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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Rochester byelection results and Emily Thornberry's resignation - live coverage

Counting gets under way for the Rochester and Strood constituency
Counting gets under way for the Rochester and Strood constituency Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Summary

  • Ukip’s Mark Reckless has won the Rochester and Strood byelection with a majority of 2,920. Reckless, who held the seat as a Conservative from 2010 until his defection to Ukip in September, is the second Ukip MP elected to parliament. In his victory speech he said the result showed Ukip could win anywhere.

Whichever constituency, whatever your former party allegiance, think of what it would mean to have a bloc of Ukip MPs at Westminster large enough to hold the balance of power.

If you believe in freedom, if you believe in low taxes, if you believe in clean government, if you believe in localism, if you believe in people power.

If you believe that the world is bigger than Europe, if you believe in an independent Britain, then come with us and we will give you back your country.

He also said that he had enjoyed “more than a dash of support from people who came here from other EU states” and that these migrants were welcome in the UK.

They are now here as part of our community and they will always be welcome. If Ukip is to win nationwide - and we have proved tonight that we can - it must do so on that basis. We most be a party that speaks to and for the whole nation and everyone who lives within it.

  • All three main Westminster parties have fared badly, although the result is particularly embarrassing for the Lib Dems. The Conservative share of the vote fell by 14%, and the Labour share fell by 12%. But the Lib Dems got less than 1% of the vote, and came fifth behind the Greens, who got more than four times as many votes. It is thought to be their worst result in a byelection since the party was formed in the 1980s.

That’s all from me for tonight.

Thanks for the comments.

YouGov’s Peter Kellner almost won the sweepstake.

Byelection results in full

Here’s the Press Association table with the results, and percentages.

Mark Reckless (UKIP) 16,867 (42.10%)

Kelly Tolhurst (C) 13,947 (34.81%, -14.39%)

Naushabah Khan (Lab) 6,713 (16.76%, -11.70%)

Clive Gregory (Green) 1,692 (4.22%, +2.69%)

Geoff Juby (LD) 349 (0.87%, -15.39%)

Hairy Knorm Davidson (Loony) 151 (0.38%)

Stephen Goldsbrough (Ind) 69 (0.17%)

Nick Long (PBP) 69 (0.17%)

Jayda Fransen (Britain 1st) 56 (0.14%)

Mike Barker (Ind) 54 (0.13%)

Charlotte Rose (Ind) 43 (0.11%)

Dave Osborn (Pat Soc) 33 (0.08%)

Christopher Challis (Ind) 22 (0.05%)

UKIP maj 2,920 (7.29%)

Electorate 79,163; Turnout 40,065 (50.61%, -14.32%)

Updated

  • Here are the results in full.

  • Mike Barker, Independent - 54

  • Christopher Challis, Independent - 22

  • Hairy Knorm Davidson, Official Monster Raving Loony party - 151

  • Jayda Fransen, Britain First - 56

  • Stephen William Goldsbrough, Independent - 69

  • Clive Gregory, Green party - 1,692

  • Geoff Juby, Liberal Democrats - 349

  • Naushabah Khan, Labour - 6,713

  • Nick Long, People Before Profit - 69

  • Dave Osborn, Patriotic Socialist party - 33

  • Mark Reckless, UK Independence party - 16,867

  • Charlotte Rose, Independent - 43

  • Kelly Tolhurst, Conservative - 13,947

    • So how did we win, Reckless asks.

    By championing all communities, he says.

    He says he had more than a dash of support from people who came here from other states.

    Many have cometo Britain because of the opportunities it offers.

    They are here as part of our community. And they will always be welcome, he says.

    We must be a party that speaks to the whole nation.

    Imagine what it would be like to have a block of Ukip MPs at Westminster large enough to hold the balance of power.

    If you believe in an independent Britain, come with us and we will give you back your country, he says.

    And that’s it.

    Mark Reckless is speaking now.

    He thanks the other candidates.

    Politics is not a popular calling, he says. It takes real grit to put yourself forward. But the alternative is despotism. We are blessed here.

    Here thanks the people of Rochester and Strood. You are my boss. You hired my again. You remain my boss. Don’t let me forget it.

