Mark Reckless has just left the Conservative Party and joined Ukip. He is announcing his defection on the stage at the party’s conference to huge cheers.
Reckless's announcement to the hall came as a complete surprise. Nigel Farage had just presented some impressive polling to the conference and then said he had a guest speaker, a Tory MP. Mark Reckless appeared, and announced he was leaving the party.
His own colleagues are completely gobsmacked. Some had spoken to him yesterday and hadn't noticed anything.
I spoke to Reckless a few weeks ago about the polling that Ukip were carrying out in constituencies to try to entice more MPs over. He told me he didn't know about it and that they must be very serious about it.
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