I imagine that The Eternal Leader will be lining up his field guns for a mass execution of dissenters. I suspect that the gilt has worn off the Farage gingerbread. You can be a dictator when you are winning, but once you lose the magic dust, once your party gets fed up with your thin skinned snarling tantrums the circling sharks will sniff your blood and come in for the kill. The time for the defenestration of Farage is when the public finally cotton on to the fact that his bonhomied, hail-fellow-well-met is an artifice. Look at his eyes when he laughs. Dead. He is the Archie Rice of British politics.

To take on Douglas Carswell on a matter of principle is an act of insanity. Trying to trouser £650,000 quid a year off the taxpayer is a jape too far. The British public probably secretly approve of the Kippers plundering the Brussels coffers, but they draw the line at them slurping from our trough. Short money is given purely for Parliamentary activity. I have always wondered how long Carswell could put up with Farage’s posturing. I would imagine the time will soon come when he renounces UKIP and sits as an independent praying that the Tories will take him back in 2020.

Patrick O’Flynn’s broadside make Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech a pean of praise. I suspect he was itching to deliver it since his economic policy was snatched away from him and he was publicly humiliated. Patrick is a very big and dangerous fish in a small pond. He, as former political editor of the Express, is a Westminster insider. He is an expert in where to plant the poisoned daggers. And this morning’s stiletto will be the first of many. He also has the ear of Richard Desmond whose £1 million pound investment has not produced a yield.

And what of Suzanne Evans? She has just had the leadership stolen from her in the most cynical and brazen way. She is nobodies fool. She must be smarting. In the interests of unity they might just stick with him until after the referendum. But I doubt it. His card is marked. The plotting has begun. I’ll give him six months. Tops.