    He thanks those who voted for the first time, including those who voted in their 70s for the first time.

    He thanks Labour voters who supported him. The radical tradition is a nobel one. It is the tradition that brought us the Levellers, he says. He spoke about this tradition in his maiden speech in the Commons.

    He says Ukip stands up for the working class.

    Rochester was Ukip 271’s most winnable seat. If we can win here, we can win anywhere, he says.

    Here are the key results.

    Mark Reckless, Ukip - 16,867

    Kelly Tolhurst, Conservative - 13,947

    Neil Davis is introducing Hugh Fenwick, the high sheriff of Kent.

    He is reading the results.

    On the BBC’s election programme George Eustice, the Conservative environment minister, has just said a Ukip victory would be good for Ed Miliband.

    The reality is that a strong showing for Ukip next May makes it more likely that Ed Miliband will be the prime minister. So, Ed Miliband will be the one who’s smiling as a result of the Ukip success tonight.

    That contradicts the line that some Tories have been putting out that tonight’s result is bad for Labour because they should have been competitive in a seat they held (on slightly different boundaries) until 2010.

    Neil Davies, the acting returning officer, says he has a result.

    But he wants to share it with the candidates first. We will get it in about five minutes.

    Nigel Farage is dropping hints about the next Ukip defector.

    If you want to compare tonight’s result with Clacton, here are the results from Clacton last month

    Douglas Carswell (UKIP) 21,113 (59.75%)
    Giles Watling (C) 8,709 (24.64%)
    Tim Young (Lab) 3,957 (11.20%)
    Chris Southall (Green) 688 (1.95%)
    Andy Graham (LD) 483 (1.37%)
    Bruce Sizer (Ind) 205 (0.58%)
    Howling Laud Hope (Loony) 127 (0.36%)
    Charlotte Rose (Ind) 56 (0.16%)

    UKIP maj 12,404 (35.10%)

    Turnout 35,338 (51.13%)

    But, as Matthew Goodwin, co-author of Revolt on the Right, the Ukip study points out, Clacton is not a particularly fair comparison.

    We’re getting the result in 10 minutes.

    It’s time to research the Lib Dems’ worst ever byelection result, just in case a record gets broken.

    In percentage terms, since 2010, it was Clacton last month. The Lib Dems got 1.37% of the vote, and 483 votes.

    But, in vote number terms, it was South Shields, in May 2013, where the Lib Dems got just 352 votes, or 1.4%.

    I have not got figures for before 2010 to hand, but I don’t think they’ve sunk as low as this since the party was formed in the 1980s.

    Updated

    According to the briefing note we were given by Medway council earlier, the result will be announced by Hugo Fenwick, the high sheriff of Kent. He’s a member of the Fenwick retail family.

    Constituencies are divided into county constituencies and borough constituencies, and Rochester is a county one. As such, the returning officer is the high sheriff, and he has the right to declare the result himself. Fenwick has exercised this right, and that is why should be taking over from Neil Davies, the Medway chief executive and acting returning officer who has been making the announcements until now.

    The Lib Dems could get only a couple of hundred votes in the byelection, the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope reports.

    Here are the Peninsula ward results in full.

    Ukip - 2,850

    Conservatives - 1,965

    Labour - 716

    Greens - 314

    Lib Dems - 60

    So, the Greens got five times as many votes as the Lib Dems.

    In his acceptance speech Chris Irvine said he triggered the byelection so that local people could have a referendum on Lodge Hill, the controversial housing development on the Peninsula.

    “The country is watching,” he said.

    But it’s 3.30am. I’m afraid he’s wrong.

    We’ve just had the result of the Peninsula ward byelection.

    The Ukip candidate, Chris Irvine, won. He was the Conservative candidate who defected.

    He got 2,850 votes. The Conservative candidate, Ron Sands, was in second place, with 1,965.

    Labour’s candidate, Naushabah Khan, has arrived at the count.

    Here are some more pictures from the count.

