An all-female cabinet? Insert your own joke here

I wonder what Jacques Derrida would have made of the new leader of the UK Independence party? In the philosopher’s typically readable and sensible tract On the Name, Derrida muses: ‘The name: What does one call thus? What does one understand under the name of name? And what occurs when one gives a name? What does one give then?’ All good questions, Jacques. The new leader of Ukip is called Dick Braine. I expect he will prefer, perhaps insist, upon being known as ‘Richard’. Or perhaps this is the way Ukip intends to continue, with its rapidly changing leaders henceforth each chosen for an apt and mildly offensive nomenclature: Bob Wankpuffin, Vicky Shitgibbon and so on. Why do they go on, now that they have been eclipsed by the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Ukip party? Pique? Nothing else to do with their time? Existential despair?

The Green party, meanwhile, is led by two metropolitan posh and youngish Londoners, as you might expect, but its most formidable politician is the vaguely reptilian Caroline Lucas — who, perhaps unfairly, I sometimes imagine swallows live small family pets, such as guinea pigs or gerbils.