The Guardian view on the Newark byelection: mutiny against insurgents

The Guardian view on the Newark byelection: mutiny against insurgents

The tactical voting against the byelection challenger gives us a less melodramatic understanding of what Ukip represents

Editorial

The Guardian, Friday 6 June 2014 / http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/06/editorial-newark-byelection-mutiny-against-insurgents

Last month, Ukip claimed to have caused a political earthquake; this month, the best it could manage was a loud political raspberry.

The Newark byelection – which Robert Jenrick held comfortably for the Conservatives in the early hours of yesterday morning – is certainly not the end of the party; it is not even the beginning of the end. After all, Roger Helmer, the Ukip candidate, did leap from a distant fourth in the 2010 general election to a strong second place in Thursday's contest, taking 26% of the vote behind Mr Jenrick's 45%.

But this week's result draws some boundaries around the Ukip phenomenon that ought to lead to a more realistic and a less melodramatic understanding of what the party represents, as well as of how it can be challenged.

Two particular lessons suggest themselves. The first is the erratic quality of Ukip's performance. A year ago, in the Nottinghamshire county council elections, Ukip candidates in Newark scored 15% and 18% respectively. Two weeks ago, amid huge publicity, Ukip topped the poll in the European elections in the Newark area polling 32% of the votes. This week, with many more people voting, they came second with 26%.

One lesson from this is that Ukip does better in elections that do not matter so much to the voters. Newark confirms that, when all is said and done, Ukip is more a party of protest than a party that aspires to govern. Nigel Farage confirmed this by not putting himself forward as candidate and then by jetting off to Malta on the eve of the poll.

A second lesson underscores one important aspect of this. In the past, parliamentary byelections have often provided an opportunity for voters to punish incumbent parties by tactical voting in favour of the strongest challenger. The Liberal Democrats used to win byelections this way. Now other parties do it; it happened most recently for Respect in Bradford West in March 2012, for example. In Newark, it is clear that the reverse took place. In this byelection there was tactical voting against the strong challenger, Ukip, and in favour of the strongest established party, the Tories.

Ukip has often proved in the past that it can draw votes from all the established parties. It did that again in Newark. What is new is that some of these established party voters are prepared to vote tactically against Ukip, too, even if that means voting Tory. Newark was a good result for the Tories because they held a seat they could have lost, and held it well. Yet their share of the vote went down while Ukip's rose sharply, a pattern that could spell doom in 2015 if widely reproduced. Perversely, it could be Labour, in spite of its own loss of vote share, that could be the ultimate winner.