    Mark Reckless arriving at the ballot counting centre with his wife Catriona
    Mark Reckless arriving at the ballot counting centre with his wife Catriona Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
    Counting taking place for the Rochester and Strood constituency byelection
    Counting taking place for the Rochester and Strood constituency byelection Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA
    Votes being counted at Medway Park
    Votes being counted at Medway Park Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

    Farage accuses Conservatives of running failed, negative campaign

    My colleague Rowena Mason has her notebook out as Nigel Farage arrived. Here are the main points he was making.

    • Farage said that a Ukip victory would be “pretty bad news” for David Cameron.

    If little Ukip, in this David v Goliath battle, is able to beat the governing party of the day, it will be a massive, massive victory. I would have thought the prime minister having put so much into this,and then having spent so much money - not of course more than the legal limit, I’m sure - I would think it’s pretty bad news for the prime minister.

    • He accused the Conservatives of running a negative campaign, and said Ukip had shown these tactics did not work.

    Our campaign was clean. We didn’t abuse anybody. They spent their time in the early days calling Reckless a liar, a drunk and worse. They have an Australian working for them, an American working for them,they seem to believe negative campaigning works in this country. I hope this result proves we’re a better country than that.

    • He said, if Ukip could win in Rochester, anything could happen at the general election.

    If Ukip can win against this massive government machine in what was our 271st target seat. It means if you vote Ukip you get Ukip and secondly all bets are off at the general election next year. Literally anything could happen. No intelligent commentator, if we win tonight, can make any predictions about the general election. If we win this, against that machine, in this constituency in which no one gave us a cat’s chance in hell, all bets are off.

    • He predicted that Ukip would win.

    I don’t make predictions ... but yes I think he’ll win.

    Nigel Farage arriving at the election ballot count at Medway Park in Gillingham
    Nigel Farage arriving at the election ballot count at Medway Park in Gillingham Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

    Kelly Tolhurst, the Conservative candidate, has arrived at the count.

    Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has arrived at the count.

    (Was he making a joke about Ukip’s record for consistency?)

    Chris Bryant has just been interviewed by Andrew Neil on the BBC’s election programme. Asked about flags, he admitted that he had never hung one outside his window. He was not a football fan, he said.

    I cannot stand football. And I know my mother-in-law would be very, very, angry with me now, she tells me that I ought to live football, but I just don’t.

    Obviously, in my book, that makes Bryant a man of sound judgment, but are you really allowed to say that if you’re a Labour frontbencher? Until recently, being interested in football, or feigning an interest, was virtually compulsory at Westminster (especially in Labour.) I do hope Bryant doesn’t get sacked too.

    (While I’m on the subject, there was an interesting moment at the SNP conference when Nicola Sturgeon was giving a speech to a reception full of journalist shortly before the Scotland/Ireland match started. If Alex Salmond was giving the speech, he would have wrapped it up quickly, so they could all watch the match, she said. But, she went on, she wasn’t interested in football, and so she would go on. She was joking about going on at length, but, not as far as I could tell, about not being interested in the Scotland match. It seemed rather a bold thing for a Scottish first minister to say, and she went up in my estimation.)

    We’re not going to get a result until between 3.30am and 4am, officials are saying.

    More news from the journalists’ sweepstake on the result. The best Ukip result predicted is a majority of 6,500, and the worst is a majority of 1,700.

    The Tories have a present coming their way tomorrow (or later today, I suppose), Michael Crick reports.

    Labour say that their vote has been squeezed in two directions. One campaigner explained:

    People told me today that they read the letter Mark Reckless put out today saying, if he won, Cameron would be out of Downing Street by Christmas and they thought, ‘I’ll vote for that.’ And then there were other people who heard Cameron saying that the only way to keep Ukip out was by voting Conservative and acted on that.

    But Mark Reckless may be disappointed if he thinks that his expected victory is going to lead to a coup against Cameron. When the byelection was caused, there were some predictions to this effect. But now the mood has changed and, as Nicholas Watt reported recently, the Tories are not going to too unsettled by a Ukip victory because it has been “priced in”.

    In the Mail on Sunday recently, James Forsyth also wrote about why Cameron would be able to survive losing Rochester.

