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Fear amongst the main parties.

Key messages from that which I'm not seeing talked about.

There were 7,785 less votes cast than in the last general election. Yet UKIP polled only 1,754 votes less than the Tories in this election. A reduction of 62% for the Tories in their actual vote count. It sounds much better in the loss of their % of the vote, but in actual votes, disastrous.

The labour vote was reduced by more than 63%

The Lib Dems were decimated. they had virtually 13% of the vote in 2010. Divide that by 10, they got 1.3% of the vote in this election and finished 5th.

I'm not sure the BNP fielded a candidate. So 2,000 votes went somewhere. Probably UKIP.

The greens only increased their vote by 130 or so. The 5,000 Lib Dem votes missing probably just stayed home.

Cameron it's time to be really worried. If UKIP had just pipped them at the post, like the Hayward and Middleton by election, then he could hold his head up and state his case. Labour lost only 0.1% of the vote there, unlike Clacton. But, again, they nearly lost the seat.

It is an interesting time in UK politics. If the Lib Dem voters had come out for Labour in Hayward and Middleton , then they would have romped home. But it looks like they don't like anyone any more, let alone their own party. Again the Lib Dem vote dropped almost an order of magnitude. Just 400 less voters and it would be another "divide by 10" in their support. More interestingly the UKIP fought this seat in 2010 and gained 1,215 votes. Almost the same as the 1,457 that the Lib Dems got this time.

OK the vote was down by 17,653 votes. However, what is most interesting, is that that 17,653 votes is very, very close to the difference in votes cast for Labour and Lib Dems in 2010 and 2015. The difference is 15,883 less.

None of the analysis I have read, so far, has talked about this.

What is more interesting is that if Cameron had not had his head stuffed firmly up his jacksie, he could have encouraged the Conservative voters to vote UKIP and they would have won the seat comfortably with a majority of nearly 3,000. That would have shaken Labour to the core and fired up the UKIP voters. As it was, it looks like UKIP took some 9,000 of them.

Opportunities lost. When will Cameron wake up and realise that he has the opportunity in his hand to totally destroy Labour as a force in the next election. Purely by getting his voters to vote tactically in Labour held seats. Something UKIP could do for him in his marginals. Hanan was absolutely right.

This next election could be a tragedy if Cameron does not climb down and climb down fast. He needs to stop calling UKIP racists and he needs to use his party to push Conservative votes to UKIP in key Labour seats and then not field a candidate.

Political strategy. What I see today is political petulance. This time it won't work. They are going to face either 4 or 5 credible parties at the next General election. Something they've never faced before. Even without PR it needs to force some horse trading.

You have got it in one Suff.

Vacancy for an advisor do you think Suff? You could be well in there.

History has been made in Clacton.

its started ukip
will continue to win votes

I've seen it said this morning that Labour's near-squeak in Hayward and Middleton was more than partially caused by the party's total failure to address the issues raised on the doorstep. Time and again, the people said their main concern was immigration; the Labour candidate and activists merely wanted to preach about saving the NHS .....

It points to the fact that Labour are going to have to seriously re-address their focus before next May.

I guess there will be a lot of meetings and think-tanks in the near future!

Cameron is caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue sea.

In places like Leeds he could pull the Tories out of the three or four seats he can never hope to win, but, and it is a big BUT, he and his party have painted UKIP as racists, a sort of BNP Lite, ho-hum.

He would be slaughtered by the media and his political opponents in the other parties, and even by some in his own party, if he was seen to be doing a deal with the "racists" of UKIP. He is a little fortunate, however, in that it looks as though UKIP can do damage to Labour without his help.

Workingman wrote:Cameron is caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue sea.

In places like Leeds he could pull the Tories out of the three or four seats he can never hope to win, but, and it is a big BUT, he and his party have painted UKIP as racists, a sort of BNP Lite, ho-hum.

He would be slaughtered by the media and his political opponents in the other parties, and even by some in his own party, if he was seen to be doing a deal with the "racists" of UKIP. He is a little fortunate, however, in that it looks as though UKIP can do damage to Labour without his help.

Exactly. If Cameron were to combine the Tory vote with the Ukip vote in Labour seats, he could deny Labour many seats. But he won't. First and foremost it would be a deep personal humiliation for him. Second he would be murdered by the media, as WM says; but what the Tories don't realise is that they are routinely slaughtered by the media anyhow, so what's the difference?

Miliband makes me smile. He said today, in typical politician-speak "We realise that certain communities who traditionally voted for us aren't any longer" or some such. Yes. That would be the white working class, who Labour have betrayed, patronised and taken for granted foe decades. The people who the Labour party was set up to defend.

The mainstream parties won't "listen" to the electorate. They won't "get it". Because over the last few decades a separate "managerial" political class has arisen. They don't even talk English, they talk politician. We are supposed to be a representative democracy - we aren't.

We are saddled with a thoroughly rotten political class and it is time they were got rid of.

I agree with every aspect of your analysis, Crommers - apart from the bit that Cameron won't look for an electoral pact!

WM correctly says Cameron is caught between a rock and a hard place .... which way he "jumps" may will ultimately depend on how desperate he is to cling on to power for another 5 years. If a Conservative / Ukip pact looks the most expedient method of achieving that end .... well, I wouldn't want to put money on it not happening!

It'll also be interesting to see - if Ukip take Rochester - whether any more Tory MPs jump ship.

There was a bit on the BBC earlier trying to paint Farage as some sort monster way out on the far right because he said that he wanterd to:

"control the quantity and quality of people who come... people who do not have HIV" - "people with tuberculosis too". "We want people to come who have got trades and skills, but we don't want people who have got criminal records - and we can't afford people with life-threatening diseases," he said "Ban sufferers of life-threatening illness from entering UK" and "I do not think people with life-threatening diseases should be treated by our National Health Service and that is an absolute essential condition for working out a proper immigration policy."

Campaigners were said to have condemned the UKIP leader's comments.

Did they now? And whose campaigners might they be? Not a large portion of the population that's for sure.