I’ve been right about Ukip predictions before, so here’s my latest one

Ukip’s conference last week featured some characteristically colourful characters, including a lady with a Nigel Farage tattoo on her arm (and, strangely, one of Robert Smith of The Cure on the other). Significantly, though, attendance was down on last year. Sebastian Payne asked what the point of the party is, now that the Brexit referendum is coming and will answer their existential question either way. Iain Martin at Cap X then predicted that the party had run its course.

It’s been a strange few months for the Kippers; a strong poll showing in May combined with a disappointing result, followed by Nigel Farage’s resignation and then un-resignation. Media attention has since focussed on the left’s own version of the ‘new politics’: Jeremy Corbyn’s new old Labour. Having grown from a libertarian single-issue protest party, Ukip has also become a victim of its own contradictions, with obvious ideological divisions between Red Ukip types like Patrick O’Flynn – who represent most of their voters – and the party’s only MP, the neo-Gladstonian liberal Douglas Carswell.