Mark Reckless

Mark John Reckless (born 6 December 1970) is a British UK Independence Party (UKIP) politician. He was elected as the Conservative member of parliament for Rochester and Strood in the 2010 general election, joined UKIP in September 2014, won re-election as a UKIP member in November 2014, but lost his seat to the Conservatives in the May 2015 UK general election.

While a Conservative MP, Reckless was noted for his rebelliousness; he cast 56 votes against the whip between 2010 and 2014, making him the 13th most rebellious Conservative in the period. He led a rebellion of 53 Conservative MPs on the EU budget, which inflicted the first House of Commons defeat on the coalition government, although he served as a member (from November 2010) of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Education

Reckless was educated at Marlborough College before going up to Christ Church, Oxford, where he read philosophy, politics and economics. He then pursued postgraduate studies at Columbia Business School in the United States receiving an MBA. At Columbia, he studied alongside writer Jacob Appel and is the subject of several thinly-veiled anecdotes in Appel's satire, The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up.