    The Tory mood has been transformed by two things. First, Labour’s leadership crisis and vanishing poll lead have made Tory MPs far more confident about their prospects: a governing party that is effectively level in the polls before the General Election campaign has even begun is unlikely to panic. Second, a poll showing that the Tories will lose Rochester this week but win it back in May has reassured them that Ukip won’t find it so easy to unseat Tory MPs come the General Election.

    The BBC’s Chris Mason says he’s heard figures suggesting Ukip will get around 17,000, the Conservatives around 14,000 and Labour 7,000 or 8,000. They’re very similar to the ones I’ve had. (See 12.58am.)

    We still have not had the result of the Peninsula ward council byelection. Given that they only had 6,000 votes to count, that does not bode well. There are 40.000 votes to count in the Westminster byelection.

    Here’s the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope on his sweepstake entry.

    A journalist colleague is organising a sweepstake on the size of the Ukip majority. I’ve gone for 3,200. (See 12.58pm.) A broadcasting colleague has just opted for 1,800.

    It wouldn’t be a byelection without the loonies.

    Matthew Goodwin, the academic and co-author of Revolt on the Right, the definitive book about Ukip’s rise, has been posting some thoughts about the byelection on Twitter.

    How Ukip's byelection performances have kept getting better

    Although Ukip is expected to win this byelection fairly easily, it is worth remembering that until recently they were a minor party that never seemed to have a chance at byelections.

    In March 2011, in Barnsley Central, Ukip achieved what was, at the time, its best result in a byelection. It came second. But it still only got 12.2% of the vote.

    Since then, these are the byelections that have seen Ukip achieving new highs (in terms of share of the vote).

    Corby in November 2012 - 14.3% (3rd place)

    Rotherham in November 2012 - 21.7% (2nd place)

    Eastleigh in February 2013 - 27.8% (2nd place)

    Heywood and Middleton in October 2014 - 36% (2nd place)

    Clacton in October 2014 - 60% (1st place)

    Mark Reckless, the Ukip candidate, has now come into the hall where the counting is taking place.

    But, so far, he has been ignoring the journo pack, who are being kept at a distance in the press area.

    Mark Reckless is arriving at the count now.

    Labour is very keen to argue that this is a poor result for the Conservatives because they invested so much hope in winning. In order to reinforce the point, they sent out a briefing note earlier this week with quotes showing how committed David Cameron was to victory. Here are three examples.

    From the Telegraph in September

    Mr Cameron said: “We are coming for you in by-elections and we are going to throw everything we can at you.”

    From the Telegraph in September

    “I will be with you in Rochester campaigning with you. I am absolutely determined that we will take this seat.” - Cameron

    From the Financial Times in October

    David Cameron told his party on Tuesday that the fight was on for the Rochester & Strood by-election as he promised backbenchers he would campaign “very, very hard” to win the seat and halt Ukip’s march in Conservative heartlands.

    There are two election counts taking place at Medway Park tonight. There’s the Westminster byelection, caused by the defection of a Conservative to Ukip, and there’s a byelection in the Peninsula ward of Medway council - also caused by the defection of a Conservative to Ukip. Chris Irvine, who works for Mark Reckless, defected shortly after Reckless defected and he is trying to get re-elected under Ukip colours.

    Just to make things complicated, the Conservative candidate in the ward, Ron Sands, was the English Democrats candidate in Rochester in the 2010 general election. He joined the Conservatives relatively recently.

    The turnout in the council byelection was 54.87%, and 5,928 votes were cast.

    Updated

    For those interested, here’s more on Emily Thornberry’s background. It’s from a Guardian feature from 2009.

    Although she only entered parliament in 2005, Thornberry has been a Labour member since she was 17. Her parents, a teacher and a law professor at the LSE, divorced when she was seven. She remembers the bailiffs who ejected them from their home, and moving with her mother and siblings to social housing in Guildford. They were raised on benefits, secondhand clothes, free school dinners, food parcels; often, she says, they couldn’t afford to heat the house. Her mother became a Labour councillor and later a mayor; she joined the party, she says, because “it wasn’t fair that things had been so hard”.

