Newark By-election

The United Kingdom Independence Party, UKIP, came second with 26 per cent.

Both the Conservatives and UKIP can take comfort from the result, but neither achieved what they really hoped for.

The Conservative majority was halved and while UKIP increased its share of the vote by twenty per cent it did not do as well as it did in last month's EU elections.

Newark is prime UKIP territory because the party successfully portrays itself as being concerned with the needs of ordinary people.

It says it rejects the current political orthodoxy of the main parties.

And Newark Town has plenty to feel dissatisfied about.

The town has a high unemployment rate, and the two main employers use many low-paid, short-term contract workers from eastern Europe, mainly Poland. Local people are resentful.

Housing is in short supply, and many of the foreign workers share accommodation, thereby pushing rents up.

On the less well-off housing estates, people have complained that they are so poor they have to choose between eating or heating.

The emergency department at the local hospital has closed through lack of money.

Perhaps the question is how did the Conservatives manage to win ?

It is because they were able to call on their core of rural voters, who are both politically and socially conservative, and generally more affluent than the town folk.

The scare stories about mass immigration and the power of the EU to determine what happens in Britain do concern them, but for now they have decided to stick with what they know - the Conservative Party.