It could get nasty

The Liberal Democrats have won the Eastleigh by-election, with the UK Independence Party pushing the Conservatives into third place. Polling only 1.771 votes less than the winning LibDem candidate this was a victory in all but name for UKIP: Eastleigh was their best-ever election performance. They pushed hard on EU migration and an anti-establishment theme. They were the only ones to put on a significant number of votes. It's clear they are now the new "protest vote party". And don't ignore the fact they came close to winning.

The deeply unimpressive Conservative candidate Maria Hutchings
with the soon to be discredited Party Chairman, Grant Shapps

Not a good day for the Tories in Eastleigh where they could not take a FibDem seat where the sitting MP was a convicted perjurer and liar who would have been LibDem leader and Deputy Prime Minister in the Coalition of Opportunism  if not for Lord (you owe me Nick!) Rennard. UKIP came second with 27.8 percent - portends a lemming like dash to the right in mainstream UK politics.

The Tories attracted criticism on voting day for handing out an election leaflet in UKIP's colours – purple and yellow. The policies spelled out in the leaflet also echoed many of the messages UKIP has been trying to hammer home. On Europe it claimed: "Maria Hutchings and the Conservatives want to give you an in/out referendum." On immigration: "The Conservatives want tough targets for further cuts." And on welfare: "The Conservatives want further changes to make our welfare system even fairer." Lisa Duffy, UKIP's campaign director, said: "I feel it's quite a compliment for UKIP that they need to use our colours. Clearly we're a threat."

Chris Huhne, the former FibDem MP

Labour has generally not  got more than 10% of the vote in Eastleigh, a right wing area which does not like to vote Tory but it will be concerned that none of the protest vote went to them as Ed Miliband is not appealing outside the core Labour vote.

UKIP's central slogan was "Stop open-door immigration" - lumping together the movement of EU nationals with asylum seekers and others through a deliberate sleight of hand into a single racist or xenophobic scapegoat.  Studies show that the "core" UKIP voter holds social attitudes closer to the BNP than the Tory party on a range of issues connected to race, immigration and multiculturalism except for the question of whether a "race war" is likely in Britain in the "next few years", where the core UKIP voter is closer to their Tory counterpart in not thinking so, as opposed to the BNP.

The Tories now know that Mad Mike “Too patriotic to pay British taxes” Ashcroft’s analysis and consequent withdrawal of support for the Tories is correct, they cannot win the next General Election in 2015.

For once the Tory reactionary Minister of Education Michael Gove gave a sensible analysis;

“I think there are two aspects to it. I think on the first it is the case that there is a greater sense of disengagement from conventional politics now than there’s been certainly in my adult lifetime. The ‘none of the above, you’re all the same’ vote is stronger. I think it’s part of a broader distaste for elites. People believe that elites have failed, everything from the expenses scandal, to what’s gone on in banking, to the recent revelations of what’s gone on in mid-Staffordshire, means there’s a sense there that the establishment, however you describe it or however constituted, has let folk down. That’s powerful.”

Two of UKIP's finest - Christine and Neil Hamilton

In the new age of anti-politics UKIP is an anti-party of nutters who are too nuts or personally flawed to stay in the Tory Party.  UKIP has taken the Nasty People who normally vote for the Nasty Party. It could get nasty!