    She failed the eleven-plus, went to a secondary modern, and had to do courses to get enough A-levels to go to Kent University, where she read law (she met her husband at law school, over a game of bridge).

    Now we’ve got the confirmed turnout figures, I’ve revised the likely figures for the parties bases on the share of the vote figures doing the rounds. (See 12.36am.) The new figures are:

    Ukip: 17,250

    Conservatives: 14,050

    Labour: 6,800

    Ukip majority: 3,200

    I’ve revised the figures up/down to the nearest 50.

    The turnout is very similar to the turnout in the Clacton byelection, where it was 51.13%.

    The turnout is 50.67%, the acting returning officer, Neil Davies, has announced.

    Here’s Labour’s Chris Bryant on Emily Thornberry.

    I think the first rule of politics is you respect the voters and by Emily’s own admission her tweet clearly didn’t do that.

    I think she is a decent and honourable person. She did the right thing by apologising and now the right thing by resigning.

    The Labour party was founded on the basis that everybody should be treated equally and that’s why Emily herself has said it’s a bit of an own goal.

    Ukip 'heading for a majority of over 3,000'

    A new set of figures is doing the rounds.

    Ukip: 43%

    Conservatives: 35%

    Labour: 17%

    Assuming a 53% turnout, this would give a result looking like this.

    Ukip: 18,050

    Conservatives: 14,700

    Labour: 7,150

    Ukip majority: 3,350

    (I’ve rounded the numbers up/down to the nearest 50)

    And here’s the Labour activist and blogger Hopi Sen on Emily Thornberry.

    My colleague Dan Sabbagh says he’s heard that the Sun have bought up Dan Ware, the flag man.

    Here is some more comment from journalists on Emily Thornberry’s resignation.

    Alan Johnson, the Labour former home secretary, has just told the BBC’s This Week that Emily Thornberry was not the kind of person to sneer at someone living in an ordinary house. He said he did not know much about the story, but that he did not think it was a resignation issue. She “comes from a very poor background”, he said. She was brought up in a council house.

    In many ways she epitomises social mobility. She rose up to being a barrister ... I would not think that Emily Thornberry is a good example of someone who would [sneer at ordinary people].

    Updated

    Labour are saying the turnout seems to be 53%. It will be “a disastrous result for David Cameron in one of his safest seats,” a source said.

    Emily Thornberry said earlier that she posted a picture of the house with the England flags on Twitter to show people what Rochester was like. My colleague Shiv Malik has used Storify to show that Thornberry has a track record of posting pictures of buildings on Twitter.

    Sky’s Adam Boulton has more on the Lib Dem humiliation.

    In the Ukip camp there are some figures being bandied around putting Ukip at 49%, and the Tories on 32%. But they’re not based on what has been seen of the papers coming out of ballot box; they’re from a survey earlier in the day, and so it’s probably best to treat them with some caution.

    According to the BBC’s Nick Robinson, there are suggestions the Lib Dems could be beaten tonight by a former sex worker standing on a sexual freedom ticket.

    Chris Bryant, the Labour MP who is running the party’s campaign in Rochester, has jointed Tristram Hunt in expressing his proud, flag-loving credentials. Speaking to Radio 5 Live a moment ago, he was asked if he flew the England flag. He was a Welshman, he said, and he preferred the Welsh flag.

    I have worn the Welsh flag. I think it’s particular beautiful. Only one other country has had the same flag for 1,000 years.

    More on Emily Thornberry’s resignation.

    Patrick O’Flynn, the Ukip MEP, reveals that he flies the England flag outside his house during tournaments. He likes annoying Guardianistas.

    Here’s the Tristram Hunt quote from Newsnight in full.

    I think it’s very sad to lose a trusted and good colleague in the run-up to a general election. But we should also be very clear that we are hugely in favour in the Labour Party of people expressing pride in their national identity and national symbols.

    Dan Ware, the man whose England flags and white van were photographed by Emily Thornberry, to her cost, has been speaking to the Telegraph. He said that he voted Conservative in 2010, that he did not know there was a byelection on and that he thought Thornberry was a snob.

