What does the Oldham result really tells us Jeremy Corbyn's leadership? A Q&A
Almost all the media reporting from Oldham suggested that Labour was facing a real challenge from Ukip, partly because some traditional supporters had doubts about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Yet Labour won handsomely. Is that because the journalists were all just biased and wrong, as the Corbyn camp suggests? (See
10.26am.) Or were there other factors at play?
Here’s a Q&A that may untangle some of these issues.
Q: All this stuff about Corbyn being unpopular - did the journalists just get it wrong, or make it up?
No. Sometimes journalists do distort things to fit a political agenda but over the last few weeks there have been multiple reports from serious, reputable journalists who have either witnessed first-hand Oldham Labour-leaning voters criticising Corbyn, or reported Labour figures echoing these concerns. For example, there was
Bagehot in the Economist, this report
in the Daily Telegraph, Rafael Behr
in the Guardian, George Eaton
in the New Statesman and Helen Pidd
in the Guardian.
I did not arrive in Oldham until yesterday afternoon but I was curious about this and I spent about an hour and a half talking to people in the Spindles shopping centre and I encountered the same phenomenon too. For example, Norman Davies, a retired Royal Mail worker, told me.
I’m generally a Labour man but unfortunately I won’t vote for them this time, not while they’ve got this idiot at the helm, this guy who would cut our defence, no way ... I don’t like him at all. He’s doing more harm than good for this country. He’s a no, no for them.
If Labour really thought Corbyn was an asset here, he would have played a part in the campaign. But, apart from one visit early on, he stayed away, and he did not feature much on Labour campaign leaflets either.
Q: So, if Corbyn really is unpopular with some voters, why didn’t that make any difference?
I can think of think of three reasons.
1) Corbyn’s leadership never became an issue. Ukip tried to make it the issue of the campaign but they failed to persuade the electorate that this was what the contest was about. Opposition parties like Ukip win byelections by identifying a grievance and invited voters to use the poll to express their feelings about this. People use byelections to rhetorically kick the prime minister. But they don’t use them to get involved in opposition leadership feuds.
2) But the identify of the local candidate was an issue - and Labour’s was excellent.
3) Corbyn may alienate some voters, but he attracts others too. I discovered this in my short spell in the shopping centre. For example, Nigel Jones, a former publican, told me:
I’ve been a card carrying Labour supporter for 33 years and I’m quite leftwing, so Corbyn is my ideal leader in a way.
And a district nurse who did not want to give her name told me.
[Corbyn’s] interesting, in a good way. You feel that he answers things. He does not talk like other politicians. They never answer anything.
The Corbyn effect may help to explain why the Greens did so badly. At the general election they got 839 votes (1.9%). Last night they got just 249, and their share of the vote was 0.9%.
Q: Are there any other factors that made a difference?
There weren’t any polls carried out in Oldham (because political polling is rather out of favour at the moment, given what happened at the general election). If there had been polling showing Labour clearly ahead, journalists would have recalibrated their expectations.
And Labour may have chosen to downplay expectations, on the grounds that it is much easier to get activists to campaign if they think there is a risk of their party losing. This happened in the Glenrothes byelection in 2008 and Oldham is similar. In Glenrothes the SNP thought they had a real chance of taking this safe Labour seat, but
on the night Labour held on with a majority of almost 7,000, which was much larger than the pundits expected.
Q: So what lessons should we learn from Oldham?
The usual ones, that in byelections candidates matter, and that being organised matters even more. Nigel Farage’s complaints about postal voting are a tribute to the efficiency of the Labour machine. In addition we can add, that the opposition can win byelections even when it is divided at Westminster so long as the fundamentals on the ground are sound.
Q: And are there any lessons we shouldn’t take away from Oldham?
Yes. This contest was neither an endorsement or a rejection of Corbyn’s politics because his leadership never became the issue. At a general election his leadership and his policies will be deciding factors, and Oldham tells us next to nothing about what impact they might have.
And, although Oldham was spectacularly bad for Ukip, it would be too soon to conclude that the Ukip threat to Labour in working class areas in the north is fading. Stephen Bush was very good on this
at the Staggers yesterday. Glenrothes was a serious setback for the SNP. But seven years later it took the seat - and most of the rest of Scotland too.
