Nigel Farage to target "dozens of seats" in general election Sustained by a couple of pints of bitter at his victory party in the Tap'n"Tin nightclub and "42 minutes sleep," Nigel Farage emerged to declare that the UK Independence party was now ready to target "dozens of seats" at the general election in May. Clean-shaven and relatively fresh-faced after 24 hours of almost solid campaigning, Mr Farage held court in Ukip's office on Rochester high street, announcing that the "legacy parties are dying." The result of the Rochester and Strood by-election was another defining moment in the rise of populism in British politics, putting into stark relief the growing distrust of the old Westminster parties. Mark Reckless, the Tory MP who defected to Ukip in September, won the seat for his new party with a majority of just under 3,000 over the Tories, who believed they could halt the Ukip advance on the Medway. Labour's vote almost halved while the Liberal Democrats secured just 349 votes - less than 1 per cent of the total - said to be the worst by-election performance by a governing party. With Mr Reckless joining Douglas Carswell as the party's second MP, Mr Farage declined to say whether more Tories would defect, but appealed to five MPs to save their seats by donning a purple rosette. If you are a Conservative MP sitting on a small majority against Labour, the further north you go, the bigger this problem becomes. You know you have lost next year. The Conservative party is literally dying in the urban north," he said. The five MPs on the top target list are: Chris Kelly, in Dudley South; David Nuttall, in Bury North; Martin Vickers, in Cleethorpes; Nigel Mills in Amber Valley; and John Baron in Basildon and Billericay. But Michael Gove, Tory chief whip, said he was "100 per cent sure" that no other Tory MPs would switch to Ukip, amid general relief that the Rochester defeat did not spark widespread panic on the Conservative benches. Mr Gove said that, while Tory MPs had priced in a likely defeat to Ukip in recent weeks, Labour would be more despondent about the result, and the accompanying row over a "snobbish" tweet by frontbencher Emily Thornberry that appeared to mock "white van man" and led to her resignation. Mr Farage admitted he did not expect further defections until after Christmas, giving the prime minister some breathing space to make his own pitch to disaffected Tory voters next month with a long-awaited speech on immigration. Mr Cameron is being urged by close allies to hurry up and make the speech and then follow the dictum of Jim Messina, the party's US election strategist, that the Tories should focus on the economy. The prime minister is in advanced discussions with senior advisers about the detail in the immigration speech, as he tries to develop a line that is both robust and likely to be acceptable to other EU member states. As Mr Farage revelled in the centre of the media scrum, the Conservative party had deserted the pitch: Tory activists packed up their campaign office at the other end of the high street as the polls closed on Thursday night. The Rochester campaign highlighted the Tory party's fragility on the ground. One Tory MP claimed that he and colleagues were being sent to Kent from Westminster as "minimum wage leaflet deliverers because we haven't got any activists." But senior party figures consoled themselves on Friday that they had at least managed to whittle back Mr Reckless" majority from 9,953 as a Tory candidate in 2010 to just over 2,900 for Ukip. King John lost Rochester to an insurgency by rebel barons in 1215 but recaptured the town a few months later, after a prolonged siege and by slaughtering dozens of pigs and using their fat to burn down the defences. The tactics may be slightly different today, but Mr Cameron believes he can recapture the town from Ukip's self-proclaimed "people's army" at the general election.