Will Britain be "lost"?

The big political story in Britain in the past few days was the result of the "byelection" in Eastleigh, a special election in one district to fill a vacant seat in the House of Commons. The Liberal Democratic candidate won, which was predicted, since the Liberal Democrats had held the seat before it was vacated (by a member who resigned in a scandal). But the "headline news" was the fact that the UK Independence Party or UKIP, a tiny party whose agenda is based on hostility to the EU, came in second, ahead of both the Conservatives and Labour (the two largest parties nationally).

That startling result is aggravating a crisis that was that was already developing within the ruling Conservative Party, which cannot afford to lose conservative voters to the more right-wing UKIP. Prime Minister Cameron is now under pressure to find a response to UKIP that will prevent this. One move the Tories promptly made is to promise to repeal the Human Rights Act if they win the next general election. That Act is one of the requirements that EU membership imposed on the UK.

Commentator Andrew Rawnsley points out that in desperation, "In the last gasps of the campaign, the Conservatives resorted to putting out their leaflets in Ukip colours." But attempts like this to imitate UKIP aren't working:: "The result of apeing Ukip while attacking their more centrist coalition partners? The Tories were beaten by both of them. ...Nigel Farage's outfit now attracts the plague-on-all-your houses, two-fingers-to-the-lot-of-you vote that used to go to the Lib Dems before they became a party of government." (Nigel Farage is the leader of UKIP. "Two fingers" is a rude hand gesture in the UK.)

How big is this event? It's "a crisis of capitalism and of democracy, as acute in Britain as anywhere else in Europe," according to another editorial in the Guarian newspaper. The Guardian links UKIP's victory to the surprising success of the "anti-politics Five Star Movement" in the Italian elections. European voters may be  rejecting mainstream political parties in general, in a way that could be very dangerous: "The time has come for the best to engage with the political system. If that fails, then Britain really will be lost." Conservatives normally don't agree with the Guardian, but the paper's views are echoed in this case by a former Conservative Pary vice-chairman, who says, "This is not a crisis for a government: it is a crisis of governance. Politicians talk about fixing things like immigration, like over-regulation, like high taxation, but they seem powerless to deal with it."