UKIP Party leader Nigel Farage is interviewed, in a week which saw the election of the first ever UKIP MP in Douglas Carswell. Nigel Farage has delivered a mini-earthquake in British politics with the former Conservative MP Douglas Carswell capturing Ukip’s first parliamentary seat and the party squeezing Labour in its north-west heartland. The Ukip leader declared early on Friday morning that he now leads the only truly national party after Carswell swept to victory in Clacton following a collapse in the Tory vote. Carswell won with 21,113 votes (59.66%) ahead of the Tory candidate Giles Watling on 8,709 votes, as the Conservative vote fell from the 53% that Carswell won as a Conservative in 2010 to 24.6%. The turnout was 51.2%. The Liberal Democrats lost their deposit for the tenth time in a byelection this parliament after Andy Graham came fifth in Clacton behind the Greens with 483 votes, securing just 1.1% of the overall share compared with the 12.9% his party won in 2010. Labour came third on 3,957 votes. Farage said his party could now reach into both Labour and Tory heartlands after Ukip squeezed Labour to come within 617 votes of capturing the formerly safe seat of Heywood and Middleton in Greater Manchester. Liz McInnes, an NHS scientist and local councillor from Rossendale in Lancashire, won the Heywood and Middleton byelection for Labour with 11,633 votes. That was well down on the 18,499 votes the late Jim Dobbin won at the 2010 general election although the overall percentage of the Labour vote increased slightly from 40.1% to 40.9%. The Ukip candidate John Bickley achieved one of his party’s most successful byelection results when he came second on 11,016 votes, a dramatic improvement on the 1,215 won by Ukip when it came fifth in 2010. Bickley saw the Ukip percentage shoot up from 2.6% in 2010 to 38.7%. The turnout was 36.02%. As he arrived at the count on the other side of England in Clacton, Farage said: “We are the most national of all political parties. We are the only party that can get big vote shares in Tory heartlands and in Labour heartlands. No other party crosses those boundaries – those old divides of left and right and the divides of class – and we cross all of those things.” Farage said the Westminster class would not be able to recover. “You’re out of touch guys,” he said when asked what message his party’s success sends to Westminster. “It is too late,” he said when asked what the other parties should do. “We have a career political class of college kids who have never had jobs in their lives with absolutely no connection to ordinary people and how they are struggling. We need new people. We need change, real change.” Ed Miliband faced immediate pressure after the result in Heywood and Middleton. John Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw, tweeted: “If Ed Miliband does not broaden the Labour coalition to better include working class opinion then we cannot win a majority government.”

• published: 13 Oct 2014
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