UKIP's Tweedledum and Tweedledee

I have often been struck by the uncanny similarity of Bannerman and Dartmouth. Physically they look very much alike, well fleshed I should say. Their views or should I say non-views are similar and one hears the same scurrilous Tory rumours about both. Dartmouth's mummy is the celebrated acid Raine as named by Diana Spencer. Nobody seems to know what claim Bannerman has to the name Campbell Bannerman.and what connection he has to the Liberal prime minister of that name. Mr Bannerman seems strangely reluctant to clarify this detail.

Both failed to make it in the Tory party defined as being selected for a safe Tory seat and both drained into UKIP via the plug hole in the Tory sink. Both sucked up to the great leader in the true Tory tradition and were rewarded with his patronage and a high place on UKIP's MEP slates and after their election both have taken to the EU like a duck to water endorsing their flexible political credentials  Bannerman by rejoining the Tory party and the other by his slavish support of Mr Farage's new earner, the Pan European UKIP party.

They encapsulate how UKIP is dominated by closet Torys eager to emerge from the closet and enjoy the munificence of the old Etonian Tory Sun King ,cast iron Dave, who might have been one's fag at Eton. Until UKIP rids itself of these people it will as Mr Bannerman observed not be a political party but a  Tory pressure group. Elections are won in the middle ground of British politics not on the playing fields of Eton.

To win on this ground UKIP needs to rid itself of its right wing buffers image and detoxify or should I say deFarage its brand into something the great mass of the UK electorate can identify with and vote for. That is not a load of Young Independence wannabee on the EU gravy train youf but people who have held real jobs with real responsibility to make something work who will put their country's interests first and last and who will work in the UK to achieve this goal. I was struck by something Greg Beaman said about Sinn Fein who refused to take up their parliamentary seats. Where are these people now? Well they are in government and where is Farage's Brussels based UKIP to be found ? In the bars  of Brussels where they will stay until they are eventually kicked out by a weary electorate recognising them for the freeloaders that they are.