Isabel Hardman

The Tories may have watched Douglas Carswell's re-entry into the House of Commons in silence, but he seems to be getting a reasonably warm reception from his old colleagues behind the scenes. He has already exchanged jokes and arranged to dine and drink with a number of them. For a few weeks this will send the whips into a spin, as they try to work out whether it really is just lunch, or a brewing defection. But it wasn't just Carswell who was nattering with Conservatives this afternoon. Nigel Farage, who watched his first elected MP re-join the Commons from a gallery, has also been talking to some of them. Philip Davies was spotted shaking Farage's hand in the members' lobby, while others tried to press the Ukip leader on the possibility that the Right may one day unite.

Why are the Conservatives so serene after losing the Clacton by-election and seeing their vote collapse in Heywood and Middleton? It is not that the party has finally decided endless fighting is no longer a good idea, but that it is holding its breath for the Rochester and Strood by-election. If Mark Reckless, the second Ukip defector, wins this, then the meltdown in David Cameron's party will make the Labour response this week look positively icy. The Tories had quickly accepted Douglas Carswell would win in Clacton and so there was little excuse for even their more febrile factions to panic.

The Tory whips are busy today, but not necessarily with fallout from the Clacton by-election. They have sent a message round to MPs saying the following: 'There is a possibility that there will be a business statement on Monday which will also affect whipping next week.' Some MPs have read this as a suggestion that they may be asked to vote on military action against Isis in Syria, which Number 10 has so far been reluctant to do. The Lib Dems have said they can't see what benefit British troops would bring to the situation Syria. But chances are that Monday's statement will relate to another event that's taken place while MPs were away.

Tonight Clacton is set to return the first elected Ukip MP to the House of Commons. The Conservatives have already tried to factor in Douglas Carswell's defection as something they can cope with - and this has been made quite a lot easier by the tribal anger that Mark Reckless provoked when he announced he was doing the same thing. But the consequences for Ukip of having an MP in terms of their appeal to the electorate are not so easily dismissed. They can now tell voters they really are a serious party, rather than a bunch of no-hopers. Nigel Farage sees it as a 'Krakatoa' moment. And one important impact it has had on the political narrative is that it is now much more difficult for critics to say that Ukip peaked in the European elections.

listen to ‘Podcast: Nick Clegg's speech’ on audioBoom.

In the past few years, Nick Clegg has come to blows with his party activists at his annual conference question-and-answer session over the policies his party has had to support while in government. The Deputy Prime Minister has, at times, grown rather grumpy as the grassroots harangue him on issues they wish he'd show more of a backbone on. But he's just emerged from today's Q&A entirely unscathed. The only point of difference was over assisted dying, which is a free vote for MPs anyway, and which Clegg disagrees with. But the Deputy Prime Minister didn't even need to defend what his party did to activists. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that the party is getting more comfortable with government, and of course the first few years would be rocky.

Danny Alexander clearly wanted to come across as casual and jovial for his speech to the Lib Dem conference. He wasn't wearing a tie. His top button wasn't done up. Neither were his cuffs because the Chief Secretary to the Treasury had, after years of politicians using it as a figure of speech, rolled up his sleeves. This sort of sartorial shift normally gets written up as a politician 'on manoeuvres', and Alexander did seem keen to appear a little different, a little more human, this time round. He even told the audience at one point that he was saying something 'with all my heart'. He had, though, scripted part of his speech for rather a different audience. 'The last time I addressed a crowd this large,' he said, looking out rather hopefully over a half empty auditorium.

Lib Dem conference rallies are always a little like spending Christmas with a family you don't know: quite baffling but rather endearing. There's the uncle who tells the same jokes every year (Paddy Ashdown, telling the conference that he'd been asked in the street by a 'little man' whether he 'used to be Paddy Ashdown' - mercifully the members found it hilarious, again), some confusing singing (an award-winning a cappella group who kept the delegates giggling by singing 'stuck in the middle'), a bit of sweariness (Ashdown, again, claiming the Libs were 'too nice' and didn't have any 'proper shits') and things that just don't make sense unless you're part of that family (a Lib Dem activist on stage telling the audience that she was 'starstruck to go campaigning with Baroness Ludford').