No Independence

And so UKIP declares itself once and for all a staging post back to the Conservative Party for people who have left it over the last 20 years.

It has expressed its preference for the only one of the three main parties to have ruled out a referendum on continued EU membership, and promised that in return for a commitment to such a referendum - not any actual repatriation of power, just a referendum - it will stand down its candidates against MPs of that party, though of no other. Since the list of the Conservative MPs in question is no doubt as good as complete, David Cameron is confronted by the fact of a party within his party.

UKIP has quite an interesting, if a highly derivative, version of Ed Miliband's rather more robust energy policy, promising a  return to coal, gas and nuclear power. That is no less a matter of national sovereignty than the EU, yet there is no suggestion of standing down even against any Conservative MP who might be patriotic enough to adopt it, admittedly as unlikely a prospect as anyone could possibly imagine. UKIP is increasingly dominated by one of those "Friends of Israel" organisations, again no less a matter of national sovereignty.

A pressure group to secure nothing more than a referendum on EU membership, and that from the Conservative Party alone, to which its members could therefore go home. No wonder that it has never won a seat.