Labour will be disappointed with Eastleigh – but the Tories should be distraught

Eastleigh was certainly a sensational evening – but not for the Labour Party. All of the focus today is likely to be on the Tory position, but Labour’s 4th place finish shouldn’t be overlooked. In the end we barely shifted the needle from 2010 – a year that should be our absolute base level even if inhospitable areas of the country like South Coast Tory Hampshire. Back then we struggled to a squeezed 9.6%, and yesterday we received a squeezed 9.8%. It’s a rise in vote share, sure – but it’s also completely within the margin of error. Labour will have started this campaign, as they should, wanting to get close to the 20% mark, and come 3rd – perhaps even second. So 4th is a blow, sure.

That said, don’t listen to the siren voices who say that Labour’s failure in Eastleigh suggests that the party can’t win in the South – all it shows is that we’re not yet competitive in places like Eastleigh. Labour’s road to victory in 2015 will undoubtedly need to go through the South – but it will be in places like Reading, Stroud, Gloucester and Thurrock. Not Eastleigh. Perhaps never Eastleigh – especially not in a two week campaign, working with a local party that was fairly limited in numbers and activity and without huge resources from the centre. The Labour Party could have chucked another £50k at Eastleigh, but that might have meant fewer organisers in key seats by 2015. That wouldn’t have been smart long-term politics.

But if Eastleigh was a disappointment for Labour, it’s a body blow for David Cameron (and Grant Shapps). The Tories needed to win this by-election to show that they could get a majority by winning their target seats, in the same way Labour needed to win Corby. Labour romped home in Corby, and in Eastleigh the Tories slammed on the reverse gear and came third. Cameron won’t be ousted over this, but when he does leave No.10, this by-election will likely be cited as a pivotal moment.

(Grant Shapps is also going to have a rough few days. It was his election strategy that placed Eastleigh near the top of the Tory target seat list. It was his choice (as far as we can tell) to stick with Maria Hutchings as the Tory candidate. He’s going to have to carry the can for this one…)

But although the leadership will come under immense pressure from the Tory right over Eastleigh (Cameron is probably stalking Downing Street like a caged bear today), the Tory back woodsmen can’t really take the high ground either. They have always argued that the Tories should tack to the right and talk about immigration/Europe more – and have an EU referendum. Essentially they advocated a UKIP-lite strategy. But there have been few Tory candidates in recent years who are more UKIP than Maria Hutchings, and they still lost – because when the electorate were faced with UKIP-lite vs UKIP, they went for the real deal. As the Tory I was on 5live with last night said – that’s “unspinnable”.

It’s clear that UKIP (the real winners last night) deserve to be taken increasingly seriously by the other parties, not just the Tories. In the South and the North (in by-elections at least) they are now the de Facto party of protest, as the Lib Dems once were. Their surge slashed the Tory vote, but also seemed to hold down the Labour vote too. They speak to an anger with a politics and a political class that feels too distant from the lived experience of ordinary working people – and without ape-ing their policies (because Labour cannot and should not do that), we need to understand what it is that makes people angry with this government vote UKIP, when they should be voting for us.

It is no longer inconceivable that UKIP could win a by-election in the next few days. Certainly that will be their aim. And if “plague on all of your houses” continues, they might just do that.

So a sticky night on the South Coast for both Labour and the Tories, and even the beleaguered Lib Dems – whopping and cheering their win last night – know that the fundamentals of their poor national position remain the same. Only the purples will really be smiling this morning. I fear I might be writing that more often in future…