Britain’s right wing populist U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) suffered an electoral defeat, as it failed to win a closely-watched by-election, in a development that observers say highlights the difficulties it is likely to face in gaining further seats in Parliament.
UKIP, which was instrumental in the campaign to leave the European Union (EU) last year, was easily defeated by Labour in a by-election in the northern English constituency of Stoke-on-Trent-Central. Labour’s Gareth Snell beat Paul Nuttall, leader of UKIP, by 2,620 votes, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats coming in third and fourth respectively. The UKIP campaign was riddled with problems — Mr. Nuttall himself was involved in several controversies: first over the validity of his home address in Stoke registered for the election, and second over comments that he made about having lost “close personal friends” in a 1989 disaster, where 96 Liverpool fans were killed. He later admitted that no close friends had been involved.
Significant blow
Still, the loss is a significant blow for a party in a constituency that had seen strong support for leaving the EU with 69.4% of the population voting to leave in the June referendum.
The defeat was a failure by UKIP to realize that rather than focusing on the Labour working class vote, it needed to draw voters from the Conservative party too, John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and a respected pollster, told The Hindu . “They seem to have been naive about the election and taken the view that to defeat Labour, all you need to do is win Labour votes.” He added that they had struggled to win Conservative votes, not only because of their focus on the working class Labour vote, but because the Conservative Party was “delivering a sufficiently hard Brexit that voters are asking: do we need to vote UKIP?,” he said.
Damning verdict
While UKIP’s vote rose in Stoke, it failed to make headway in another by-election in Copeland. (It’s share of the vote fell by 9%), as it lost votes to the Conservative Party, he added. “The Stoke result indicates that what the opinion polls are telling us are correct, and that it is difficult for UKIP to expand beyond 12% of the electorate into a broader constituency.”
The Copeland by-election saw the Conservatives swing a dramatic victory in a major upset for the Labour party, which has held the seat for decades. The Conservatives defeated Labour by 2,147 votes, as it saw its share of the vote rise by 8.5%.
Rewind to 1966: Corbyn
After the result, Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said they would go further to “reconnect with voters and break with the failed political consensus.” “Both constituencies, like so many, have been let down by the political establishment.”
“You would have to go back to 1966 to find a by election in which the party in power saw its vote rise by as much as it did in Copeland,” said Prof. Curtice. “What you are seeing is the Conservatives largely unchallenged in British politics, having the space to deliver as hard a Brexit as they would like to,” he said.
