UKIP royally screwed up the announcement of where Nigel Farage is going to stand at the general election, so it’s not really a surprise that no one seems to have noticed Farage has today confirmed it will be in South Thanet. The UKIP leader has for the first time admitted what we all suspected at the bottom of his column on the Indy’s website today:

“My phone was rather busy the other day when one of the members of Ukip’s Thanet South branch decided to tell a newspaper that I was standing in that constituency in 2015. The situation is that there will be a hustings in the constituency the week after next at which the branch will decide who they wish to represent them.

I have thrown my hat in the ring, but so have others, including a top-class barrister and friend of mine. It may seem silly to some that the leader of a party would have to go through the process of being approved and selected but, I assure you, rank means nothing in Ukip.

Just as I applied to stand again as a Ukip MEP and went through the same assessment as other candidates and faced the vote of the membership with everyone else, I believe that the power to select the person they will be pounding the streets in all weathers for lies with the members of the branch themselves.

Of course I think I stand a good chance of winning. I have fought the seat before and it is in my home county of Kent and an area I have represented in the European Parliament since 1999. But with Ukip members, nothing is ever for certain. And that’s just fine by me.”

The Tory candidate is former UKIP leader Craig Mackinlay…