And the winner is...?

So what are we to make of last week's by-election?  Good for the LibDems, brilliant for UKIP, disastrous for the Tories and average for Labour seems to be the perceived wisdom.  But is it that simple?  Firstly, this was a by-election, and by-elections are traditionally used by the electorate primarily to punish the government of the day, and for all this is a coalition, it is widely seen as a Tory government.  Secondly, this is a LibDem stronghold - they run the local council and are generally well thought of. Whatever their situation nationally, it was always unlikely that their vote here would collapse. Thirdly, Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader has said, quite correctly, that their success was in great part down to the fact that they were prepared to talk about issues that the other parties wanted to avoid.  But it is of course easy to talk about things when you know there is no reasonable prospect of you having to do anything about them in the foreseeable future.  And finally Labour knew from day one that they had no chance, and so really didn't put much effort onto it.  So in a way, this was just one of a relatively small number of foreseeable outcomes, and I don't think anyone should draw any major conclusions from it.