Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

The Tories are paying the price for their swagger over the Rochester by-election

But Ukip still has a big challenge ahead

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[/audioplayer]In a corner of the Ukip campaign office in Rochester, a light-up orb is spinning, with the words ‘Vote Mark Reckless’ endlessly switching from yellow to purple. It’s hypnotic, if disconcerting, but also unnecessary because voters don’t need to be persuaded to vote for him. The by-election that Ukip thought would be a tricky one is turning out to be easier than anyone predicted.

Poll after poll has put Mark Reckless as the winner of next week’s vote, and fewer and fewer Tories privately think that their party will win. Yet the Tories were boasting at their conference in October that they were going to beat Reckless and humiliate him. So why has it gone so wrong?

One of the problems is that the Conservatives, buzzing about in their conference bubble in Birmingham, oversold themselves as the natural victors. Back in Westminster, Tracey Crouch — the MP for next-door Chatham and Aylesford — briefed colleagues on the constituency and argued that its voters were ‘more thoughtful’ than those in Clacton, and would therefore vote Tory. Reckless himself told the Ukip conference when he defected that he really needed his new party’s help because ‘Rochester and Strood is not Clacton’.

No one on the ground complains about the support they’re getting from Westminster — the Prime Minister made his fourth visit this week and the whips forced MPs to visit five times (though Ukip antidote Boris Johnson is staying well away because his airport plan for the Thames Estuary makes him a controversial figure around there). But there have been strategic decisions that have helped Nigel Farage’s party, too.

Reckless has benefited from the Tory habit of pre-briefing all its moves to the media.

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