Second place for UKIP in Barnsley!

Being a member of a "minority" party isn't easy at times.  You look with envy at how easy it is for the LibLabCon to win elections with frankly very little effort, the way they have thousands of people who would literally vote for a chimp if it wore the right colour rosette.

For today, at least, I'm going to have to ask some other people to remind me what that's like because UKIP's Jane Collins came SECOND in yesterday's Barnsley by-election.

No matter what I write here, it won't convey the importance of this result or reflect the unbelievable amount of effort Jane and her fellow UKIP activists put in in Barnsley over the last few weeks to secure UKIP's biggest ever election success.  After almost a decade of blogging, it's not very often I find myself stuck for words.

Not going to be on Nick
Clegg's Christmas card list

The results are:

Labour	14,724	60.8%
UKIP	2,953	12.2%
Conservative	1,999	8.3%
BNP	1,463	6.0%%
Independent (Tony Devoy)	1,266	5.2%
Lib Dem	1,012	4.2%
Eng Dem	544	2.2%
Monster Raving Loony Party	198	0.8%
Independent (Michael Val Davies)	60	0.2%

In the comments of this post on Bloggers4UKIP last week, the CEO of the polling company, Survation, suggested that the Lib Dems could conceivably come fifth with a UKIP third and fourth.  As it happens the Lib Dems came sixth and UKIP second but kudos to Survation, they were the only polling company to come close to predicting the result.

I'm so pleased with this result I think I'll buy cakes for the office to celebrate.  I think I'll get a special one for the token Lib Dem voter on the team.