Beware of misreading Eastleigh result There are few mornings so bracing in British politics as those that follow an interesting by-election. Lessons are drawn, blood is let, recriminations and explanations follow. Yet the instant conclusions reached are rarely correct. As the political parties pick over the embers of the Eastleigh campaign, it will be easy to draw certain inferences. The headline opinions are that the result is pretty good for the Liberal Democrats who won; very good for the UK Independence party which finished a close second; very very bad for the Conservatives, pushed into third by Ukip; and not all that great for Labour, which fielded a high-profile candidate but finished a poor fourth. Robert Shrimsley In truth the result means next to nothing for Labour which was always destined to come fourth. The Lib Dems will be pleased and it could have been a lot worse. Any governing party which holds its seat in a mid-term by-election is entitled to be satisfied but Eastleigh cannot be said to offer a template for a Lib Dem revival because the party was defending the seat against the Tories rather than Ed Miliband's Labour. Had Nick Clegg, Lib Dem leader, lacked the wit to run a short campaign he might have lost to Ukip as well. He will not have that option of a truncated general election campaign. Ukip has a right to be pleased but it also faces some cold truths. First, it did not win. Second, while it has done well - and will continue to do well in other such contests - with the Lib Dem admission to government, Ukip is now the main party of protest. But ultimately there is no reason to believe that Eastleigh has changed any fundamentals for Ukip any more than Newbury, Christchurch, Orpington or Glasgow Hillhead did for the Lib Dems or their predecessor parties. What is indisputable is that the result is a problem for David Cameron because the politics of this are terrible for the prime minister. It plays to all those who have argued for a more rightwing strategy - the eurosceptic, anti-immigrant, coalition-hating wing of his party which now feels vindicated in saying his strategy is costing the party support to Ukip. He will face pressure to move his chancellor, cut taxes and further slash the deficit, a form of economic illiteracy unique to the political right. But he should hold firm. The voices raised against Mr Cameron are those who were already agitating. They will now just be even more insistent. A sober look at the result offers few new reasons for concerns. Unpopular governments with no money to spend do badly in by-elections. It is clearly not a good result but it was entirely predictable. Ukip certainly did well, and might have won had the campaign lasted longer. Yes, the Conservative share of the vote fell by 14 percentage points (as did the Lib Dem shares) but there is no reason to assume that those who are happy to abandon the unpopular Conservatives in a by-election would repeat the exercise if they thought it would put Mr Miliband in Downing Street. So while Conservatives are understandably concerned that Ukip can deny them seats, they should see Ukip's success as a symptom of Tory weakness, not a cause. It is true that Eastleigh shows how hard it will be for Mr Cameron to win the next general election outright but one would worry about deferring to the political judgment of any Conservative who had not already reached that conclusion before the count. Of course, if Mr Cameron cannot contain the political fallout, the post-Eastleigh splits could easily morph into electoral problems but there is a distinction and the wise heads around Mr Cameron should see it. A bad economy, tactical errors and factional infighting are the greatest threats to a Tory recovery. The party most likely to damage Mr Cameron remains his own.