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LONDON.
Britain’s ruling coalition members, the Liberal Democrats suffered a punishing defeat in a by-election in northern England that they said was the price they had to pay for the government’s tough economic policies.
The party had not been expected to defeat the incumbent centre-left Labour party in the former mining town of Barnsley, but the scale of the defeat underlined the party’s slump since joining the Conservative-led government last May. The Lib Dems came a humiliating sixth in Thursday’s vote after polling second in the general election in May. Labour won comfortably despite their former MP being jailed for fiddling his expenses.
The result reinforced predictions the Lib Dems will suffer heavy losses in local elections in May, and failure to win a referendum on changes to the voting system the same day will increase disaffection with leader Nick Clegg. Some analysts argued that disaffected Lib Dem members may call for the party to leave the coalition ahead of the 2015 parliamentary election to give it space for electoral recovery if things do not improve. However, analysts said the Lib Dems were unlikely to leave the coalition.
“I think in one sense it (the election result) actually reinforces the need for the Liberal Democrats to hang in there, because any early election would clearly be to their disadvantage. If they can survive this year, they can probably survive the five years,” Wyn Grant, politics professor at Warwick University, told Reuters.
Stephen Fisher of Oxford University said the Lib Dems may look “fickle” if it pulled out because it has argued for fixed-term parliaments.
“It might jeopardise its credibility in any future coalition arrangement,” he told Reuters.
The winning Labour candidate Dan Jarvis, a former soldier who spent 15 years in the parachute regiment, told the government: “Your reckless policies, your broken promises and your unfair cuts are letting your country down.”
The main opposition party argues that cutting too far, too fast will plunge the economy back into recession. Former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown said it was “not unusual for parties to take a hammering” when in government, but urged the coalition to stick with its public spending cuts to rein in a record budget deficit.
“We have got to have a discipline and a toughness to stand there and do what needs to be done and take the flak for that while this country gets through the most difficult economic crisis it has faced for 40 or 50 years,” he told BBC Radio. – Reuters.