Conservatives round on defector to send a warning to others

The Conservative Party, as a succession of speakers declared in Birmingham this week, is the world’s oldest, and it has survived because of its ability to adapt.

The Conservatives have endured, too, because they are ruthless when their interests are threatened, as the MP Mark Reckless is finding out following his defection on Saturday to the UK Independence Party (Ukip). Chris Buckwell, a constituency party official in Rochester and Strood, spent yesterday going from event to event in Birmingham, urging Conservatives to come to Kent to help defeat Reckless in the byelection.

Ukip had 100 people delivering leaflets on the streets of the constituency on Saturday, Buckwell told a Birmingham fringe meeting. “We will match that this Saturday,” he said.

His 300-strong constituency association, "bar a handful", had remained loyal, while Ukip leader Nigel Farage quit a canvass because Conservatives outnumbered the Ukip team on the street, claimed Buckwell.

Vulnerable

The Conservatives’ decision to go on the front foot is partly because they believe that Ukip and Reckless have made a mistake. Reckless had a 10,000-seat majority over

Labour

in 2010, but Conservatives believe he is vulnerable because, unlike fellow Tory defector

Douglas Carswell

, he doesn’t have a large personal following. Equally, there is another opinion: that if Labour wins the seat, rather than Ukip, the Conservatives could win the war even if it loses the battle in Rochester.

“We may actually get Labour,” Conservative MP David Davis told party delegates yesterday. “Make sure that everyone knows that. That may not be a wholly bad thing.”

The reason for this view is simple: such an outcome would prove the validity of the “Vote Ukip, get Labour” warnings that Conservatives believe could sway doubtful voters back to them next year.

Faced with rumours that another MP is getting ready to quit, Conservatives sought to take back the initiative from Farage, muttering the names of "possible" defectors – Gordon Henderson in Sittingbourne and Sheppey, for one – to journalists.

Muddled policies

Henderson ruled out defection, saying that while he had been tempted, he eventually decided against it because the insurgent party’s policies are muddled and confused.

But speculation continues to surround the Kettering MP, Philip Hollobone.

Hollobone is central casting’s idea of a Ukip MP, one who endlessly and obsessively goes on about the EU. “And he doesn’t even have a researcher, he’s so frugal,” one reporter was told.

Defeat for Reckless, if it happens in the byelection to come, would help, Conservatives hope, to take the wind out of the sails of other potential defectors. In the meantime, the scale of the party’s reaction against him – charges of lying from the prime minister, the mobilisation of the Conservative machine – will act as a warning to others.