Tory MPs who pander to hard-line Eurosceptics in the hope of dissuading UKIP from putting up candidates against them in the next election are set to be disappointed. UKIP leader Nigel Farage has just announced on 18Doughty Street that UKIP will put candidates up against Tories whatever their views on Europe.

Previously, Farage had stated that UKIP would not stand against signatories to the anti-European "Better Off Out" campaign, contrary to the wishes of a substantial proportion of his party. Had his U-turn taken place 18 months ago, then, in my home town of Shipley, Labour's Chris Leslie would have defeated Better Off Out signatory Philip Davies at last year's general election.

UKIP estimates that there were 21 constituencies where the decision of UKIP to stand resulted in the Conservatives failing to win the seat.

Whatever the accuracy of these estimates, the deision to stand everywhere means that there is no point in Tory MPs pandering to them. Rather, they will need to stand up to them and demolish their arguments. But don't count on it: many of them have spent so long parroting UKIP that they wouldn't know how to put a reasonable fact-based pro-European argument together!

Perhaps that is why Farage boldly claims that UKIP will be the largest party after the 2009 European Elections, based on the (rather questionable) logic that, having doubled its share of the vote in the past two European elections, achieving this again would give it 32 per cent of the vote in 2009.

This is slightly at odds with the party's declining membership (down from 27,000 at the height of the Kilroy media frenzy to a mere 16,000). This averages at a mere 20 per constituency and would seem to indicate that, with Europe not currently at the top of the political agenda, UKIP's strategy is basically to attract disaffected right-wing Conservatives.

Still, he did at least have the honesty to admit that "UKIP is good at raising money for campaigns" - but Paul Sykes's millions won't turn UKIP into a credible political party!