Isabel Hardman

The Tories are bracing themselves for another defection to Ukip which may or may not come today or in the next few days. MPs and whips have been chasing after Adam Holloway and Chris Kelly as the figures who seem the most at risk, and have been extracting the sort of point blank denials that Mark Reckless claims to have never been asked for. Daniel Hannan has been denying again that he is leaving his party, while another rumour is doing the rounds that the next defection could be from a London Conservative working with Boris, rather than the Commons or the European Parliament. MPs are angry and determined to put as much pressure on Reckless as possible, not least because many of his colleagues feel betrayed.

Two of the brightest rising stars in the Conservative party, Sajid Javid and Liz Truss, addressed the Tory conference. After an angry day yesterday where Grant Shapps and the PM furiously attacked Ukip and their backbench colleagues piled in to savage Mark Reckless, the pair needed to use their slow to re-focus party minds on fighting Labour in the general election. They are both well-equipped for such a task: Javid started his speech with a passage on his values as a British Tory, then moved onto attacking the snobbery he encountered from the Labour Party when he was appointed Culture Secretary, and Ken Livingstone's comments that he saw Javid as a Pakistani and a banker. Javid responded: 'well, Ken, I'm British.

There's a funny mood at this Tory conference. It has more energy than the Labour conference, but partly that energy is anger at Mark Reckless' defection, rather than enthusiasm. MPs and advisers are jittery that another defection will come at another terribly inconvenient moment. A third MP leaving the party will suggest real momentum. So George Osborne's task when he speaks a little later this morning is to turn the energy that's buzzing about the hall into enthusiasm for government. The Labour conference, for all its desire to get the Tories out of office, lacked that sincere excitement about the idea of the party being in charge. The Tories need to show that they're not running out of ideas or exhausted by government, but are keen for a majority government.

Mark Reckless has been talking about moving to Ukip for months, those who know him say. It was only in the last two weeks that he decided he was definitely defecting, and only in the past few days that more people working for the party knew what was happening. Still, they managed to keep it under wraps to the extent that some journalists had gone home early, dismissing the reports of defections as overexcited chatter. The hall was gobsmacked when he appeared.

Mark Reckless has just left the Conservative Party and joined Ukip. He is announcing his defection on the stage at the party's conference to huge cheers. listen to ‘Podcast special: Mark Reckless defects to Ukip’ on audioBoom Reckless says it is the leadership of the Tory party that is holding the country back — Isabel Hardman (@IsabelHardman) September 27, 2014 This is horrendous for the Tories — Isabel Hardman (@IsabelHardman) September 27, 2014 More to follow...

As reported earlier this week, a group of Conservative MPs are keen to get English votes for English laws sorted as soon as possible. Bill Cash has sent William Hague a change to the standing orders of the House of Commons which would enforce this principle immediately. He has also written to party colleagues asking for their support on this, and says he has heard sympathetic noises from the party leadership on the idea too (although it depends who you talk to as to how sympathetic the noises sound). Cash told Coffee House that it was imperative that the government avoided bringing in EVEL through legislation as it would almost certainly end up with a Supreme Court challenge.

Not long after John Bickley had appealed to Ukip delegates to help him win in Heywood and Middleton, Nigel Farage conceded that it wasn't going to happen. In a briefing with journalists after his speech (the Ukip leader is very generous with his time for the London-based media establishment, far more so than any other leading politician), he said: 'I think it's too big a mountain to climb in that short a space of time, and I think the Labour party is saying that because they've got a very divided local party, they're not happy with the candidate, they can't get anyone out to canvass, and when they put the coaches on to go from the hall in Manchester to the office in Heywood, only 23 people got on one... they were expecting hundreds.

What voters want is a renationalisation of the railways, policies that hit the rich harder, a mansion tax and definitely not an abolition of inheritance tax. This isn't a belated write-up of one of the further left fringes of the Labour conference in Manchester: it's the ideas of a group of Ukippers who gathered this lunchtime in Doncaster to discuss how to attract Labour voters. Led by Ian Dexter, a party member who has no formal role in writing the manifesto but who was given the official 'How to win the crucial Labour Vote' lunchtime slot, the fringe sounded at times more like a Socialist Workers' Party meeting than an apparently libertarian party trying to entice Labour voters over. This included spending more on healthcare, housing , manufacturing, and higher wages, he argued.

Douglas Carswell has just finished speaking at the Ukip conference and his fellow by-election contender John Bickley, who is standing in Heywood and Middleton on the same day, has just given a short address too. He told the hall that 'the dam is ready to burst' and asked for members to pop in before they went to Clacton. Labour sources were last week claiming that their chance of holding onto the seat was looking shaky, which was read by many as an attempt to get their activists and MPs to take the fight seriously. But I hear that there is a fierce debate going on in Ukip between those who want to divert resources from Clacton to Heywood in order to give the fight a real go, and those who think it best to focus efforts on Carswell's seat.