United Kingdom Independence Party(UKIP) wins crucial by-election in Rochester and Strood in southern England

 Ukip party leader Nigel Farage (left) with Mark Reckless, former Conservative Party MP for Rochester and Strood who won the consituency seat

The victory of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) candidate, the former Conservative Member of Parliament Mark Reckless in the election for the Rochester and Strood parliamentary seat is being widely seen as marking a shift in traditional British politics in the run-up to the May 2015 general elections.

UKIP,the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic political party has eaten into the base of not just the Conservative party –- which has suffered the biggest loss in vote share — but the Labour and Liberal Democratic parties as well.

UKIP, won a parliamentary by-election in Rochester and Strood in southern England, in a contest prompted by the defection of a lawmaker, Mark Reckless, from the Conservatives.

 Reckless polled 16,867 votes, which accounts for a little over 42 per cent of the total vote. This is a lead of almost 3000 votes over Kelly Tolhurst from the Conservative Party, who came second with 13,947 votes and a 34.8 per cent vote share. The Conservative Party’s support base has fallen by 14.4 percentage points from the last elections.

The Labour Party candidate Naushabah Khan polled 6,713 votes or 16.8 per cent of the total share, which marks a fall of 11.7 percentage points from its last performance in the same constituency. The Liberal Democratic candidate performed the worst of the three mainstream parties, coming fifth with 349 votes – or 0.9 percent of the total vote.

For the UKIP leader Nigel Farage, his party’s performance reflects much more than voter disillusionment with the three mainstream parties. It represents, in his view, a positive vote for its policies.

“All bets are off for the general election,” he said after the results were announced. “If you vote UKIP, you get UKIP,” he said, adding, “the people out there who vote UKIP intend to stay with UKIP.”

Note
With this victory UKIP won its second seat in the British Parliament after another former Conservative, Douglas Carswell, became Ukip’s first elected member of Parliament in Clacton-on-Sea after he, too, quit the Conservatives