    Updated

    Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, told Newsnight that Labour was very much in favour of flags.

    (As someone said earlier, it’s all very Thick of It. Are you going to see Labour MPs flying the England flag outside their own homes. The way things are going, I wouldn’t rule anything out.)

    More on Emily Thornberry’s resignation.

    Philip Davies, the Conservative Eurosceptic, told Newsnight a few minutes ago that he did not think any more of his colleagues would defect to Ukip. He agreed with Nigel Farage “on almost everything”, he said. There might be some things he disagreed on, but he could not think of them, he said. He agreed with Farage on more issues than he agreed with David Cameron. But he would not join Ukip because he was a Conservative, he said.

    Emily Thornberry's resignation - Verdict from the Twitter commentariat

    And here is some Twitter comment on Emily Thornberry’s resignation from journalists.

    More on Emily Thornberry’s resignation.

    Here’s more on the Rochester resident who’s England flags have led to Emily Thornberry’s resignation.

    Here’s another turnout claim.

    Here’s some Twitter reaction to Emily Thornberry’s resignation.

    From Douglas Carswell, the Ukip MP

    From Michael Heaver, a Ukip campaigner

    From Sunder Katwala, former general secretary of the Fabian Society

    From Mark Ferguson, the LabourList editor

    From Kevin Maguire, the Daily Mirror columnist

    From Sean Kemp, a former aide to Nick Clegg

    Here’s how the Sun, the house journal of white van man, is reporting the Emily Thornberry story.

    Here’s Chris Bryant, the Labour MP managing the campaign in Rochester, on Emily Thornberry.

    Emily Thornberry resigns from shadow cabinet over white van tweet

    Emily Thornberry has resigned from the shadow cabinet.

    The Press Association has filed this.

    A senior Labour MP has resigned from Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet after her tweet of a house draped with England flags caused controversy on the day of the Rochester and Strood by-election.

    Islington South and Finsbury MP Emily Thornberry was accused of snobbery after posting the picture of the modern terraced house with three red and white Cross of St George flags - one bearing a West Ham United badge - and a white van parked in the drive, along with the message “Image from Rochester”.

    She apologised after being given a dressing-down by Mr Miliband and Labour later announced that she had resigned as shadow attorney general.

    In a statement released by the party, Ms Thornberry said: “Earlier today I sent a tweet which has caused offence to some people.

    “That was never my intention and I have apologised.

    “However I will not let anything distract from Labour’s chance to win the coming general election.

    “I have therefore tonight told Ed Miliband I will resign from the shadow cabinet.”

    Radio 5 Live are broadcasting about 10ft away from the Guardian executive suite in the press room (a table). Priti Patel, the Conservative Treasury, is being interviewed as I write, but she is not conceding defeat yet. “All I’m saying is that I’m not going to pre-judge the result at this stage,” she says. And Paul Nuttall, the Ukip deputy leader, is taking part in the discussion too. He would not declare victory. “We are confident, we are buoyant, [but] we are not going to count our chickens,” he said. He remembers the polls at the Heywood and Middleton byelection (which understated Ukip’s support), he said. “I don’t think polls are worth the paper they are written on when it comes to byelections,” he said.

    Sky’s Amber de Botton is hearing the turnout could be higher than it was in Clacton.

    Of course, that would increase the size of the projected Ukip majority.

    The Tories have already started dismantling their campaign HQ.

    This is from my colleague Ben Quinn

    And this is from my colleague Rowena Mason.

    Polls close - and Tories privately admit defeat

    The polls have just closed. And Tory sources are already effectively conceding defeat. This is what one of them told me a bit earlier.

    We have thrown everything at it but, in the Newark and Clacton byelections, the polls at the start proved reasonably accurate, and that’s where we’ve ended up here. It might move a few points, but that’s the situation.

    As you can see on the table I posted earlier (see 9.42am), all the polls here have shown Ukip ahead, with leads varying from nine points to 15 points.

    Labour sources are even more emphatic. They are predicting that Ukip will get about 45% of the vote, the Tories 37/38/39% and that they will be squeezed down to about 10% or 11%.

