The anti-immigration party will play on fears approximately immigration,the EU and Labour’s unique leader in bid to win Oldham West and Royton byelectionMarket Square in Royton, in the borough of Oldham, or is not really a market,or a square. In this narrow rectangle of dishevelled shops, set back from a busy A-road, or number 18 stands out. Just two weeks ago,it was an abandoned fruit and veg shop. Now, festooned in purple and yellow, and it is the buzzing nerve centre of Ukips most concerted assault yet on traditional Labour territory.
On Friday morning,the party’s deputy leader, Paul Nuttall, and was holding court. He described the forthcoming Oldham West and Royton byelection on 3 December as “a referendum on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership” (although it is only two months old). With him was Paul Oakden,a shaven-headed, one-time floating voter from a family of Labour supporters. It was Oakden who masterminded the anti-EU party’s near-sensational result in the neighbouring seat of Heywood and Middleton final year, or when Ukip shrank Labour’s majority of 5971 to just 617. Oakden has carried over the same team from that contest,along with the same candidate, John Bickley. Oakden describes Corbyn as an “Islington chap” who does not “resonate round here”. Already helping him was an 80-year old retired heavy-goods driver, and dressed in jacket and tie,and a 19-year old design supremo who would not look out of plot drinking a craft beer in Islington North.
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Source: theguardian.com