The British Conservative party has for the first time been pushed into third place in a by-election in the town of Eastleigh, by a party David Cameron dubbed “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists.”
The UKIP (the UK Independence Party) strongly opposes
immigration, and advocates for the UK to leave the European Union.
The party has apparently gained credibility, at least in the
Eastleigh midterm by-elections, which usually follow a vacancy
arising in the House of Commons.
In the Eastleigh vote, the Lib Dem Party polled at 13,342 votes,
UKIP at 11,571, the Conservatives at 10,559 and Labour at 4,088.
UKIP took almost 28 percent of the vote, one of their best-ever
results in a British parliamentary election.
“I think it’s unlikely we’re going to be the biggest party in
Westminster in 2015 but what we could well do is catalyze some sort
of realignment of British politics,” UKIP head Nigel Farage
told RT. “It’s pretty clear to me that the Conservative Party is
going through just about its deepest crisis in history. There are
two distinct groups of the Tories who don’t agree with each other
on virtually anything and I think if UKIP gets much stronger that
it is today we could see something really new and really exciting
in British politics.”
Voters’ voices seem to echo Farage’s remarks: some said they
were “absolutely sick of mainstream politics; they’ve got
nothing out of it except unemployment.”
One senior Conservative Party figure, former leadership
candidate David Davis, warned before the vote that a
"crisis" would follow should the defeat happen.
David Cameron acknowledged that the result was
"disappointing" for his party, but insisted he was
"confident" that the Tories would be able to win in the 2015
general election.
The result, which saw the Liberal Democrat Party take first
place, could pile pressure on Cameron from lawmakers within his own
party who worry he may not be able to lead them to victory in 2015,
Reuters reported.