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One Charles Tunnock is said to be of the view that UKIP supporters are “ready to come back” to the Tories.

Well, they have to go somewhere, now that UKIP is on the brink of collapse. But what makes him think that any more than half of them were ever Tories in the first place? At the last European Elections, the combination of their vote and the Tories’ gives far too high a total to constitute simply the natural Tory vote in Scotland, in Wales, in London, any of the Northern regions, either of the Midland regions, or the West Country.

The way is open for the re-emergence of the party of the Attlee Government’s refusal to join the European Coal and Steel Community on the grounds that it was “the blueprint for a federal state”. Of Gaitskell’s rejection of European federalism as “the end of a thousand years of history” and liable to destroy the Commonwealth. Of the 66 Labour MPs who voted against Maastricht. And of the every single Labour (and Lib Dem) MP who voted against the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies every year between 1979 and 1997.