Mark Reckless - Phoney Welshman

Few departures from Parliament were less regretted than that of UKIP’s monotonous and dislikable Mark Reckless, who won a by-election in the Rochester and Strood constituency but lost last May after the Tories rightly stuck with their candidate, smart and enthusiastic local businesswoman Kelly Tolhurst. Reckless’ sole claim to Parliamentary fame was that he once got himself so pissed he was unable to make it to the voting lobby.

And here, representing the "Kick refugees off the M4" Party, we have one professional piss artist, and one who is a mere amateur

The General Election, sadly for voters in one part of the country, was not the end of Mark Reckless, as a glance at his Twitter feed confirms: his home location is now confirmed as “Rochester and Caerphilly”. That’s an interesting one: Reckless, representing a party that is hot on going after foreigners, is now pretending to have some affiliation with Wales. One wonders if his knowledge of their National Anthem is better than John Redwood’s.

It gets worse for voters in the Principality: Reckless has not only “been appointed Director of Policy Development for UKIP Wales, a role that will see him writing the party's manifesto for next year's Welsh election”, he is also looking to get a seat in the Welsh Assembly Government. As the BBC has told, “Ex-MPs Mark Reckless and Neil Hamilton, and Nigel Farage's head of media Alexandra Phillips are all applying to stand as regional list candidates”. What an unappealing trio that makes.

Reckless was rejected by the voters in the constituency he had represented for the previous five years. Hamilton was ejected from one of the Tories’ safest seats, Tatton, over his propensity to accept used notes in plain envelopes from Mohammed “you can call me Al” Fayed, after the Guardian had described him as “A liar and a cheat”. Hamilton had previously tried to get himself nominated as a UKIP Parliamentary candidate.

This English incursion has not gone down too well with the locals. The Beeb noted that “One former candidate, who did not want to be named, told BBC Wales he was ‘extremely angry’ and he and others were considering quitting the party over the way the selection is being run … Another said if Mr Reckless, Mr Hamilton and Ms Phillips were selected they would ‘go down like a lead balloon’ with voters”.

I’ll go further: while some reports suggest that UKIP will win seats in all regions of Wales through a strong showing at the ballot box, and the proportional representation of the list system, the reality of recent months is that the party’s poll numbers have declined across the UK, and that fielding outsiders in Wales might make matters worse.

It won’t help that Reckless, far from being in the same chummy and charismatic vein as party leader Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, is dull as ditchwater and sounds like Monty Python’s boring chartered accountant Arthur Putey. And he’s got no connection with Wales, except that he would rather like the taxpayers there to pay for him to be back in some kind of Parliament. Even if it is called the Senedd.

Mark Reckless is a phoney. Hopefully the voters of Wales will see through the opportunist Kipper. And all his equally opportunist pals.