By Andrew Osborn

LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) – The anti-EU UK Independence Party
looked poised to win its first ever elected seat in Britain’s
parliament on Thursday, dealing a symbolically ominous blow to
Prime Minister David Cameron seven months before a national
election.

Such a breakthrough for UKIP could demonstrate an ability to
split the mainstream Conservatives’ vote and thereby cloud their
re-election prospects. It would also raise pressure on Cameron
to become more Eurosceptic three years before a referendum on
European Union membership to be held if he is re-elected.

Opinion polls suggest UKIP, which favours a British EU exit
and lower immigration, will easily win a special election in
Clacton-on-Sea, southeast England, where voting gets under way
at 0600 GMT and results are expected on Friday around 0100 GMT.

“British politics will never be the same again,” Patrick
O’Flynn, a UKIP lawmaker in the European Parliament, forecast on
Wednesday. “And amen to that.”

UKIP’s candidate in Clacton, Douglas Carswell, an arch
Eurosceptic, defected from Cameron’s Conservatives in August,
triggering Thursday’s vote. He said at the time that he had
switched allegiance because he doubted the prime minister’s
determination to reform the EU.

Cameron has promised to try to renegotiate Britain’s EU
relationship before offering voters an in/out membership
referendum in 2017. But many of his own lawmakers are sceptical
about his resolve to push for real change, viewing his promise
as a tactical move to try to hold his divided party together.

In terms of its demographics, Clacton is the most
UKIP-friendly constituency in the country, according to analysis
by academics Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford.

“It’s very white, very old, very working class, lots of
economic deprivation and … there is a heightened anxiety over
migration and Europe,” Goodwin told Reuters.

UKIP is also expected to poll strongly although not win in
another special election being held on Thursday in northern
England after the death of the area’s opposition Labour
lawmaker, a result it says will show it is a threat to the
established left as well as the right.

FEAR IN CONSERVATIVE HEARTS

Tapping into a weariness with mainstream politics, UKIP won
European elections in Britain in May, poached two of Cameron’s
lawmakers in the last six weeks, and polling suggests it may win
up to six of 650 seats in the British parliament next year.

That sounds like a paltry number. But its ability to split
the centre-right vote in any number of constituencies which,
under a winner-takes-all system could hand them to the Labour
party, strikes fear into Conservative hearts.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal
Democrats, the junior partner in Cameron’s coalition, said on
Wednesday that UKIP was winning voters over by appealing to
their fears and by providing them with scapegoats.

“Life is so simple when you know who or what to blame,” he
told his party conference in Glasgow.

“It’s seductive and it’s beguiling. That much may even be
proved tomorrow, if the people of Clacton give the UK
Independence Party an MP. But resentment, the politics of fear,
doesn’t pay the bills or create a single job.”

UKIP believes its success will begin to unravel a political
establishment under which until recently Britain’s two main
parties – the right-leaning Conservatives and left-leaning
Labour – have taken turns to govern.

But although a blow to Cameron, Conservative strategists
say, a defeat in Clacton would be manageable. They are more
worried about the possibility of defeat in a second special
election because it appears more winnable for them.

Triggered by another defection to UKIP, the election
expected in November will be in Rochester, a part of southern
England where voters are seen as less UKIP-friendly and where
the UKIP candidate Mark Reckless, a former Conservative, is
regarded as far more vulnerable than Carswell.

(Additional reporting by Kylie Maclellan; Editing by Mark
Heinrich)

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