Stinging Electoral Defeat for British Conservatives as Right-Wing Party Makes Gains

[pampango]

Love the "Stinging Electoral Defeat for British Conservatives", not so much "as Right-Wing Party Makes Gains"

Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives took a harsh pummeling on Friday after results of a by-election showed surging support for the right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party. Such deep inroads into the Conservative vote, if sustained at a general election in two years’ time, could oust the Conservatives from power and usher the Labour Party back to 10 Downing Street. Senior figures in Mr. Cameron’s party acknowledged privately that the results from Thursday’s vote in Eastleigh, a mainly suburban voting district near the coastal city of Southampton, had thrown the deeply divided Conservatives into further disarray.

The winners, with 32 percent of the vote, were the Liberal Democrats, a left-of-center party that has been in an increasingly fractious governing coalition with the Conservatives since the general election in 2010.

Observers attributed the Independence Party’s surge — its best result in a parliamentary by-election — to its relentless campaigning on two issues that have a powerful resonance among right-of-center voters: high levels of immigration and Britain’s membership in the 27-nation European Union.

Among those policies (opposed by "a powerful bloc of mainly right-wing Conservative legislators&quot are Mr. Cameron’s decision to support a same-sex marriage bill that is now moving through Parliament and to seek to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership in the European Union rather than quit it altogether, as the Independence Party and many right-wing Conservatives advocate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/02/world/europe/british-by-election-shows-new-support-for-rightist-party.html?_r=0

The UK's Conservative party is being fractured by an even-further-right party, UKIP, and the most conservative wing of its own. The Liberal Democrats actually won this election but the increasing vote totals of the UKIP (although that does weaken the Conservative party) is not good.

[BlueStreak]

1. Teabaggers with a stiff upper lip.

I like how that sounds.

[socialist_n_TN]

2. It really depends on whether the farther RW party was taking votes away.........

from the Tories or from other parties. IOW, are they just splitting the Tories or are they actually gaining ground with the general electorate? IMO, the first scenario is not really bad, whereas the second IS bad.