When Rob was 14 years old, he was excited enough about Labour politics to put on a presentation at his school in Oldham about Harold Wilson’s 1964 election win. He backed the party in every subsequent election, albeit with dwindling enthusiasm, until this May, when he voted Ukip. “The Labour party I remember was all working-class people,” he tells me. “Now you get the feeling they have no idea how working-class people live.”

Labour has good reason to feel nervous about its poll test in Oldham Read more

Rob will lend a vote to his old party in Thursday’s byelection out of respect for the candidate – Jim McMahon, the 35-year-old council leader – “because he’s local”. Questions about Jeremy Corbyn elicit thorough dismissal, linked mainly to national defence. Trident: “When people know you haven’t got it, they’ll have a go.” Islamic State: “You can’t negotiate with them … You’ve got to stand up to them.” He couldn’t vote Labour under its current leader in a general election. “Corbyn will have to change a lot. He’ll have to completely change the way he thinks.”

Outside a shopping centre in the middle of town, I speak to Warren, in his 30s, also a Ukip supporter. He says he’s not into politics but caught snippets of the debate about terrorism on the news. “Cameron was saying ‘enough is enough’ and Corbyn seemed to be saying ‘let bygones be bygones. Let’s hide under a rock’ or something. I think he’s a pussy.”

A generous evaluation of Corbyn comes from Jo, behind the counter in a shop not far from Labour’s campaign headquarters in Chadderton. “I like him,” she says. “I think they have to go in that direction – more peaceful.” Jo also likes McMahon, although she complains about council waste and misspent social security. She cites contrasting cases of two neighbours: one who is too sick to work, and struggles to pay the rent, while another earned enough from benefits to do up her kitchen.

Such stories were a standard feature of the general election campaign trail, and it is hardly surprising if attitudes haven’t shifted much since then. But it is striking how few people who might once have been core Labour voters think anything noteworthy has happened in the party since May. The Corbyn revolution that took Westminster by surprise over the summer was hailed by its more evangelical acolytes as the vanguard of a contagious new spirit of left radicalism. But Lancashire seems immune.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, with John Bickley, his party’s candidate in Oldham. ‘Ukip would have to overturn a majority of nearly 15,000. Senior figures see that as improbable, but not unthinkable.’ Photograph: Lauren Brown/PA

There is ample disdain for all London-based politicians as a bunch of crooks, and Corbyn is not exempt. “Just another liar” is the view of one militant abstainer. There is no evidence of untapped Labour support among those who chose not to vote in May – a segment on which Corbyn’s electoral strategy (insofar as he has one) relies for offsetting bourgeois middle England’s tilt towards the Tories. The non-voters I speak to have inclinations in a different direction. For example Jamie, a young builder, tells me he probably won’t vote but if forced to, would choose Ukip. His verdict on Corbyn: “Just sat there in his chair, not looking at the real world.”

Despite palpable contempt for Labour on Oldham’s streets, the party is expected to cling on to the seat. The Tories are not in the running, and Ukip would have to overturn a majority of nearly 15,000. Senior figures in Nigel Farage’s party see that as an improbable upset, but not unthinkable. Expectations are being played down. Gone is the bravado of the last parliament, when Farage promised electoral earthquakes and delivered minor tremors. There is recognition among the more strategic-minded Kippers that momentum has stalled. “We can’t keep being the party of near misses,” one tells me. Farage is also a polarising figure – a Marmite lid on his party’s appeal – admired by a small, angry minority, and reviled by others as a stirrer of inter-communal suspicion. Oldham saw the ugly side of that kind of politics with race riots in 2001.

But a narrow escape would still be grim for Labour. Campaign insiders expect the majority to be slashed by thousands. If defeat is averted, it will be down to McMahon’s local record and support in the constituency’s south Asian population. Around a fifth of the electorate is of Bangladeshi or Pakistani heritage, and Labour canvassers say their vote is holding up best in areas where that community is concentrated. Local elections in May point to a stronger turnout in those wards.

Corbynism is distinct from Blairism only in the sense that they are opposite sides of one Islington coin

While it is an achievement for Labour to have won that loyalty, the incipient segregation of party voting habits along ethnic lines is cause for longer-term concern. But the immediate worry is Ukip gobbling up Labour’s white working-class support in seats with no such demographic cushion. If the effect was sustained in a general election, Faragists would replace Labour MPs across the north, or Tories would come through the middle.

The precedent, cited with equal terror and glee by rival campaigns in Oldham, is Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon’s glossy nationalism exerts a different pull to rough-edged Ukippery, but the malaise in Labour heartlands is analogous. It is a function of votes long taken for granted, combined with a sense of Labour’s capture in the 90s by arrogant southern elites: that it was “poncified”.

That expresses deeper alienation, connected to the decline of secure manufacturing jobs and to mass migration. Ukip sympathies in Oldham carry a note of wounded expropriation. A refrain is that politics no longer belongs to “people from round here”. Hopes that Corbynism might be the adhesive reconnecting a dislocated core to the party seem misplaced. It feels more like a catalyst for decline, another iteration of tin-eared disregard for local sensibilities – distinct from Blairism only in the sense that they are opposite sides of one Islington coin.

Labour MPs report similar problems across the north of England. A relationship of long estrangement is reaching closure. People cared about Lab our when they thought the feeling was mutual. Now they are over it and Corbyn isn’t winning them back.

“He’s an idiot,” says one middle-aged lady in Royton, outside Oldham town centre. Asked to explain what prompts that view she shrugs. “It’s all the things he comes out with. He needs to get his act together.”