    And Ukip? As Rowena Mason and Madeline Ratcliffe reveal, they were in jubilant mood earlier. But, on the record, they are not declaring victory yet. A spokesman told me:

    We felt that we put in a strong ground game today to make sure that the enthusiasm on the doorstep turns into votes in the ballot box, but no one is taking anything for granted.

    A Ukip source said the turnout was probably a bit lower than in the Clacton byelection, where it hit 51%.

    The number of voters in the constituency is 79,163. Assuming a turnout of 45%, and assuming that the Labour figures are right and that Ukip get 45% and the Tories 38%, Ukip would be heading for a majority of around 2,500.

    List of byelection candidates

  • Here are the candidates in the byelection. There are 13. It’s not a record, but it is unusually high.

  • Mike Barker, Independent
  • Christopher Challis, Independent
  • Hairy Knorm Davidson, Official Monster Raving Loony party
  • Jayda Fransen, Britain First
  • Stephen William Goldsbrough, Independent
  • Clive Gregory, Green party
  • Geoff Juby, Liberal Democrats
  • Naushabah Khan, Labour
  • Nick Long, People Before Profit
  • Dave Osborn, Patriotic Socialist party
  • Mark Reckless, UK Independence party
  • Charlotte Rose, Independent
  • Kelly Tolhurst, Conservative

    • Key data

    For background, here is some of the key data you need to follow the results.

    Result in the 2010 general election

    Conservatives (Mark Reckless): 49.1% (23,604)

    Labour: 28.4% (13,651)

    Lib Dems: 16.2% (7,800)

    English Democrats: 4.6% (2,182)

    Greens: 1.5% (734)

    Conservative lead: 21 points

    Conservative majority: 9,953

    (I’ve taken the percentage figures from Dods parliamentary companion. They are marginally different from the ones in Wikpedia for some reason.)

    Byelection polls

    Survation for the Mail on Sunday on 4 October

    Ukip: 40%

    Conservatives: 31%

    Labour: 25%

    Lib Dems: 2%

    Greens: 1%

    Ukip lead: 9 points

    ComRes on 21 October

    Ukip: 43%

    Conservatives: 30%

    Labour: 21%

    Lib Dems: 3%

    Greens: 2%

    Ukip lead: 13 points

    Survation on 28 October

    Ukip: 48%

    Conservatives: 33%

    Labour: 16%

    Greens: 1.7%

    Lib Dems: 1%

    Ukip lead: 15 points

    Ashcroft on 10 November

    Ukip: 44%

    Conservatives: 32%

    Labour: 17%

    Greens: 4%

    Lib Dems: 2%

    Ukip lead: 12 points

    Normally not much happens news-wise between 7am and 10pm on the day of a byelection. Even though Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has described today’s vote in Rochester as the most important byelection for 30 years, no one was expecting a proper story before the results came out.

    But today the gods of news have provided - thanks to Emily Thornberry. The Labour MP, and shadow attorney general, was in the constituency today campaigning and she posted this on Twitter.

    Emily Thornberry's tweet
    Emily Thornberry’s tweet. Photograph: @EmilyThornberry/PA

    It may look like an innocuous exercise in photo-journalism, but critics have accused her of snobbery (the fact that she is MP for Islington South and Finsbury doesn’t help), Twitter has gone bonkers, Ed Miliband is allegedly furious too and poor Emily has been forced to apologise.

    Here’s the Guardian story with all the details. And here’s Thornberry’s apology, which is something of a first; I can’t remember an MP being made to apologise before just for posting a picture.

    Here are two other Rochester developments today.

    I’m now at Medway Park, a large leisure centre in Gillingham where the count is taking place. Polling stations close at 10am. All the opinion polls conducted here have shown Ukip well ahead, and so Mark Reckless, the former Conservative, is almost certain to become Ukip’s second elected MP when the result comes in around 3/4am tomorrow.

    Reckless’s victory would not be a surprise. But it would still be significant moment in the Ukip insurgency which is disrupting politics, and could even dismantle conventional two-party politics.

    I’ll be covering all the action as the results come in.

    If you want to read what happened earlier, do take a look at our polling day live blog. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

    Updated

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