Standing proudly beneath the magnificent keep of Rochester Castle - built by French invaders a little over nine and a half centuries ago - Mark Reckless presented the 22 men and women being sent forth to storm Medway Council on May 7.

The Ukip candidates gathered at Boley Hill on Saturday morning in preparation for a day spent touring the Medway towns, spreading the Ukip word with their poster van - and Mr Reckless said he was happy with team put together by Medway group leader Chris Irvine.

“We’re fielding candidates in every vacancy in Rochester and Strood,” he said. “It’s a good standing and there’s people here with a wide range of skills.”

“I wouldn’t criticise the Conservative councillors that have served on the council, but after a long period you need change.

“A lot of the Conservatives focus on defending what they’ve done, and defending the status quo - they’re reluctant to change anything.

“Our Ukip candidates are offering a breath of fresh air.”

And “fresh” was an apt word on Saturday morning, as the rain began to pour down on the Rochester and Strood candidate, much like the recent scorn poured on Ukip’s ideas by their detractors.

Did Mr Reckless support the Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s controversial comments about foreign HIV sufferers using up NHS resources to the detriment of British nationals?

Yes he did, he confirmed, but he added: “I think it’s a broader point than that - anyone visiting the country should have health insurance, in the same way we have to when we go abroad.

“We want people to be here for five years before they benefit from the NHS - it’s not an international health service. It’s right to debate some of the illnesses that are costing us a lot of money.”

But he added: “In some individual cases you’d make a decision - a refugee would be entitled to treatment.”

Behind him, the Ukip poster van preached on the same the subject - Ukip would put an “extra £3 billion” into the NHS, it said, along with the words “no privatisation.”

On the other side, the poster van declared “immigration is three times higher than the Tories promised” and Mr Reckless echoed the point, saying Ukip would aim to bring immigration back to “what was normal before the 1990s”, and cap the number of non-British nationals given work visas at 50,000.”

And with that, as the rain pelted down harder, the increasingly bedraggled group retreated back from the castle walls and dispersed into the towns to spread the word.