QUENTIN LETTS visits this week's UKIP by-election battleground, Rochester On the high-speed train from London to Rochester you pass a lorry graveyard â€" a scrap heap of old trucks and artics and buses. These sometime gleaming kings of the road, rusting and minus their headlights, may be a nasty reminder of transience to the Westminster politicians who have been whooshing down to the Rochester and Strood by-election campaign these past few weeks. Most political careers end in the crusher, after all. Will that happen to our main parties at Thursdayâ€™s by-election? The so-called anti-Establishment party Ukip is reckoned to be cruising to victory over the Conservatives, who themselves took this Kent seat in 2010. Labour won here in the Blair years, but they are trailing far behind. Rivals: Ukip's Mark Reckless (left) and Tory hopeful Kelly Tolhurst on the campaign trail near Kent yesterday The Lib Dems are nowhere â€" down to 2 per cent according to some estimates. Two per cent? Thatâ€™s weaker than Charlie Kennedyâ€™s mouthwash. George Osborne and William Hague visited yesterday for the Tories. Shadow Commons Leader Angela Eagle went for Labour (acid drop Angela charming the voters? â€" eek) while Ukip fielded their deputy leader, Paul Nuttall MEP. The expensive by-election was caused by sitting Tory MP Mark Reckless decamping to Ukip and seeking the immediate endorsement of the voters rather than wait for the General Election. Opinion polls have put him ten points ahead, but they also suggest the Tories could win it back in May, when voters may be more interested in who is going to be Prime Minister (Cameron or Miliband) rather than in who can give the System a kick up the gluteus maximus. Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne yesterday visited a factory called Masterhitch and focused on apprenticeships: cue hi-viz orange jackets and some ministerial pointing at machinery. They make digger buckets at Masterhitch, and Mr Osborne looked duly fascinated. Alongside him was the Toriesâ€™ candidate, Kelly Tolhurst, a big, strong lass with a forehead high as a hop pole and a soft, fruity Kent accent that may have been grown under one of the numerous polytunnels in the farming part of this constituency. They say a plum donâ€™t fall far from â€™er tree and fair Kelly, who has an engagingly lumbering gait and was stomping around the place in knee-high boots yesterday, was born local, lives local, talks local. End of. And says she would never want to be an MP elsewhere. Her dad ran a nearby boatyard and Mrs Tolhurst, 36, is herself a businesswoman, though she has the laugh of a Shepherd Neame barmaid. Oh, sheâ€™d be a wonderful adornment to the Commons, unlikely as it might seem at present. Leader Hague soon joined her for the briefest of visits, knocking on doors in a well-to-do street between Strood and the Hoo Peninsula. They must have managed all of ten doors together before Mr Hague had to head back to London for the dayâ€™s Commons business. Only two people were at home in the middle of the morning. A cock-up by the Tory planning people? Nay, said Mr Hague, it was proof of the Governmentâ€™s success in getting people back to work. If his other visits were as successful as this one, it means he shook ten voters by the hand. Is this sensible use of a Cabinet ministerâ€™s time? The man at No 48 seemed well disposed to the Tories while the chap at No 42 said he had â€˜no ideaâ€™ how he was going to vote. As Mrs Tolhurst walked away, however, he came out to clutch her arm and say â€˜if you do get in, make a differenceâ€™. Later I joined Mark Reckless on the streets of Marlowe Park, once solid Labour territory. â€˜Canâ€™t stop,â€™ cried one woman, â€˜Iâ€™m just doing my ironing.â€™ Slam went the door. Mark Reckless (centre) with Ukip deputy leader Paul Nuttall (right) as they canvas votes at a resident's door The expensive by-election was caused by sitting Tory MP Mark Reckless (left) decamping to Ukip and seeking the immediate endorsement of the voters rather than wait for the General Election An Indian restaurant chef told Mr Reckless he would indeed vote for him, but he seemed less sure when pressed for thoughts on what mattered to him politically. Sorry, gotta go. Door closed. Semi-retired optician Maurice Bainton, 69, was happier to talk. He told Mr Reckless at once that he was pro-Ukip. What issues were of concern to him? â€˜Immigration,â€™ he said. â€˜Thereâ€™s too much of it. Every shop seems to be full of Polish. I know I shouldnâ€™t say so but Iâ€™m of that generation.