The expensive by-election pushed the Labour party to mobilize its members with a large door knocking campaign while the result indicates that the voters were interested in more than just Brexit, and the Brexit party’s narrow agenda was not enough to win over the electorate.
Sputnik has discussed the issue with Dr Simon Usherwood, Senior Lecturer Department of Politics, University of Surrey.
Sputnik: Does this failure to capture a seat in the Peterborough by-election mean that the Brexit Party's win at the European elections was a fluke?
Simon Usherwood: Not ready a fluke. But I think a product of particular circumstances. We know that European elections are always times when protests parties, opposition parties do relatively well.
And it's clear there's a lot of frustration in the in the general public about Brexit and the Brexit party offered a very clear policy on that.
And I think that's one of the factors that made it harder for them to win.
Sputnik: You mentioned there the range of issues, the Brexit party hasn't come forward with a manifesto yet, do you think that would hurt their chances?
Simon Usherwood: It's a double edged sword, Nigel Farage says that they have other policies, but then doesn't want to set them out in a manifesto.
He was talking this morning about manifestos being essentially, a set of promises-lies that politicians tell people.
So they want to be difference but if they do things differently on that front, so then clearly, people's uncertainties are raised.
As much as Brexit is the dominant political issue is not the only thing people worry about.
There are clearly concerns about health, about the economy, welfare, education, all of those things require some kind of response and some kind of policy and the absence of that in what the Brexit party offers, or seen to offer, really does make a difference.
Simon Usherwood: Well, you know, I think it's worth stressing that they did very well, they got just under 30 percent of the votes.
And you know, they were not that far off winning. But again, it's this point that was Brexit is an all-consuming issue in Westminster, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's all consuming in other parts of the country. The people who aren't politicians do have other things that they're concerned about.
And so probably, I think, you know, there's a desire to, to think about what lies beyond Brexit and outside Brexit, it is part of that calculation.
Also, Labor clearly were very keen to show that they were still viable after the the whole triggering of this by-election. And with that desire to kind of move on and show that they're a credible party of opposition, so throwing a lot of resource into this, to try and get it over the edge, which, which they finally did.
Sputnik: Okay. And just to finish up, I just want to talk about the potential upcoming general election, in 2015, we saw you can get a large share of the actual votes. But that didn't reflect in seats. If that were to happen to the Brexit party in the potential upcoming election, how do you think the public would react to once again, not being represented in Parliament?
And you know, this has been a long standing problem in the first past the post system isn't a good way of capturing how people vote in elections.
The difficulty is that the people who win in a first pass the post system, have a strong reason to keep that system because it keeps them relatively insulated.
So I think it's not going to bring people out on the streets. But what I will do is confirm part of that narrative that people like Nigel Farage have long made, which is 'the system doesn't work' and that we need to think about more radical changes to the system.
I f you listen to what he talks about, he talks about Brexit, but he also talks about the need to reconnect with politics to the people, and I think generally, that's always something that we need to be thinking about and acting on.
So I think it will keep his party and his arguments alive, even if he isn't able to secure much or indeed any representation in a general election.
Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Simon Usherwood and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
