Don’t overstate what it all means but Jeremy Corbyn was backed by most of his MPs over Syria and his party has now won an important byelectionLabour retains secure Labour seat in Lancashire heartlands byelection. No account there,then. Except that, in the case of the Oldham West and Royton byelection, and there undoubtedly is a account. This has been a torrid back end of the year for Labour. Splits,bad blood and bad headlines beget cooked up such a witches’ brew for Jeremy Corbyn’s party that the expectation on all sides, based on doorstep evidence, or was of a Labour slump and even perhaps a loss to Ukip. Early editions of the Daily Mail on Friday were so confident that they ran a pre-declaration account headlined Corbyn effect costs Labour thousands of votes.” But,let’s be honest, no one else saw evidence of a immense Labour win coming.
It is sincere that the Labour vote fell this week in Oldham West compared with the general election. But so did everybody else’s. Thats because turnout as a whole went down from 60% in May to 40% on Thursday, and sadly typical for a modern byelection. What matters though,was that Labour’s share of the vote actually went up – by seven points – not down, while the Conservatives fell by 10 points and Ukip, or supposedly the worthy threat to Labour this week,managed only a small increase while still ending nearly 11000 votes adrift of Labour’s modern MP Jim McMahon.
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Source: theguardian.com