â€™ Mr Bainton disliked Labour because Gordon Brown had wrecked his pension. And the Tories? â€˜I donâ€™t mind David Cameron,â€™ he said. â€˜Heâ€™s turned the country around.â€™ He looked at Mr Reckless and apologised for this heretical view. At Ukipâ€™s headquarters in Rochester High Street, the name â€˜Cameronâ€™ generated angry muttering. The conundrum is this: Ukip exists in large part because of hatred of Cameron, yet the country at large likes Cameron more than it does the Tories. Mark Reckless (third from left) with other Ukip campaigners in Strood yesterday as they campaign for votes Reckless speaks to a resident in Strood in an attempt to win votes in the up-coming by-election on Thursday The premises was full of volunteers from elsewhere â€" one might almost say immigrants, but they were from places such as Devon and Oxfordshire and Chichester. So thatâ€™s all right, then. Among them was retired engineer and businessman Graham Jones, 62, who is standing for Ukip in Bognor Regis next May. He had been in the Tory party but never liked Mr Cameron. A well-spoken woman from Chichester said gay marriage had pushed her over the edge, if we can put it like that. â€˜It was the way he did it.â€™ For Catherine Lea, 64, a former parliamentary secretary (she worked for the likes of red-hot Tory Sir Nicholas Winterton, Treasury minister Andrea Leadsom, and ancient Leftie Sir Gerald Kaufman), the reason for joining Ukip was simply â€˜Europe â€" weâ€™ve had enough of itâ€™. It is an odd business, this by-election canvassing. Minibuses or taxis drop a squad of political types in Nowhere Street and they prowl with their clipboards and suits and fancy sales patter while householders squint through net curtains and refuse to answer the door, whatever party it might be. Kelly Tolhurst, Conservative candidate for Rochester and Strood, on the campaign trail in Cliff Wood Tolhurst, pictured with William Hague, leader of the House of Commons, posts leaflets through letterboxes Kelly Tolhurst, a big, strong lass with a forehead high as a hop pole and a soft, fruity Kent accent that may have been grown under one of the numerous polytunnels in the farming part of this constituency Her dad ran a nearby boatyard and Mrs Tolhurst, 36, is herself a businesswoman. She was able to knock on about ten doors in the well-to-do street before Hague had to disappear back to his day duties at the Commons Mr Hague was being followed by a distinctly unusual little chap who was holding a briefcase. Did it contain nuclear codes? Or the Hague packed lunch? Mr Reckless, meanwhile, was being assisted by a short, untidy lad who wore a red crucifix round the neck of his rain-soggy jumper. Perhaps it was there to be brandished if anyone mentioned gay marriage. Mr Reckless has a reputation as a B-grade Basil Fawlty, all lanky legs and a trainspotter-ish way with small talk, yet he seemed a gentle soul on the doorsteps. He has a habit of inserting little coughs of laughter into his conversation in a self-deprecating way, so that he will say â€˜if I am re-elected on Thursdayâ€™ and then do a little half-swallowed chuckle. From the small straw poll I conducted, Iâ€™d say immigration was the top concern â€" it was even raised by a Nigerian-born woman who summoned Mr Reckless and me into her home. As it happened, she did not know if she was pro or agin it. George Osborne yesterday visited a factory called Masterhitch in Strood and focused on apprenticeships Staff at the company, which makes digger buckets, talks Osborne and Kelly Tolhurst through the process Opinion polls have put Reckless ten points ahead, but they also suggest the Tories could win it back in May Mr Reckless and Mr Nuttall told her they were against Europeans being given preferential immigration deals. The implication may have been that they were pro-immigration from Africa, but I am sure they did not mean that. Nooo nooo. Outside Rochester cathedral I met a retired teacher who would only give her name as Margaret. She said she disliked Ukip intensely and would be voting Tory instead of her normal Lib Dem. A construction worker felt unable to give a considered opinion, mainly because he did not speak English. David Spicer, retired, said he was Ukip â€˜of courseâ€™ (he scuttled off without explaining himself). At a sweet shop in the High Street, an informal poll is being taken of customers. Counter assistant Daisy Young, 18, had the Tories one point ahead yesterday lunchtime. If there is a political fever in Kent at present it is last-week by-electionitis, with all its attendant symptoms of exhaustion, hyperbole and a wish among members of the public that the politicians and media would shut up and leave them alone.