‘Oooooh!’ shouted MPs when Mark Reckless got to his feet today at Prime Minister’s Questions for his first chance as a Ukipper to grill David Cameron. The newly-re-elected MP had looked rather nervous for most of the session as he bobbed up and down trying to get the Speaker’s attention, but he probably didn’t need to be so anxious given Bercow is normally very happy to call new MPs, especially ones the Prime Minister doesn’t like. When his chance came, he asked the following question:
‘I’m grateful to the Prime Minister for spending so much time in Rochester and Strood. Dr Philip Barnes, acting chief executive of Medway Hospital, said this morning that what our hospital needs is a period of patience and stability. Does the Prime Minister agree?’
This wasn’t a question about government policy or one designed to needle the Tory party particularly, but a local one that sounded as though Reckless was still fighting his by-election. In a sense, he is, because the next few months will involve him wooing constituents in order to prove the Tories wrong a second time. Reckless has a majority of just 2,920, and polling in the constituency suggested that many of those who backed him still wanted David Cameron as Prime Minister after next year’s election and that they were voting Ukip this time around to give the Establishment a good kicking.
When I followed him and other Ukippers around in Rochester during the by-election, I was struck by the way some in the party hierarchy were quite pointedly saying he’d need to work hard for the next few months. He can ill afford to squander Commons questions on national politics when he needs to show his constituents that he is working hard on their behalf. He has already posted a video of the question.
This may lead to an interesting division of labour in the two-man Ukip parliamentary party. Douglas Carswell has always been a man who likes to scrutinise legislation and debate big questions. While Reckless has been behind a good few revolts in the Commons, he probably won’t want to get involved in much of that sort of parliamentary politics for the next few months.
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