Tories lose vexatious court case against Mark Reckless

Rochester & Strood Conservatives have lost their vexatious court case against UKIP MP, Mark Reckless.

The Conservatives had hoped to set the dangerous precedent that politicians defecting to another party could be made to repay money their former party had spent on promoting them. Whilst sour grapes no doubt played a big part in the decision to bring the case against Mark Reckless and his agent, Chris Irvine, the Conservative Party will almost certainly have been pushing them to do it in the hope that it would scare other Tory councillors and MPs off defecting to UKIP.

The Conservatives have reportedly been ordered to pay £1,850 in costs.

Date set for Mark Reckless court case

Rochster & Strood Conservative Association will get their day in court after filing a claim against UKIP MP, Mark Reckless and UKIP councillor, Chris Irvine for the money they've wasted on leaflets promoting Reckless before he defected to UKIP.

The Conservatives are asking a judge to set the very dangerous precedent that a candidate deciding to switch political parties should have to compensate the party they resign from for the money they've spent promoting them prior to their resignation.

This would be a swift 5 minute judgement in favour of Reckless were it not for their argument that approving campaign expenditure on leaflets two days before he defected was calculated to cost them money when he would have known that the leaflets would have been useless before they were even taken out of the box which, on the face of it, sounds reasonable.

However, as I understand it, Mark Reckless was not an officer of Rochester & Strood Conservative Association and as such, his approval for expenditure would only have been required because it impacted on the legal limit on election spending and not to authorise the spending of the association's funds. We don't vote for political parties in Westminster elections, we vote for the person so what Rochester & Strood Conservative Association actually did (rather than what they thought they were doing) was print leaflets to promote the Mark Reckless personally and to put the Conservative Party's brand on those leaflets.

Was it fair for Mark Reckless not to tell the Conservatives not to print the leaflets and save them some money? Probably not. But politics isn't fair and unfair isn't illegal.

UKIP MPs cast deciding votes on bill to outlaw wind turbine subsidies

UKIP's two MPs cast the deciding votes in a 10 minute rule bill yesterday to outlaw state subsidies for wind turbines.

Had it not been for Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless, the bill would have been rejected and an opportunity to stop the wasteful subsidy of windmills for rich landowners and big multi-national corporations would have been missed. The bill passed by 59 votes to 57.

10 minute rule bills are heard after PMQs when most MPs are in the Commons but only 116 MPs remained. Mark Reckless had to try 5 times yesterday during PMQs to ask David Cameron why he wouldn't take part in TV debates because MPs were noisily groaning to drown him out. It would appear that MPs are worried about UKIP upsetting their cosy consensus and this is their childish response.

Rochester Tories suing Mark Reckless for cost of leaflets they had to throw away

The Tories in Rochester still haven't got over the fact that Mark Reckless defected to UKIP and then mauled them at the ballot box and have issued a claim against him for costs relating to campaign leaflets they've had to throw away.

Reckless' agent, Chris Irvine, has also been named on the claim for £3,000 to cover the cost of election material that they say was authorised by both Reckless and Irvine as recently as two days before he announced his defection.

It's unlikely that they'll be successful because the principal is quite absurd but it'll make an interesting (and expensive) test case for an ambitious lawyer. You'd think they'd be saving up for the £5,000 fine for exceeding the election spending limit with their postal primary publicity stunt that's surely coming their way once the Electoral Commission have received their election expenses return.

Mark Reckless wins Rochester & Strood for UKIP

Mark Reckless has won the by-election in Rochester & Strood with 42.1% of the vote and will return to parliament as UKIP's second MP.

The majority was less than some predicted but it's just under 3,000 and over 7% which is pretty healthy. The Tories are trying to spin the defeat as a positive and claim that because the margin is smaller than they predicted, they can win the seat back in 2015. It looks like their target seat maths is as dodgy as the maths they used to predict the UKIP margin because Mark Reckless' 2,090 vote majority makes it the 125th largest majority in the country.

The Tories came a respectable but still fairly distant second whilst Labour finished in third place more than 25% behind UKIP. The Green Party finished in fourth with 4.22%, just missing the magic 5% that would have kept their deposit and the Lib Dems were relegated to fifth place with 0.87% of the vote and were only spared the embarrassment of losing to the Monster Raving Loony Party (something normally reserved for the English Democrats who didn't stand in this by-election) by 198 votes. Britain First's lowly 9th place with just 56 votes shows that their clever social media propaganda machine hasn't turned them into a credible electoral force.

Well done to all involved in the election campaign, the activists that travelled from all parts of the UK and beyond to campaign for Mark Reckless and of course to Mark Reckless himself for the brave decision to resign following his defection and contest his seat as a UKIP candidate. Your hard work paid off, you have helped to make history.

Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Mark Reckless	UKIP	16,867	42.10%
Kelly Tolhurst	Conservative	13,947	34.81%
Naushabah Khan	Labour	6,713	16.76%
Clive Gregory	Green	1,692	4.22%
Geoff Juby	Lib Dem	349	0.87%
Hairy Knorm Davidson	Loony	151	0.38%
Stephen Goldsbrough	Independent	69	0.17%
Nick Long	People Before Politics	69	0.17%
Jayda Fransen	Britain First	56	0.14%
Mike Barker	Independent	54	0.13%
Charlotte Rose	Independent	43	0.11%
Dave Osborn	Patriotic Socialist	33	0.08%
Christopher Challis	Independent	22	0.05%

Breaking: Mark Reckless MP defects to UKIP

Conservative MP for Rochester & Strood, Mark Reckless, has just announced his defection to UKIP at the party conference.

Mark Reckless MP bookies' favourite to defect to UKIP

Conservative MP, Mark Reckless, is odds on favourite to follow Douglas Carswell's lead and defect to UKIP.

Reckless is the MP for Rochester & Strood and the bookies have him as 3/1 favourite to ditch the useless Tories and join the people's army.

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that more Tory MPs will defect to UKIP but if it does happen it's certainly not going to be before they see whether Carswell successfully defends his seat.