Robert Jackson defects from the Conservatives

4.42.53pm GMT Mon 17th Jan 2005

Over the weekend Robert Jackson MP for Wantage defected from the Conservatives to Labour. Robert Jackson is the second Conservative MP to have defected this Parliament the other being Andrew Hunter of Basingstoke who defected to the DUP. Labour, of course, also had a defection away from them this Parliament when Paul Marsden of Shrewsbury and Atcham defected to the Liberal Democrats.

Politics in the House of Commons are obviously quite fluid. I would have though defecting from one political party to another must be one of the hardest things for a politician to do, but the regularity that it has been happening over the last few of Parliaments suggests that it is not (there have now been seven defections in the last decade).

The Conservatives now have two less MPs than they had in 2001 (without any by-elections) and the Labour Party three less - one through a defection and two by-election loses to the Liberal Democrats (Brent East and Leicester South)