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| Corbyn hails Oldham byelection as sign of Labour's deep-rooted support | Corbyn hails Oldham byelection as sign of Labour's deep-rooted support |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour’s decisive byelection victory in Oldham is proof that his party is a broad church with deep-rooted support across the country. | |
| The Labour leader made a brief appearance on Friday morning alongside the new MP, Oldham council leader Jim McMahon, who won a 10,722 majority in Thursday’s byelection, comfortably seeing off a challenge from Ukip. | The Labour leader made a brief appearance on Friday morning alongside the new MP, Oldham council leader Jim McMahon, who won a 10,722 majority in Thursday’s byelection, comfortably seeing off a challenge from Ukip. |
| Flanked by placard-waving supporters on the steps of Chadderton town hall, Corbyn said: “This campaign shows just how strong our party is, not just here in Oldham, but all over the country. | Flanked by placard-waving supporters on the steps of Chadderton town hall, Corbyn said: “This campaign shows just how strong our party is, not just here in Oldham, but all over the country. |
| “We’ve driven the Tories back on tax credits, on police cuts, on their whole austerity agenda and narrative. It shows just how strong, how deep-rooted and how broad our party, the Labour party is, for the whole of Britain.” | “We’ve driven the Tories back on tax credits, on police cuts, on their whole austerity agenda and narrative. It shows just how strong, how deep-rooted and how broad our party, the Labour party is, for the whole of Britain.” |
| He ignored a barrage of questions from the Channel 4 News reporter Michael Crick, who asked why Corbyn appeared on so few of McMahon’s leaflets and whether he agreed that McMahon had saved his leadership. | |
| McMahon’s majority was down from 14,783 recorded by the late Michael Meacher at the general election in May. But Labour’s share of the vote increased to 62.3%, because fewer people voted overall. | |
| Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, earlier praised both McMahon and Corbyn after the emphatic win. “We had a brilliant candidate, locally born, stood up for local people, in Jim McMahon,” he said. “I remember Nigel Farage saying on day one of this byelection it was a referendum on Jeremy Corbyn. If it was a referendum on Jeremy Corbyn, he has won. It was a decisive victory with our share of the vote going up.” | |
| Labour’s deputy leader dismissed as “sour grapes” claims by the Ukip leader Farage that the result lacked legitimacy because of the high number of postal ballots from black and minority ethnic voters, some of whom have poor English. Farage, whose candidate John Bickley finished a distant second on 6,487, is to lodge a formal complaint. | |
| McMahon, the 35-year-old son of a truck driver who left school at 16, used his speech to lay into George Osborne’s “northern powerhouse” project intended to bridge the north-south divide – a somewhat curious turn of events given McMahon’s close involvement in Greater Manchester’s devolution negotiations with the Treasury. | |
| He said: “This is a truly overwhelming thing. For a local lad to represent the town he loves in Westminster is a big, big issue. I’m very clear; I am sick to death of what the Tories are doing to towns like Oldham. | He said: “This is a truly overwhelming thing. For a local lad to represent the town he loves in Westminster is a big, big issue. I’m very clear; I am sick to death of what the Tories are doing to towns like Oldham. |
| “The whole northern powerhouse rhetoric is nothing more than a write-off of the north to create a poorhouse, and I’m sick of it. I think it’s about time that we show the Tories the people have had enough.” | “The whole northern powerhouse rhetoric is nothing more than a write-off of the north to create a poorhouse, and I’m sick of it. I think it’s about time that we show the Tories the people have had enough.” |
| Yet as one of the 10 leaders that make up Greater Manchester’s combined authority, McMahon has been at the heart of the discussions that led to the city region being the first in England to receive a package of new powers free from Whitehall control. | |
| In November last year Greater Manchester agreed to introduce an elected mayor in return for greater control over investment, housing, transport and even, subsequently, the NHS and social care. | |
| McMahon was widely expected to run for mayor and is viewed as a star of local government, having been elected the leader of Labour group on the Local Government Association in 2014, representing more than 6,000 Labour councillors and groups across England. He was also elected to Labour’s governing National Executive Committee representing councillors in England, Scotland and Wales. | |
| In his short speech, Corbyn called McMahon “an experienced council leader, brilliant local man, [who] can speak up for the people of this town, speak up in parliament for them and bring about the kind of decent, prosperous opportunity future that we want for everybody, everybody in this country. | In his short speech, Corbyn called McMahon “an experienced council leader, brilliant local man, [who] can speak up for the people of this town, speak up in parliament for them and bring about the kind of decent, prosperous opportunity future that we want for everybody, everybody in this country. |