WHAT a virulent outbreak of Farage fever that was. An optimistic person might hope the symptoms won’t last long, but this complaint does leave a nasty rash.

Last week we suffered from a double-dose, so there is still a fair bit of scratching going on. A strong showing in the local elections (where they were held) was followed by a storming victory in the European elections, which saw UKIP finishing above Labour and the Conservatives.

Some will be cheered by such a turnaround; others – and believe me on this – will feel that a sink-hole just opened up in their souls.

These results tell us something about what sort of a country some people want to live in: a suspicious, slightly nasty country, deeply conservative, wary of foreigners and “otherness” in general, and ready to blame too many of our problems on immigration, Europe, and almost everything on the other side of the Channel in general, from the smelly cheese onwards.

After the local elections, a former Tory turned UKIP voter from Somerset was interviewed on the BBC radio news. He was asked what would make him vote Tory again. “Only if they shut the doors to this country,” he said, chewing a piece of straw (sorry, the cliché generator in my brain just popped that last bit in when I wasn’t looking).

This is the sort of thing UKIP voters say. But just think about this for a moment. No country anywhere can simply close its borders and bar entry to all foreigners forever. And any country which did this would condemn itself to self-inflicted obscurity in a stagnant swill of small-mindedness.

Such silliness also rests on the idea that there is a pure Englishman or woman among us, rather than a race and a country made strong by the acceptance of others who have arrived here throughout history.

One of the striking aspects of UKIP is its mixture of what might be seen as hurt and arrogance. Supporters of Nigel Farage’s party like to suggest that they are being conspired against by the establishment and the media, while at the same time enjoying an almost free ride from the newspapers and the TV political editors.

If UKIP is being slurred by an establishment plot, the establishment (whatever that is) must be pretty incompetent at plotting.

The BBC coverage of the first outbreak of Farage fever after the local elections might almost have been written to a script supplied by Mr Farage himself – who, incidentally, as a wealthy public schoolboy former banker is a pretty unlikely sort of rebel to the common man’s cause.

The growth of UKIP over the past 20 years has certainly been impressive, and there is no doubt that the party’s success at present is largely down to the political brio of Farage himself. With little to hand other than a pint of beer and few policies to speak of, he has used his rather peculiar charisma to build a party. Enough people despair at the behaviour of the main parties, or feel in general that modern life is rubbish, for his support to have grown in the over-heated vacuum of today’s politics.

Now Mr Farage tells us that the UKIP fox has entered the Westminster hen-house. This is a telling metaphor in that foxes tend to kill for the sake of it in such situations, don’t they?

What does all this mean for Britain? We won’t have any idea until the General Election. My half-educated guess is that UKIP will poll round ten per cent of the vote next year – enough to influence the result, without necessarily translating into much actual power, but sufficient, to descend into Farage-speak, to make the Westminster hens nervous.

As for Europe, now more parts of Britain are represented by members of a party dedicated to destroying the parliament they attend, while being paid handsomely out of public funds to pursue their vendetta. It seems an odd way for Britain to be represented in Europe.