Politics

Like a bad smell, Neil Hamilton continues to linger around Westminster. The disgraced MP, who came to embody Tory sleaze by the time he lost his seat in 1997, has reinvented himself as Mr Ukip, with first a seat on the party’s powerful National Executive Committee before scaling the dizzy heights of Deputy Chairman. Despite numerous controversies, the Hamiltons have weathered on with their media appearances, but Mr S hears it is Christine Hamilton that might have the more sustainable career in politics. Neil Hamilton was shunned for a MEP seat when the selections were made earlier in the year, and informed party sources pour water on the prospects of him being awarded

The Tories may have watched Douglas Carswell’s re-entry into the House of Commons in silence, but he seems to be getting a reasonably warm reception from his old colleagues behind the scenes. He has already exchanged jokes and arranged to dine and drink with a number of them. For a few weeks this will send the whips into a spin, as they try to work out whether it really is just lunch, or a brewing defection. But it wasn’t just Carswell who was nattering with Conservatives this afternoon. Nigel Farage, who watched his first elected MP re-join the Commons from a gallery, has also been talking to some of them.

Ever the insurgent, Nigel Farage decided to give his post-Clacton interview to BBC Sunday Politics today rather than Andrew Marr show. He would have regretted fairly soon: the line of questioning was all about Ukip policies, which are notoriously flimsy. What about Patrick O’Flynn’s idea for a SamCam tax on luxury goods? Farage dropped it, but said today there was nothing to drop. He once said on Telegraph TV that the NHS should be run by businessmen – is that Ukip policy? There’s a “very strong argument” for that, he said, but was it policy? He didn’t say. Lucky the BBC’s current inability to beam in an interview in to

Why are the Conservatives so serene after losing the Clacton by-election and seeing their vote collapse in Heywood and Middleton? It is not that the party has finally decided endless fighting is no longer a good idea, but that it is holding its breath for the Rochester and Strood by-election. If Mark Reckless, the second Ukip defector, wins this, then the meltdown in David Cameron’s party will make the Labour response this week look positively icy. The Tories had quickly accepted Douglas Carswell would win in Clacton and so there was little excuse for even their more febrile factions to panic. But the party believes it has a good chance

The Tory whips are busy today, but not necessarily with fallout from the Clacton by-election. They have sent a message round to MPs saying the following: ‘There is a possibility that there will be a business statement on Monday which will also affect whipping next week.’ Some MPs have read this as a suggestion that they may be asked to vote on military action against Isis in Syria, which Number 10 has so far been reluctant to do. The Lib Dems have said they can’t see what benefit British troops would bring to the situation Syria. But chances are that Monday’s statement will relate to another event that’s taken place