Indeed a fascinating result and the cause of much proud strutting by some and yah-boo'ing by others today.
Away from all that what are the realities?
-The parties of the right ,- Conservatives and UKIP outpolled those of the left, LibDems and Labour.
-The UKIP vote cost the Conservatives a victory.
-If Nigel Farage had stood for UKIP he might have won the seat, thereby denying the LibDems some of their crowing and making a much bigger impact for his party,
-It was a bad result for the Conservatives and it will fuel questions about David Cameron and the style and substance of his leadership as well as about lack of overall vision, strategy and tactics.
-The Conservative party now has a direct challenge from the right, one which will take its rather than anyone else's votes. That changes the electoral mathematics of the entire right side of the political spectrum. The Tories were formerly guaranteed the votes of almost all on the right as they simply had nowhere else to go. This fact enabled the leadership to go marauding into centre left territory in search of additional voters with no risk of losing any on the right. That's all over now which means that the Conservative leadership will now have to take the party towards the right (including a tougher line on the way Europe/the EU conducts itself) to secure its right flank.If it doesn't......
-The result was nearly as bad for Labour whose share of the vote barely in double figures could fairly be described as derisory. It therefore poses the same questions for and about Ed Miliband. He and his party, which until the mid 1990s held Eastleigh have nothing at all to crow about. Above all it begs the question as to whether Labour is a saleable product in most of southern England.
-To both the main parties, Conservatives and Labour , the electorate said neither of the above".
-Does this mean that neither is electable under its current leader and /or policies?
-If UKIP made the same inroads into the Conservative vote nationwide in 2015 a clear Labour victory would be assured and the LibDems would be out of government. It would be ironic if their visible efforts to be poor coalition partners to the Conservatives by undermining numerous initiatives including the much needed boundary changes and reductions in the number of constituencies were to see them again in the world of political impotence and irrelevance. The lesson for them is and would be that unprincipled opportunistic disloyalty ultimately gets you nowhere, other than in former times maybe the execution block.
Both main parties now have some serious thinking to do about what the electors are saying and what they want. Not enough people are buying the products they are trying to sell. Political parties, although they haven't yet understood it, have now become businesses not religions and have to understand that outside a dictatorship or one party state, if they don't provide what people want then someone else will. In this case the new providers turn out to be the LibDems and UKIP. The Conservative and Labour parties will have to become market orientated rather then ploughing on trying for ever to force old fashioned dogma driven policies down the electors throats. Both have been given a timely opportunity to rethink what they are all about and how they do business and realise that they are not religions.
The question therefore is whether the Conservative and Labour parties can grasp the moment and reinvent themselves as voter-friendly marketable businesses offering and delivering what people want ( and that includes the tough bits) or whether they are unable to do that and want to stay firmly rooted in old dogmas and "we know you've little choice" approaches. It is these above all that the Eastleigh voters rejected yesterday. Like it or not, the customers are right and the big parties are in the brown stuff.
Away from all that what are the realities?
-The parties of the right ,- Conservatives and UKIP outpolled those of the left, LibDems and Labour.
-The UKIP vote cost the Conservatives a victory.
-If Nigel Farage had stood for UKIP he might have won the seat, thereby denying the LibDems some of their crowing and making a much bigger impact for his party,
-It was a bad result for the Conservatives and it will fuel questions about David Cameron and the style and substance of his leadership as well as about lack of overall vision, strategy and tactics.
-The Conservative party now has a direct challenge from the right, one which will take its rather than anyone else's votes. That changes the electoral mathematics of the entire right side of the political spectrum. The Tories were formerly guaranteed the votes of almost all on the right as they simply had nowhere else to go. This fact enabled the leadership to go marauding into centre left territory in search of additional voters with no risk of losing any on the right. That's all over now which means that the Conservative leadership will now have to take the party towards the right (including a tougher line on the way Europe/the EU conducts itself) to secure its right flank.If it doesn't......
-The result was nearly as bad for Labour whose share of the vote barely in double figures could fairly be described as derisory. It therefore poses the same questions for and about Ed Miliband. He and his party, which until the mid 1990s held Eastleigh have nothing at all to crow about. Above all it begs the question as to whether Labour is a saleable product in most of southern England.
-To both the main parties, Conservatives and Labour , the electorate said neither of the above".
-Does this mean that neither is electable under its current leader and /or policies?
-If UKIP made the same inroads into the Conservative vote nationwide in 2015 a clear Labour victory would be assured and the LibDems would be out of government. It would be ironic if their visible efforts to be poor coalition partners to the Conservatives by undermining numerous initiatives including the much needed boundary changes and reductions in the number of constituencies were to see them again in the world of political impotence and irrelevance. The lesson for them is and would be that unprincipled opportunistic disloyalty ultimately gets you nowhere, other than in former times maybe the execution block.
Both main parties now have some serious thinking to do about what the electors are saying and what they want. Not enough people are buying the products they are trying to sell. Political parties, although they haven't yet understood it, have now become businesses not religions and have to understand that outside a dictatorship or one party state, if they don't provide what people want then someone else will. In this case the new providers turn out to be the LibDems and UKIP. The Conservative and Labour parties will have to become market orientated rather then ploughing on trying for ever to force old fashioned dogma driven policies down the electors throats. Both have been given a timely opportunity to rethink what they are all about and how they do business and realise that they are not religions.
The question therefore is whether the Conservative and Labour parties can grasp the moment and reinvent themselves as voter-friendly marketable businesses offering and delivering what people want ( and that includes the tough bits) or whether they are unable to do that and want to stay firmly rooted in old dogmas and "we know you've little choice" approaches. It is these above all that the Eastleigh voters rejected yesterday. Like it or not, the customers are right and the big parties are in the brown stuff.
