UKIP Party Wins Second Seat in UK Parliament

Britain’s anti-EU UKIP party won its second seat in parliament on Friday, defeating Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives in a special election six months before what is shaping up to be a closely-fought national vote.

The victory for UKIP, the UK Independence Party, will unsettle businesses, investors and European partners who fear Britain could be slipping towards an exit from the European Union.

UKIP favors an immediate British EU exit and sharply lower immigration. Mark Reckless, UKIP’s candidate, was a Conservative lawmaker until he defected in September.

Reckless won 16,867 votes or just over 42 percent of the vote in the south-eastern English constituency of Rochester and Strood giving him a majority of 2,920. Cameron’s Conservatives came second with 13,947 votes. Labor came third with 6,713 votes. The overall turnout was 50.67 percent.

UKIP’s success highlights the threat it poses to Cameron in a national election in May 2015 and its ability to split the mainstream Conservative party’s vote casting a cloud over its re-election prospects.

via CNBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza