seriously diminish, Labour were a very poor second. With Fartarge now saying it was the bloody Asians fault he lost. (really, I know he’s a racist c**t, but to actually come out and blame them on national TV and in the papers is beyond the pail)
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And don’t forget all those tedious vox pops with apparently ordinary Oldham folk parroting what they read they the Sun. Poor old Farage fell for that stuff, but the voters saw through it. Now he’s complaining that the Asian community was somehow denied their right to vote for a racist political party.
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Pingback: “A good result for Labour, a bad result for UKIP, an appalling result for the Westminster Establishment” | Vox Political
Dear David As you know there has been a lot of coverage of abuse of Labour MPs. Corbyn supporters get most of the blame. I’ve followed up a few of them and it is interesting how little can be found out about who they are. For example, Chris Bryant complained about someone called George David on Facebook, but I can’t find them by searching. I think ‘threats’ of deselection or strongly worded political comment are not threats at all, the ones that are concerning are those that imply violence. The two are being conflated and there seems little evidence that the worst and most threatening abusers are Corbyn supporters, but the comment and media coverage implies that they are. My theory is that some of them are in fact anonymous Tory provocateurs, trying to encourage splits in Labour. I wonder if anyone has done investigative work on this phenomenon? I thought it might be up your street! Regards
Steve Hilditch
Sent from my iPad
>
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Interesting point. Given the current plotting and bullying in the Tory Party, this is one line of inquiry. It could also be used to destabilise Labour.
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Reblogged this on nearlydead and commented:
David Hencke,another journalist of integrity-there’s not many.
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From Graham Bell
The day after the election I went onto the news site for bbc to see what the result was and despite the BBC ,in particular Laura Kuenssberg ,having written off labour ,because of Corbyn ,there was for some time no mention of the result. When it did get a mention the success was framed as “Despite Corbyne” and all due to the selection of the local candidate with no mention that when a close result was predicted he was the candidate.They didn’t change the candidate just before the election to influence the result.
It’s not just politicians that have been shaken and are threatened by the shift in the political climate presented by the Corbyn victory it’s the whole circus ,the media, the PSA ,the police ,the quango aspirants,the think tanks .All of them .They sup together ,live together inter-marry .Suddenly the people affected by their actions have got a say and that frightens them all.
Look across the pond to Bernie Sanders. Without one penny from WALL STREET he’s outstripped Clinton in donations.Look at the last debate. On the night on every poll on every point and every applaud monitor gave Bernie between 65and 75% yet the media reported an outstanding triumph for Clinton.
In a world where there is enough for the entire population to have 3 decent meals each day, people are appalled that 40% are starving,and that situation is coming closer and closer to home
.Terrorism,extremism, the anger of 60% of the have nots is a result of POVERTY. UNECCESARY POVERTY not ideology.
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He’s still not felt it worth explaining the Islington children’s homes cover-up.
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