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TORY PM David Cameron was braced for a miserable night yesterday as his party’s right-wing revolt to turn into a by-election nightmare in Clacton.
Douglas Carswell was set to canter home to become Ukip’s first ever MP after switching parties last month.
But Ed Miliband was poised to celebrate his party holding off a determined Ukip challenge to retain the Heywood and Middleton seat, where the Tories are expected to finish third.
In a dry-run of Labour’s general election strategy, Unite-backed candidate Liz McInnes has put the NHS front and centre of her campaign.
And she was set to claim almost 50 per cent of votes yesterday, according to a poll commissioned by millionnaire Tory donor Michael Ashcroft.
Pollsters had made Mr Carswell the unassailable 1/100 favourite to claim Clacton, leaving tetchy Tories firing desperate pot shots at their defector on polling day.
Tory press officers labelled a photo of Mr Carswell outside a polling station a “cynical stunt.”
“He can’t vote as doesn’t live in Clacton constituency,” they protested in social media post.
Nigel Farage savoured his party’s imminent breakthrough by posing with a pint in a local pub — and parading around the south coast town alongside a girl on horseback carrying a Ukip flag.
Top Tories admitted the battle was over before polls closed but local councillor Tim Young was putting up an energetic fight for Labour.
He said there were “masses of Labour activists getting out the vote” and reported he was receiving a “huge amount of support in Clacton today.”
