UKIP's Reckless wins Rochester and Strood seat

[brooklynite]

Source: BBC

UKIP has its second elected MP at Westminster after Mark Reckless won the Rochester and Strood by-election.

Mr Reckless took 16,867 votes, 2,920 more than Conservative Kelly Tolhurst's 13,947, with Labour's Naushabah Khan on 6,713 - ahead of the Green Party.

The Lib Dems came fifth with their lowest vote total in a by-election.

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-30140747

[T_i_B]

1. Crap news all round.

http://eveningharold.com/2014/11/20/uk-braced-for-another-day-of-being-unable-to-escape-farages-gaping-maw/
http://newsthump.com/2014/11/21/farage-erection-enters-7th-hour/

[LeftishBrit]

2. Not the UK's finest hour.

Apart from having defected to a party which is more-or-less Britain's equivalent of the Tea Party, he is probably best known for missing an important Commons vote on the grounds that he was too drunk.

[daleo]

3. That does sound reckless.

[cosmicone]

4. Labour chose the wrong candidate. n/t

[T_i_B]

5. Any reason why?

I heard very little about any candidate other then Reckless (and from what I've heard Reckless wasn't that good a candidate himself)

If you are referring to Emily Thornberry, she wasn't the candidate here. She's the MP for Islington South & Finsbury.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Labour had no chance in the constituency; it was between the Tories and UKIP. Between bad and worse!

A past version of the constituency was once a marginal Labour seat; but since boundary changes, Labour is now out of the running.

I don't think there was any problem with the Labour candidate; you may be thinking of Emily Thornberry, a now former Minister and never an MP for this constituency, who had to resign from the front bench following an ill-judged tweet.

[iandhr]

6. I spent a semester studying the EU.

There is some very legitimate anger with Brussels do to the fact that so much power is in the hands of people who haven't been elected telling member states how to run their countries.

The far right has been able to successfully tap into this anger. Unless some of the non-wacko parties can come up with a response this is going to keep happening.