So UKIP are going to cut and run from their name and call themselves “Independence Party”. I suppose “UKIP” has built up too many bad connotations. “Independents” sounds better, and perhaps they are intending to claim the several hundred Independent councillors across the country as theirs!

Their leader, Farage, is quoted in the Telegraph saying it is “time to campaign on more than just immigration and withdrawal from the European Union and move to wider themes of national and local independence, deregulation and tax cuts”.

"Local independence"?! For where? Dulwich? Liverpool? Hull? Perhaps the Scottish nationalists are not, after all, the main threat to the unity of the UK!