Labour wins Oldham West and Royton by-election

Labour’s Jim McMahon won the Oldham West and Royton seat – vacant after the death of former minister Michael Meacher – with 17,209 votes. Ukip’s John Bickley came a distant second on 6,487.

Labour’s share of the vote increased to 62.1 per cent and there was a 2.27 per cent swing from Nigel Farage’s party to Labour.

Mr Farage said he was not contesting Labour’s victory, but said he had “evidence from an impeccable source that today’s postal voting was bent”.

Turnout was higher than expected at just over 40 per cent, and Labour appears to have benefited from an effective postal vote operation.

There are some really quite big ethnic changes now in the way people are voting. They can’t speak English, they have never heard of Ukip or the Conservative Party, they haven’t even heard of Jeremy Corbyn. Nigel Farage

The Ukip leader told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “There are some really quite big ethnic changes now in the way people are voting. They can’t speak English, they have never heard of Ukip or the Conservative Party, they haven’t even heard of Jeremy Corbyn.

“I’m commenting on the state of modern Britain, post mass immigration. It means effectively that in some of these seats where people don’t speak English and they sign up to postal votes, effectively the electoral process is now dead.”

He added “As a veteran of over 30 by-elections I have never seen such a perverse result. Serious questions need to be asked.”

Numbers of postal votes rose by 15 per cent on Thursday, with people handing in bundles of voting slips on behalf of other voters in “processes that shouldn’t really be happening in a modern democracy”, Mr Farage claimed.

The Ukip leader quoted a newspaper report claiming there were households in the constituency where occupants spoke no English and were unable to identify Jeremy Corbyn, but said they were voting Labour.

He added that Labour had a local advantage because of their control of council housing and links with local mosques.

Osborne congratulates Corbyn

It emerged that the chancellor, George Osborne, was on the same train as Mr Corbyn this morning and congratulated the Labour leader on a “very good result”.

Mr Corbyn called the result a “vote of confidence in our party”, while Mr McMahon denied the accusations of electoral malpractice, saying: “There is nothing wrong with people making a democratic decision not to support Ukip.”

If he has got evidence of that, he should have told the police immediately. Tom Watson

Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson called Mr Farage’s complaints “sour grapes”, saying: “If he has got evidence of that, he should have told the police immediately. I have spoken to our organisers and they have got no knowledge of that.”

He added: “If this was a referendum on Jeremy Corbyn, then he has won. It was a decisive victory with our share of the vote going up.

“I hope our MPs look at this result. What’s happened since Jeremy became leader and I became deputy leader is we have focused on issues that affect the working people of Britain.

“I think people responded to that at the ballot box. I hope our MPs will see that if you stand up for working people, they respond by supporting you at elections.”