UKIP Defection Is Triple Nightmare For Cameron

By Faisal Islam, Political Editor

The Prime Minister rises at 5.15am on a working day.

At that moment on Saturday the banners were being hung in Birmingham, the lifts festooned, and individual staircase steps swathed with constituent economic achievements leading to an overall tagline: "Securing A Better Future".

The basic sell: a recovery is here, but the country needs the Conservatives to finish the job.

And then, David Cameron would have been forgiven for seeing a clear route to glory in May starting with his trip to Birmingham for the Conservative Party conference.

A thumping majority in a successful Parliamentary vote was the fruition of weeks of slow deliberative work on Islamic State (IS), to show a diplomatic, humanitarian, multilateral effort.

Even then, the vote seemed most difficult for Labour leader Ed Miliband, losing one rising frontbench star, and having to fire an aide to the shadow defence secretary.

The papers were beginning to question Mr Miliband's position of backing airstrikes against IS in Syria by the US and Arab allies, but requiring an effort to get a UN resolution for the RAF to join them.

Mark Reckless has found a new ally in the leader of the UKIP party

And then there was his opponents' speech in Manchester.

He didn't watch it, but read it and felt confident enough to tell the Sunday Times it was 'guff'.

The weekend papers had carried the first of the Conservative grid announcements: a Mail story extending discounts to 100,000 first-time buyers, the Sunday Times on welfare caps to fund extra apprenticeships.

A strong performance in front of a united Conservative party learning a disciplined message on the economic recovery is exactly the sort of base from which to turn around the Labour Party's extraordinarily impervious poll lead, and confirm the traditional swing to an incumbent government.

And then came Reckless and Newmark. Two very different Conservative MPs.

A self-inflicted wound from a minister, obliged to resign by a salacious newspaper sting hours before the start of a vital pre-election conference.

But Mark Reckless' defection to UKIP is a triple nightmare.

The loss of an MP, to UKIP, and the attendant distraction of a by-election that will be far closer than Clacton.

The fact of it is compounded by the method. It was designed for maximum timing embarrassment. Again it was kept a secret.

The sheer pleasure the assembled crowd was extraordinary to behold. UKIP are showing clear competence in these theatrical defections.

But Mr Reckless joined Douglas Carswell in laying out not just policy differences, but personal problems with David Cameron's style.

Douglas Carswell is another Tory defector

In particular an 'away day' attempt to get precisely the same type of message discipline from MPs as exudes from the Birmingham ICC.

Both defectors mentioned the treatment of the independent-minded and far from Ukippy MP Sarah Wollaston. This establishes method and motive for yet more defections.

We already have half of an ex-Tory "Gang of Four". Remember the pundits saying that May was UKIP's high watermark?

Conservatives might try to take comfort from the fact that UKIP will also do well in certain Labour seats, beginning with the Heywood and Middleton by-election.

But the threat is clearly asymmetrical.

At the Labour fringe, they were developing policies and messages to defeat UKIP as 'more Tory than the Tories'.

At the Conservative fringe, they'll be discussing how to adopt UKIP policy, or how to join them. Or one might argue that the Conservative fringe is UKIP.

So Mr Cameron started Saturday with a clear path.

A push into the centre ground, and a grab for the 6% of Labour voters who think George Osborne has run the economy well could mean, whisper it, a majority.

But the PM finds himself fighting on two fronts, and one of them a very old war. I expect some sort of extraction from the European Convention on Human Rights.

"The status quo cannot continue" was all one insider would say. Is that enough to sate the frustration of UKIP-tempted Tory activists, voters and MPs? Almost certainly not. An offer for England might help.

After a tough week, incredibly, Ed Miliband could be forgiven for having a half-smile.

David Cameron will be relieved that his opposite number did not claim that "PM-in-waiting" mantle last week. But that relief was rather short-lived.

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