For the second time in less than two months, the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) has won a by-election to the British House of Commons.
And for the second time in as many months, British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party are seeking answers to try and turn the tide against the anti-European Union upstart.
What is alarming is that with less than six months to go before the May 7 general elections, Ukip seems to have tapped into a groundswell of anti-immigrant consciousness in the British political psyche.
And the results of the by-elections are showing that the political landscape of traditional UK politics will be radically redrawn if those victories are replicated in the May polls.
Ukip’s margin of victory over the Conservative candidate was by nearly 9 percentage points — and this after Cameron and his party threw everything at it by way of political and logistical support to stop Ukip.
They failed — and that is an embarrassing result for Cameron — and they may embolden opponents within the Tory ranks to consider ousting the prime minister sooner rather than waiting until for the May 7 contest.
The reality is that Nigel Farage’s party is on course to hold the balance of power in six months’ time in the new parliament. The Rochester seat won on Thursday had been ranked as 271st on Ukip’s list of winnable seats.
The fact that it was a former Conservative MP, Mark Reckless, who quit and joined Ukip to force the by-election, added insult to Cameron’s injury.
After a dismal campaign in the Scottish Independence referendum campaign that saw Cameron hastily cobble together an offer of new and still unspecified powers to Scotland, the British premier has had the air of a wounded leader.
The results from Thursday night will do nothing to dispel his rivals, but it is not as if Labour, the main opposition party, is in any position to capitalise either. Its leader, Ed Milliband, is under fire from vocal party critics and he is on shaky ground as well.
