Campaigning in the Oldham West and Royton byelection, Ukip leader says Labour has ‘Blairite’ candidate who is standing for a divided party

Nigel Farage accused Jeremy Corbyn of wanting “complete freedom of movement”, including the scrapping of any immigration limits, as the Ukip leader campaigned for votes in the forthcoming Oldham West and Royton byelection.

Visiting Oldham’s war memorial in the rain on Friday, Farage said Labour had chosen a “Blairite” local council leader, Jim McMahon, to fight the byelection. McMahon is “very much at odds with Corbyn on very many things”, said Farage, suggesting his party could take advantage of “a sort of civil war” being fought in Labour ranks to overturn the 14,738 majority won in May by Michael Meacher, who died last month.

McMahon, 35, is a popular figure locally, credited with a host of regeneration projects including a new cinema and the restoration of the very war memorials Farage posed in front of during his visit. McMahon beat a local bus driver, Kashmiri-born Mohammed Azam, to the Labour nomination on Thursday night.

Jim McMahon to stand as Labour candidate for Oldham byelection Read more

Asked whether McMahon was the last person Ukip wanted to compete with, Farage said: “[McMahon] was the last person Mr Corbyn wanted to win the election. They are diametrically opposed. I think Labour have chosen a good candidate, but he is asking to be a representative of a party led by a man with a completely different political ethos.”

He added: “Labour has picked a good candidate. But he is standing for a divided party. He’s not standing for local politics, he’s standing for Westminster. There are shades of the 1980s in this, when from one constituency to the next Labour had completely different representatives. He clearly would be very much at odds with Corbyn on very many things.”

Speaking during a brief visit to the byelection constituency, Corbyn said he was sure McMahon would win because “he represents the people of Oldham, he understands them”.

The Labour leader focused during his short speech on tax credits, which he said would be a key issue for voters.

“After I think now nine questions from me to the prime minister about what’s happening to working tax credits we’ve got this very simple message to the government,” he said. “The people of Oldham have a chance to decide: do they want a party in power that will defend the interests, the living standards of ordinary people and defend working credits and not take £1,300 away from three million families across Britain that will in many cases stop them working, in every case reduce their standard of living?”

Tom Watson, Labour’s deputy leader, was also at McMahon’s launch. He told the Guardian that the byelection wasn’t a referendum on Corbyn’s leadership, despite Farage’s best efforts to paint it as such.

“I’ve been involved in byelections for 30 years and they are generally not a referendum on anything. They’re usually about local issues,” he said.

“What I do know is voters decide the terms of the debate in the election and I hope that Nigel isn’t going to play those establishment games where he tries to make it a negative campaign based on our leader, because the people in this area deserve better. I think actually the issue that really does concern them is tax credits, which is a UK-wide issue, particularly in Oldham where there’s 17,000 families who are going to be affected by those cuts.”



Told by the Guardian that immigration was a topic raised by many shoppers in Oldham on Friday, Watson said: “We want a fair but firm policy and that’s where we are at. We know that it’s a tough challenge to win public consensus around that.”



In a short speech McMahon, who did not go to university and left school to push trolleys at a cash-and-carry, promised to stand up for ordinary workers. “I was brought up by a really hard-working truck driver. He taught me that if you work hard, roll your sleeves up, you can get on in life,” he told activists to great cheers.

“I see people working hard for really low wages, on zero-hours contracts, in really insecure employment. And that’s not the town I want. I want Oldham to be the best it can be for people who are willing to work hard and contribute – they should get the reward of that. We can only do that with a Labour government. I’m happy to step forward for the town, happy to stand forward for the Labour party and I’m happy to show Ukip the door.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Labour candidate Jim McMahon (left), the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and his deputy, Tom Watson, at a byelection campaign launch on Friday. Photograph: Dave Thompson/Getty

McMahon rejected Farage’s description of him as a “Blairite”, adding: “I don’t really pay much attention to what Nigel Farage says, to be honest.”



Farage began Ukip’s campaign this week focusing on what he called Corbyn’s “lack of patriotism”. But in an interview with the Guardian, McMahon said he would win in any battle of who-is-the-most-patriotic, saying he was proud to be travelling to Buckingham Palace next month to accept his OBE from the Queen and had raised £136,000 to restore the cenotaph in his Failsworth council ward.

Asked whether Ukip had lost the patriotism argument with McMahon, Farage said: “Yeah but he can’t [argue] about his party leader or the direction his party is going in … It doesn’t take away the fact that within the Labour party there is a sort of cultural civil war going on between two different wings of it.

“They’ve chosen Corbyn. That’s what matters to us. The way British politics has gone, it’s ever more presidential and actually people vote for or against party leaders even more than they vote for or against candidates.”



Farage said many voters in Oldham, where racial tensions caused riots 14 years ago, would disapprove of Corbyn’s relaxed approach to immigration. “I think that the statement yesterday from the European commission to say they expect three million more migrants into Britain brings sharply into focus everything Ukip has been talking about and why there is a massive, massive problem there,” he said.

Oldham West and Royton byelection is referendum on Corbyn, says Farage Read more

“The fact is that on the immigration question it would appear that [Corbyn] believes in ‘one world’. Now, I’ve read about this in exercise books in school and what it basically means is he believes in complete free movement of people and thinks that it was wrong in the last election that Labour advocated any limits at all. And I think that’s going to be a big issue.”

Voters in Oldham appear to be just as divided as Labour about the merits of Corbyn. Pledging her vote to Ukip, one 72-year-old woman said she would “sooner swim in shark-infested water than vote for him”.

Norman Joyce, 83, said: “I hope Labour don’t win here. They don’t know how to live within their means. If I can’t afford something, I can’t have it. They should do the same.” He added: “I certainly don’t like the new Labour leader. If I have got to protect myself I want to have the means to protect myself. Corbyn wants to get rid of the means to protect our country. He’s going to leave us exposed.”

Others were more positive. Smoking a cigarette before a job interview, 32-year-old employment adviser Matthew Bosson said he would be switching his vote in the byelection from Green to Labour. “I’d vote Labour now. Prior to Jeremy Corbyn I wouldn’t. I think he has re-embodied traditional Labour values.”