UKIP second in Eastleigh...anyone from Eastleigh care to comment?

Do you know Eastleigh at all? There is no Labour infrastructure there. Hardly any membership let alone activists. Labour has only ever got out its core vote there.

There are 19 wards in the borough of Eastleigh represented by 44 councillors.
40 are Lib Dems, 4 are Tory.

Affluent areas like Eastleigh are barely affected by national issues. The "protest vote" here was about gay marriage and Eastern European migrants - and UKIP was the obvious choice.

The only surprise was that the Lib Dems lost quite so many votes to them.

Can I just point out that there is a frequent link between people would want PR and and those who complain about the Coalition and its policies because no one voted for them or they didn't vote for them.

Hello Liberal Democrats who feel betrayed by the abandoning of student tuition fees for example.

As for Labour. Seats in this country where the Lib Dems have ever been a contender either go down the lines of Lib Dem v Conservative with Labour not even on the same race track OR Lib Dem v Labour with the Conservatives not on the same race track. So much so that this was part of strategic policy in the last election with literature tailored to the area to encourage voters to 'Keep Out' the main opposition stating that the weaker party 'have no chance' in more or less that exact phrasing. They calculated that people were more likely to vote tactically for the Lib Dems than would vote positively for the Lib Dems during a General Election where it was so split and much fear about who would get in.

It would be something they had researched so, this decision just shows how much voting is motivated it about 'keeping out' and how difficult it is to massively change voting patterns in an area. Hence if you have complete disillusionment with the entire system like their currently is, then it doesn't surprise me that UKIP have benefitted rather than any of the other parties. Its about 'keeping out' rather than necessarily a positive vote for them and their policies.

Can I just point out that Labour won 10% of the votes, which is the same result for them as in 2010.

It's never been a Labour seat, and is never likely to be. Everyone knows that.

Meanwhile, the Tories and Lib Dems BOTH lost 14% of their votes to UKIP.

As Farage quipped - "If only the Tories hadn't split our vote..."

I work in recruitment and the salaries paid when I started in the 90's are the same now - £7 ph was the average basic hourly rate then too - that's 20 years ago.

It's wrong that the Government are squeezing companies like yours to the bone in order to carry out your job - And this is Capitalism yes? This is how it's meant to work - keep the workforce under control by paying them just enough to survive?

It stinks doesn't it? I'm not blaming you - I see how the system is controlling you too. It's now wonder no-one votes what is the point?

Anyway, I too am a slave to Capitalism and must get off to work now!

The minimum wage was brought in using practically the same argument as being used for the living wage. If we did implement the 'living wage', in a few years time we'll be talking about a 'real living wage'.

You cannot raise wages by the stroke of a legislative pen unless the economy can support it. Right now our economy is hardly strong and it would be a disaster.

I think most people see the profits which the likes of Tesco and Amazon make and think all companies are raking it in. The reality is most employees are employed by small/medium businesses, most of which are scraping by. Even many large companies are zombies and only continue trading because banks are too afraid to call in the debts.

at the moment the Living Wage is a voluntary concept not actually a statuatory right like the Minimum Wage

The Living Wage (7.45ph for those out of london) is a fixed amount approx £1.50 an hour above Minimum Wage.

We pay just above minimum wage (7 ph - look at your local temp agency - most part time jobs are lower than this) to a proportion of unskilled manual factory employees. They've worked for us for years and have good working conditions, perks and long holidays. Our business relies heavily on government contracts, all of which have been decimated over the last 2 years due to cutbacks. We are just about surviving. If we have to add a huge proportion more to our wage bill it will finish us and everyone will lose their jobs.

naranji I find your statement fascinating and I have a question I hope you don't mind?

But how can you justify employing someone and not pay them a living wage? Since when did an employer think it was OK to have someone work for them whom they cannot pay a decent salary to? Be interested in your input.

I run my own manufacturing business and the living wage would force us to close. Shame as I have always been a Labour voter traditionally. They seem to have absolutely no clue.

