LONDON — Once regarded as a refuge for political mavericks, the party that wants Britain to quit the European Union made strong gains in three by-elections held this week, adding still more pressure on the Conservative prime minister, David Cameron, to take a tough line on Europe.
The UK Independence Party came in second in Middlesbrough and Rotherham, and finished third in Croydon North, in the elections on Thursday when voters chose replacements for two lawmakers from the opposition center-left Labour Party who died, and one who quit Parliament.
Labour held on to all three seats and increased its share of the vote. But by beating the Conservatives in two of the three seats, UKIP, which campaigns against the E.U. and for tougher immigration controls, highlighted a potential threat to Mr. Cameron from the right.
By-elections are often used by voters to express anger at unpopular governments and, in the past, the small, centrist, Liberal Democrats have usually prospered in them. But the Liberal Democrats are part of the coalition government and languish in the opinion polls, so analysts believe that UKIP is now scooping up protest votes.
“If you are a disgruntled Conservative, and you are not willing to go as far as voting for Labour, what are you going to do?” said John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, “UKIP are the obvious place to go if you are someone who wants to send a message to the Conservatives.”
Although it has 12 lawmakers in the European Parliament, elected on a proportional system which helps smaller parties, UKIP has no members of the British Parliament, which uses a first-past-the-post system.
In 2006 Mr. Cameron dismissed the party as mostly a bunch of “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists” but UKIP’s ability to win over his disgruntled supporters is proving an increasing headache.
Under Britain’s electoral system, the loss of several thousand votes in some districts to UKIP could be enough to deprive the Conservatives of key seats, and possibly of victory, at the next election.
So alarmed are some Conservatives that one recently proposed an electoral pact with UKIP under which the two parties would not contest the same seats. That met with a cool response from the Conservative leadership; Mr. Cameron’s answer to the UKIP challenge has been to toughen his line on the E.U.
He wants to negotiate to loosen British ties to the 27-nation bloc, focusing them more around its single economic market, and to seek approval from the public for the outcome of those talks, possibly in a referendum.
Professor Curtice said that those who had switched from the Conservatives to UKIP were not motivated only by the party’s tough stance on Europe and immigration — but by general disenchantment with the government. Economic growth is stagnant in Britain which is undergoing its largest public spending cuts in recent memory.
“The Tories are making a mistake if they assume that offering a referendum on Europe will be enough to win those votes back,” he said. He added that the Liberal Democrats’ performance in Rotherham, where they came eighth, was “the worst post-war Liberal performance in a by-election.”
The by-elections in Middlesbrough and Croydon North were caused by the deaths of Labour’s Stuart Bell and Malcolm Wicks respectively, while Denis MacShane of Labour resigned his Rotherham seat after a highly critical report about his parliamentary expenses.
Based on these results, UKIP could realistically hope to finish first among the British parties contesting the next elections to the European Parliament in 2014, though, because their vote is spread thinly across Britain, they will still struggle to win seats in the next British Parliamentary elections, due in 2015.
Nevertheless its leader, Nigel Farage, claimed that UKIP had now supplanted the Liberal Democrats as Britain’s third largest political force.“You can call it a protest vote,” he said Friday, “but I have to say there’s a lot of protest about.”
Anti-Europe Party Makes Gains in British By-Elections http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif
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