LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives took a harsh pummeling on Friday with a by-election result that showed surging support for the United Kingdom Independence Party, a right-wing group whose deep inroads into the Conservative vote, if sustained at a general election in two years’ time, could oust the Conservative government and usher the Labour Party back into 10 Downing Street.
Midterm by-elections in Britain have been notoriously quirky for decades, providing an opportunity for protest voting that have often been poor predictors of general election outcomes.
And that was the line taken by Mr. Cameron as senior figures in his party were acknowledging privately that the result from Thursday’s vote in Eastleigh, a mainly suburban constituency near the coastal city of Southampton, had thrown the deeply divided Conservatives into further disarray.
“This is a by-election. It’s midterm. It’s a protest. That’s what happens in by-elections,” Mr. Cameron said after the Eastleigh results showed the independence party, known as UKIP, taking 28 percent of the vote, pushing the Conservatives, with 25 percent, into third place in a contest for a seat that they hoped they could win. The winners 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.
Commentators attributed the UKIP surge — their best result in a contest for a parliamentary seat — to the party’s 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.
European directives on a wide range of social, economic and judicial issues have been a persistent source of discontent among British voters generally and a cause of long-standing strife among Conservatives.
Mr. Cameron, whose leadership has been widely questioned among a powerful bloc of mainly right-wing Conservative legislators, said he would not be changing the policies that have stirred discontent against him and suggestions that the party should seek a new leader before the 2015 election.
Among policies that have alienated many traditionalists in the party – and boosted UKIP support – have been 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 the European bloc altogether, as the UKIP and many right-wing Conservatives advocate.
Some of his critics say that in seeking to placate his Liberal Democrat partners and hold the coalition together by adopting policies that are taken from the Liberal Democrat playbook, notably on same-sex marriage, Mr. Cameron has abandoned core Conservative beliefs.
“It’s disappointing for Conservatives,” Mr. Cameron said, referring to the Eastleigh vote. “But we will remain true to our principles, true to our course in a way that can bring back” the sort of Conservative voters who defected to UKIP in Eastleigh.
One of the most powerful Conservatives in the Cameron cabinet, Education Minister Michaelove, compared Mr. Cameron’s mood to that of Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative prime minister in the 1980s, who met an incipient revolt among Conservative backbenchers – then composed of centrists who rejected some of her policies – by saying, “The lady’s not or turning.”
“There were times when Margaret Thatcher was challenged by by-election results in the 1980s, but she stuck to her course,” Mr. Gove said.
I n recent months, the general election expected in 2015 has increasingly become a magnetizing force in British politics, with all parties watching opinion polls with a view to gaining advantage in what is expected to be a tight contest. The Conservatives have been running up to 12 percentage points behind Labour in recent national opinion polls, a gap that has not been insuperable for some governing parties in the past.
But their uphill battle to retain the power they won in 2010, after 13 years in opposition, could founder if the UKIP surge continues and turns the election into a four-cornered battle, with UKIP, hitherto seen as a mainly marginal protest group, contending as a mainstream force alongside the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. While it drew support from all three major parties in the Eastleigh vote, early analyses of the voting suggested that it inflicted most damage on the Conservatives.
Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, described the by-election result as a watershed moment for the party, particularly as it came in a southern, heavily middle-class constituency that has not seen the influx of immigrants that has helped boost the UKIP vote in other recent electoral contests, particularly in rundown industrial centers where competition for jobs and housing have contributed to making immigration a contentious issue. In Britain’s last round of by-elections, in November, UKIP came second to Labour in the northern city of Rotherham, with 22 percent of the vote.
The Eastleigh result took on a particularly ominous cast for the Conservatives — the party has never won a general election outright without winning Eastleigh since the constituency was established in 1955. Among UKIP officials, the result was seen as a bellwether. “We have really connected with voters in this constituency,” Mr. Farage told the BBC after the Eastleigh vote. “And that is because we are talking about issues that other parties would like to brush under the carpet.”
British By-Election Shows New Support for Rightist Party
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British By-Election Shows New Support for Rightist Party
