Which of the following is most important to you: ebola, ISIS, or UKIP? Does it matter more that some experts predict a worldwide epidemic claiming perhaps one million lives, that at this moment innocent women and children are being murdered in their thousands because of their ethnicity or beliefs; or that a maverick Tory MP won a by-election in Clacton?

I think I know what your answer would be. It is right that we have sent 750 military personnel to West Africa, including a Royal Naval ship and helicopters to fight what could so easily become a global catastrophe; and it is right that we have sent warplanes to help protect the innocent and prevent genocide in Iraq. Yet historians in years to come will wonder that those two great and grave matters; together with others such as the warnings from the International Monetary Fund that the EU economy may be stalling, were forced off our front pages by a by-election?

So it is only right that we consider carefully the messages which the electorate sent us in Clacton, Heywood and Middleton and elsewhere. Voters are not happy. They are worried above all about ‘immigration’ (although probably slightly unclear about exactly what they mean by it); they are unhappy about the EU’s interference in our everyday lives; they are concerned about crime and the erosion of our traditional values. Those and so many other less-defined annoyances merge in a by-election to ‘giving the traditional parties a good kicking.’

The Conservatives must listen carefully to that message and seek to redefine their central core message and beliefs. The Labour Party are in just as much a difficulty, especially in the aftermath of the Scottish Referendum and the collapse of their support north of the border. And our poor old partners in coalition, the Lib Dems, aresuch a hopeless case as to be in need of terminal care. All three parties must wake up to the message from Clacton.

However, there is one message which has been too often parroted on our screens over the last few days with which I disagree.

That is that the Clacton result demonstrates a generalised dissatisfaction with our political systems and with Westminster in general.

There is no evidence that that is the case. My experience is that people feel just as strongly about politics today as ever they did but their party political allegiances may be more fickle than they traditionally were.