Serious Threat

21 November 2014

Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

UKIP Wins Second By-Election

The UK Independence party won yesterday's by-election in the constituency of Rochester and Strood, in Kent. The party also one a council seat in Medway, which is part of the City of Rochester. Both elections were forced by the resignation of sitting Conservatives who defected to UKIP. Further defections and by-elections are likely between now and the May general election. The Conservatives may well be outflanked on their right by UKIP, which is undeniably a factor now. They have gone from the fringe to become a serious threat to the Conservative's general election hopes.

The inappropriately named Mark Reckless (who has been quite calculating in truth) took 16,867 votes as the UKIP candidate, 2,920 more than Conservative Kelly Tolhurst's 13,947, with Labour's Naushabah Khan on 6,713. Clive Gregory of the Green Party on 1,692 and Liberal Democrat Geoff Judy with 349 both lost their deposit.

Meanwhile, Chris Irvine, who is also the election agent of Mr. Reckless, retained his seat on the Medway council with 2,850 votes. Tory candidate Ronald Sands was second with 1,965, while Labour's Pete Tungate finished third with 716. While the Greens with 314 beat the Lib Dems, who scored 60, into fifth place, both parties lost their deposits.

Norman Smith, the BBC's assistant political editor summed up what this means for the UKIP, "UKIP's victory was in many ways even more impressive than their triumph in Clacton. The ease with which they demolished a 9,000 Tory majority was striking and this after the Conservatives had strained every sinew to halt the UKIP bandwagon. UKIP now insists no Tory seat is safe and has suggested other Conservative MPs are more likely to defect."

The Tories may well see further defections given that they promised to throw the kitchen sink into their efforts and still came up short. They are likely to lose any seats that UKIP defectors decide to fight in by-elections, although there is no legal requirement that a defector must resign. Defectors with majorities in the thousands, though, may well choose to keep up the pressure by forcing by-elections. The Tories will counter in the general election that a vote for UKIP is a vote for Labour and that anti-EU voters can only get a referendum on membership by electing a Conservative majority.

Labour, meanwhile, was never going to win this seat in the Tory heartland of the home counties. And it won't win the seat in the general election either. A certain amateurism turned up when shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry tweeted a picture of a house with three St. George's flags with a condescending, "Image from #Rochester" caption. She has since resigned from the shadow cabinet. However the headlines should have been about the Tory defeat and not about Ms. Thornberry.

As for the Liberal Democrats, they have managed to go from great popularity during the 2010 election campaign ("I agree with Nick") to the fifth in the rankings behind the Greens ("Who the heck is Nick?"). Whether they will matter much in the general election campaign and the parliament that follows remains to be seen, but at this stage, they may well face reverse decimation, in which only 10% survive the beating.

© Copyright 2014 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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