In a sour, embittered rant on the radio, the thoroughly modern Mosley, Nigel Farage, had some strong words about yesterday’s by-election at Oldham West and Royton: “It was fixed by all those ethnics” or words to that effect. Of course, Farage had no evidence to suggest the result was fixed by anyone, but I fully expect him to contact the police straight away in order to get to the bottom of all this. We can’t have those “ethnics” voting as well. It makes a mockery of our electoral system.
I’ll come to the Labour stuff in a minute but first a word on Ukip. “Oswald Mosley, Douglas Carswell, Neil Hamilton, Paul Nuttall, Stuart Wheeler – your boys took a helluva beating.” Farage was hitting out in every direction, except the ones labelled truth and reality, because he knows what a crushing defeat this was. Yes, they knocked the Tories into a distant third place but in reality the establishment party of the far right expected to win in Oldham. One of many reasons Labour did so badly in May was the Ukip erosion of Labour votes in its heartlands, as the white working class vote ebbed away to the shrill voices of the right, with its simplistic, casual and overtly racist message.
I am not sure Ukip did themselves any favours yesterday by going round the constituency in a large white van, belting out a selection of Christmas tunes, one of which was – by pure coincidence – White Christmas. I know we often accuse Ukip of being stupid, but they are not that stupid. A party of the right, with its usual anti-immigration and immigrant message, does not “accidentally” choose a song about a “White Christmas”. At the very least, it’s mischief making, at the worst it’s casual racism to be answered with a surprise “What me, guv?” reaction. The important thing is that Ukip lost and lost very badly.
With Labour’s meltdown at the election and three months of chaos under its new leader, Farage felt the door was ready to be kicked down by the far right and the far right can only thrive and grow with the support of ordinary working people. This is not snobbery: it is a simple fact. The far right sow seeds of fear, they apportion blame to those who are often blameless (like immigrants), they thrive on feelings of hopelessness and helplessness among many of the last well off, the disadvantaged and the forgotten. I am SO glad the politics of fear and the politics of hate failed so disastrously in Oldham.
This was a great result in so many ways. It is a victory for the people of Oldham who have elected a quite excellent local Labour candidate to represent them. In Jim McMahon, they have a hugely talented, well liked and respected Mayor and now as an MP he will now be able to take his talents to the next level.
It is also good news for the country as a whole because it shows that Labour still has a semblance of effective opposition to the Conservatives. Whether the by election was “a referendum on Jeremy Corbyn” is debatable, but after a week in which the party ripped itself apart in public, it would be churlish not to allow Corbyn his day in the sun. The arguments as to whether the result was obtained because or despite of Corbyn are largely irrelevant. The point is that Labour under Corbyn has passed its first serious electoral challenge. Despite all my reservations about Corbyn – too many to list here – a Labour defeat, or even a poor performance would have benefited no one other than the Tories and Ukip.
There will be greater tests ahead for Labour – 2016 has a whole bunch of difficult challenges – but for starters this was far from a bad start, quite the opposite, actually.
Farage and his jibes about these wretched “ethnics” should be treated with the contempt they deserve. To follow his illogic to a conclusion, Jim McMahon must have been a muslim jihadist who was urging Sharia and the building of a mosque on every street corner, rather than merely a highly effective local man representing all the people of his constituency.
I don’t know if it just that Farage is a bad loser. He looks pretty good at it as far as I can see.
