David Cameron gives his reaction to Mark Reckless’s victory for Ukip in the Rochester and Strood byelection
The Conservatives are “absolutely determined” to win back the
Rochester and Strood parliamentary seat at next year’s general election,
David Cameron has said after his party claimed that Ukip failed to
secure a major breakthrough.
As Tory sources played down the prospect of further defections by Conservative MPs after Mark Reckless won Ukip’s second seat with a majority of 2,920, the prime minister said another victory for Nigel Farage’s party in May would only help the Labour party.
Speaking at Paddington station before catching a train to a
conference in Newport, Cameron said: “The result was closer than the
pollsters had predicted. I am absolutely determined to win this seat
back at the next general election because anything other than a
Conservative government will put our recovery at risk and Ed Miliband in
Downing Street. I am more determined than ever to deliver security for
Britain.”
The prime minister also widened his attack on the Labour leader by
saying that a picture of a house decked out in St George’s flags in
Rochester and Strood tweeted by Emily Thornberry showed that Labour
“sneers” at hard-working people. Emily Thornberry’s #Rochester Twitter image.Photograph: Emily Thornberry/Twitter
“Emily Thornberry is one of Ed Miliband’s closest allies and aides,”
he said of the MP for Islington South and Finsbury, who was forced to resign as shadow attorney general over the tweet.
“Effectively what this means is that Ed Miliband’s Labour party
sneers at people who work hard, who are patriotic and who love their
country, and I think that is absolutely appalling.”
But Miliband, who in effect sacked Thornberry in the course of two
telephone calls on Thursday night, distanced himself from the tweet.
“That is not my view, that is not Labour’s view, that will never be
Labour’s view,” he said.
The prime minister tried to move the focus to Miliband after
Reckless, whose defection from the Conservatives triggered the
byelection, inflicted a humiliating blow. The prime minister had
promised to throw huge resources at winning the seat, visiting Rochester
and Strood five times and ordering his MPs to each make at least three
trips. Ukip candidate Mark Reckless makes a speech after being elected MP for Rochester and Strood.Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
Reckless received 16,867 votes, or 42.1% of the poll. His
Conservative opponent, Kelly Tolhurst, took 13,947 votes (34.8%), a fall
of 14.4 percentage points.
Labour’s Naushabah Khan came third with 6,713 (16.8%, down 11.7
percentage points) and the Liberal Democrats won just 349 (0.9%, down
15.4 percentage points). The Lib Dems finished behind the Greens, who
polled 1,692 (4.2%, up 2.7 percentage points).
Farage said the byelection meant the result of next year’s general
election was “unpredictable beyond comprehension”. He told the Today
programme on BBC Radio 4: “It means the whole thing is thrown up in the
air. Anybody that now tries to attempt to predict what will happen next
year frankly is wasting their time. It is now unpredictable beyond
comprehension. This was seat number 271 on Ukip’s target list. We’ve
shown here that if you vote Ukip, you get Ukip, and I think the
consequences are very difficult to predict.” Ukip leader Nigel Farage (C) celebrates as Mark Reckless is announced winner of the Rochester and Strood byelection.Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
Tory sources said they were confident of regaining the seat at the
general election. Peter Kellner, the president of the market research
firm YouGov, said the Tories would win the seat back if they secured a
swing of around 4%.
The sources said the Ukip majority, which fell short of 15% in one
poll, meant that Tory MPs were likely to think twice about defecting.
They said it was right to throw so many resources at the byelection
because it helped them rebuild an infrastructure in Rochester and Strood
after Reckless’s defection.
Tolhurst will decide in the next week whether to stand in the general election.
The Tories sought to portray the result as a blow to Labour, which
held the seat until 2010 on different boundaries. The sources pointed
out that no opposition party had moved into government unless it secured
a net byelection gain. Labour gained Corby in a byelection in 2012 but
this was cancelled out when it lost Bradford West to George Galloway in
2012.
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