Labour had been loosing voting share in this district for decades though. With UKIP voters going to the Tories, it was almost inevitable.
This is a description, not an explanation
This seat has been consistently Labour since its inception, this is the first time it has ever been anything but - why it hemorrhaged its voters is the far more important line of inquiry than whether it hemorrhaged its voters to begin with, because as we can see, it has.
Which makes for a further challenge: now that Brexit is a thing, the Tories are well positioned to grab UKIP's voters (at least until UKIP rebrand itself as a proper far-right party). In a FPTP system like Britain's, that's terrible news for Labour.
It's far more important for the Tories that UKIP won't be siphoning off their votes than the other way around, moreover I am not sure UKIP will survive to see the next GE in any meaningful form without a new are based Nige to propel the party forwards. It may be for the best that UKIP dies and is replaced by a NewKIP that has a new unifying factor beyond leaving the EU, but for Labour by far the most significant thing eating it apart is the infighting. The neolib core divorced the party from its working class roots, leading the working class to abandon the party in favour of anything else. Then Corbyn comes along and divorces the party from neolibs. After all is said and done, who's left? Student socialists. Not a very broad appeal there
*EDIT
Only to the superficial does Labour losing a by-election whilst in opposition, in a seat it has not lost in 80 years, appear to be a disaster. In fact, this was the day that Corbyn and his bold new grassroots movement set themselves inexorably on the path to greatness, with such courage and ingenuity in the face of such a setback.
When the Labour leader was asked this morning, hours after losing a seat his party has held for 80 years, whether he “ever wondered whether the problem might be me,” his response was instructive. Lesser men might have reached for the simple answer, “yes”, but Corbyn is courageous enough to hold out and search for the deeper, truer lessons. He gave an equally simple reply: “no.”
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