When Mark Reckless defected to UKIP in 2014 there was almost a visceral reaction from Conservatives in Rochester and Strood and more widely across Kent.

It wasn't hard to find incandescent Conservatives queuing up to denounce him for what they saw as a naked act of betrayal. It was genuinely raw anger, too.

The worst part, according to his many critics, was that he had done something that he had persistently denied he would do.

Even the then Prime Minister David Cameron got in on the act allegedly saying that he had betrayed activists who had worked to get his “fat arse” on the Commons benches.

The level of fury amongst Conservative was so great that they were determined not to simply roll over and allow him to take the Rochester and Strood seat in a by-election.

They failed, despite a campaign that saw the Prime Minister himself visit the constituency no less than five times to drum up support.

For UKIP the defection and the subsequent by-election victory seemed - at the time - a decisive moment for the party.

With victory came confident predictions from the then leader Nigel Farage that this was just the start of bigger things.

A few months after securing victory, however,Mark Reckless lost the seat at the general election, as the Conservatives had predicted.

Although UKIP continued to be a powerful force, not least in the EU referendum, looking back it can be seen - along with Nigel Farage’s failure to win South Thanet - as the point at which the party began slowly to unravel.

Mark Reckless continues to be reviled by his former Kent colleagues who are in no mood to forgive and forget.

If you want a measure of their enduring anger, take the words of the Ashford MP Damian Green, as fair minded a politician as you are likely to get.

Asked about what he thought of Mark Reckless, he rather artfully said that his mother had always told him that if he could find nothing nice to say about a person, then he should say nothing at all and therefore he would be saying nothing at all.

A political reconciliation seems very, very far away - whatever alliance he has made with the Welsh Conservatives.

Perhaps more significantly, Mark Reckless’ political realignment reinforces a view that Ukip is on a downward descent - ironically, a victim of its own success.

And ahead of the county council election, his move has indirectly reminded voters that the party he defected to in 2014 has achieved its main objective.

That in turn may mean that its previous supporters may not have the same inclination to get out and vote, the last thing any party wants.