Jeremy Corbyn has said Labour’s win in the Oldham West and Royton by-election shows its strength and the appeal of its anti-austerity message.
Visiting the constituency, Labour’s leader hailed an “incredible” result.
Oldham is a tribal homeland for Labour, so, er, winning there isn’t a great surprise. I expected Ukip to do better, but in a constituency where sticking a red rosette on a turd would get it elected, doesn’t tell us very much, frankly. Only that some people are very stupid and will readily vote themselves other people’s money. So what’s new?
The real test is in a general election. Corbyn is unlikely to win over the middle England floating voters.
What this anti austerity message means in reality is that we don’t care about our country being up to its eyeballs in debt and we will just carry on spending money that we don’t have until we end up like Greece. Once that happens we will just blame everyone else for being too mean to lend us any more money.
It should also be noted that the generation of UK residents who actually know what the actual meaning of the word austerity is are gradually passing away.
A part of the issue seems to be that Labour increased their majority. I think that it is fair comment that Corbyn has done fairly well in this particular by-election. The impression that I am starting to get is that, despite his misguided lefty views, Corbyn is an intelligent and thoughtful man and much cleverer than Cameron. Yes I know, my cat is cleverer than Cameron.