David Cameron must shoulder some of the blame for Mark Reckless's defection, after falling out with him over the issue of Europe During the run-up to last week’s Ukip conference, Nigel Farage was spotted going into an elegant Georgian townhouse close to a former site of the Bedlam hospital, one of the first British mental institutions, where the gentry used to amuse themselves by laughing at the inmates. Mark Reckless, a bespectacled 6ft 3in economist and barrister who became a Tory MP at the last election, arrived around the same time. It was in the privacy of the £2 million house that they plotted their own modern-day public spectacle: the humiliation of David Cameron on the eve of the Tory Party conference.
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Farage met Reckless before Ukip conference in house of Malcolm Pearson
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A former Tory, Lord Pearson defected to Ukip himself in 2007 over Europe
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Pearson is also good friends with Douglas Carswell, the first Tory defector
They often met for drinks at @placeholder’s home as they toyed with the idea of joining Ukip.