'i agree. He sounded like someone living in cloud cuckoo land'

Naranji, it is very sad because there are millions of Labour voters who are desperate to kick the Coalition out, but when I saw that, I knew that they don't stand a chance of kicking the Coalition out even though it is not doing very well at all.

Cruddas had a worker with him in a cafe, and the worker said that taxes were too high. It seemed that Cruddas didn't want to hear that, because that is what the Coalition and their voters believe. Instead he started on about the "living wage", which he and the worker knows will never be adopted by private industry without legislation. It will probably only be in the state sector and workers in the private sector will have to pay for it.

Labour's thinking is trapped in their box, they can't break from their dogma and that is why the public won't see them as the answer.

i agree. He sounded like someone living in cloud cuckoo land. Labour are so unbelievably weak and they've lost my vote because they no longer have any intellectual big hitters and spend their entire time bleating on about how bad the coalition are. Also as a rural dweller I cant STAND Ed Miliband and his ridiculous london centric policies.

'Labour victory in 2015'

I used to think that because the Coalition is not doing a very good job, but I no longer think Labour will win. This Eastleigh result shows that many ordinary people do still not see them as a viable alternative even in these terrible economic times. But what really convinced me that Labour will not win is when I saw Jon Cruddas, their policy chief, on Newsnight recently.

He is a well-intentioned guy and Labour have some good people who say some good things, but when I saw his strategy, I knew that it was set up to fail. He said something like all of teh following: that "food banks are here to stay" and we need to find ways to work with them etc. He said he favours the Big Society, just that the Tories aren't doing it right. He saw putting public money into community organisations such as gyms as a good way of finding employment for people rather than DWP offices, because the community knew more about where jobs and work was than the staff in DWP offices.

I thought it was something out of Monty Python, but it was Labour strategy and their policy chief.

noone knows who to vote for. UKIP are the only party that have a very simple message that people can grasp (whether they agree or not is another matter). Labour have come out of this the absolute worst IMO. To not be able to gain ground from this awful coalition government just shows how in trouble they are. Mainly down to a terrible leader IMO.

Am not an Eastleigh resident but am intrigued to know what the Beer,Baccy and crumpet party policies were??

They came 7th with 23 votes beating amongst others the Elvis loves pets party!

A party represented by Neil Hamilton is not a credible alternative to anything.

It's a byelection - it means just a smidge more than nothing.

Labour victory in 2015. In the meantime: Dave Cameron out & new leader in; Nick Clegg out & new leader in. Economy fails to grow & more people lose their jobs. Cameron & Osborne continue to waste precious time defending their banker mates bonuses whilst regular people get no (or below inflation) pay rise.

Are the people of Eastleigh racist? Only they know.

I would have expected Labour to do better; it's a bad indicator on their ability to present a credible alternative agenda.

There is nothing racist about voting UKIP.

We live not that far from Eastleigh and the UKIP vote is gaining ground here, and what they are saying resonates with people.

A lot of Tory voters are worried about another possible Coalition, which would be a disaster.

UKIP is not a racist party. It is however anti-immigration. But that doesn't make them racist.

I'm from an ethnic minority and I agree with quite a few of their policies. Where we differ is I think leaving the EU would be a long term disaster for the UK.

Anyway, the UKIP vote has really thrown a big spanner in the works mainly for the Tories.

UKIP voters seem to be disaffected Tory voters so they are drawing votes away from the Tories. Those who hate the Tories will probably think this is a good thing except UKIP seem to be a more right wing version of the Tories so I can't see that being particularly good. It will force the Tories to be even more anti-Europe and even more right wing to try to win back their core voters.

For Labour it is also v. interesting that they've been beaten into fourth place. OK Eastleigh isn't a Labour stronghold but given the austerity over the last few years, the debacle of student loans and the fact that mid-term govt's tend to get punished. Well you'd think Labour would have done better than fourth place. It seems that when push comes to shove voters don't think Labour have anything to offer them and would rather vote for the incumbents or UKIP.

It would seem to me that the only way for all the parties to proceed now is to cool towards Europe. UKIP is pretty much a two policy party. Immigration is bad. Europe is bad.

Personally I would argue that uncontrolled immigration is bad and that on Europe, the good outweighs the bad.