Mark Reckless, the UK Independence party (Ukip) candidate in Thursday’s Rochester and Strood byelection, has suggested some immigrants from Europe could be asked to leave the country if Nigel Farage’s party got into government and took Britain out of the EU.
The former Conservative MP, whose defection triggered the byelection, indicated that EU migrants who had lived in the UK for a long time would be considered sympathetically but others might only be allowed to stay for a transitional period.
His remarks were challenged by the Labour candidate, Naushabah Khan, who is herself the daughter of immigrants.
“Where would you stop, Mark? My family are migrants, are we going to say they need to go back as well?” she asked during an ITV hustings aired on local news on Tuesday night.
Reckless made the comments when he was challenged to spell out what would happen to a Polish plumber if Ukip had its way and Britain left the EU.
“I think in the near term we’d have to have a transitional period, and I think we should probably allow people who are currently here to have a work permit at least for a fixed period,” he said.
Asked again whether this would mean a Polish plumber and his family could be deported, Reckless said: “People who have been here a long time and integrated in that way I think we’d want to look sympathetically at.”
He stressed that Ukip’s focus was on how to control numbers of new migrants and creating a system that did not discriminate in favour of EU migrants against non-EU migrants,
The issue of immigration continues to dominate the campaign in Rochester and Strood, along with the NHS and local primary schools, ahead of the vote on Thursday.
The polls and bookmakers suggest Reckless is the clear favourite to win, despite David Cameron promising to throw the kitchen sink at the seat to hold it for the Conservatives.
It emerged on Tuesday that the prime minister had been berated by his own candidate, Kelly Tolhurst, over the “hurt” caused by immigration to her area and the need for “action, not just talk” on controlling the number of new arrivals.
In a leaflet distributed to voters, the 36-year-old businesswoman wrote how she would go straight to the prime minister and “demand something is done” if she won the byelection.
The officially-approved flyer, headlined “Kelly talks”, appears to be an attempt by the Conservatives to portray their candidate as someone with Ukip-style views on immigration that take a tougher line than her party and Cameron himself.
“I wanted to bring the prime minister to this constituency to show him that uncontrolled immigration has hurt this area. I told him we need action, not just talk.”
Another Conservative leaflet appears to link immigration and fear of crime.
It says: “Most people I know here have worked hard their lives, played by the rules and paid their fair share, but we sometimes struggle to access the services we need because of uncontrolled immigration. Others don’t feel safe walking down the high street of our town.”
Conservative MPs have been told to make at least three visits, although some have made only fleeting appearances.
The prime minister on Wednesday made his fifth visit to the north Kent constituency, stressing four times that Tolhurst was a “strong local candidate” and warning that a vote for Ukip would take the country a step closer to the “instability, insecurity and the danger of Ed Miliband” in Downing Street.
The Tories are braced for the possibility of more defections if Reckless wins, especially given that any switchers would probably not have to fight a byelection this close to next May.
Asked what he would say to any Conservative MP planning to defect to Ukip, Cameron said this would be “entirely counterproductive” as only he could deliver an EU referendum.
Labour, which is likely to come third in the contest, on Tuesday said Cameron was failing in a “must-win seat for the Tories to be in government after the next election”.
Lucy Powell, Labour’s new chief election co-ordinator, said it was the kind of seat that her party could only win if it was heading for a 1997-style victory at the general election.
“For us it’s a landslide seat, not a majority seat,” she said.
Although Labour held the seat of Medway for 13 years until the last election, Powell said the demographics since a boundary change made it much less favourable to Labour.
“In byelections you tend to get squeezed outside the two main contenders. Here you are seeing that squeeze (for Labour) as the third party in this contest,” she said.
