A coup against Farage may be likely soon

Sources in the West Midlands tell me that An Independence From Europe is gaining members hand over fist from UKIP. This engagingly named party was set up by Mike Nattrass MEP to ensure that his party tops the ballot paper in all the nine English regions where it is standing, and according to my UKIP source, Nattrass could retain his seat at to 22nd May elections under his new colours. Well, the colours are purple, the same as UKIP, but you take the point, I'm sure.

Mike Nattrass is a popular bloke, but popularity is not enough to account for the number of MEPs and senior UKIP figures who are cheering him on behind the scenes. To understand that, I am told that about four or five years ago Nigel Farage ordered his contingent of MEPs not to employ their wives as aides in Brussels. Now it has emerged that he was doing exactly that with his own awfully wedded, and the knives are being sharpened even as I write.

Does that sound trivial to you, especially when we consider the main issue at stake, which is getting the UK out of the European Union? The problem is that as with all small parties the men with the big swinging dicks tend to go up against each other like stags in the rutting season.

Right now, an awful lot of wives who had once hoped to get a cushy number in Brussels to pay their dressmakers' bills are now fuming that their men did not do for them what Farage did for his wife. One can imagine to conversations that went on as wives accused their husbands of being incapable. Needless to say, comparisons would be drawn with Mrs Farage's husband who is, of course, a real man who loves his wife. You can write the script yourselves if you know anything about women.

So, big swinging dickery is now on with a vengeance. If An Independence From Europe does well in its West Midlands base, then you can expect a coup to be mounted against Farage as soon as the elections are over.

It will be presented as uniting the anti-EU movement again, without the presence of divisive individuals like Farage, but really is all about men with hard-ons who want to prove that they are not going to be humiliated by "Mr Shortarse and his German wife," to quote one of my sources directly.