A second top Kipper has defected to the Tories in two days, just as UKIP conference gets underway in Bournemouth. Alexandra Phillips, who used to be an aide to Nigel Farage and was head of media at the party’s HQ, says it is “time to go home”. She tells Guido:

“After watching UKIP tragically turn in on itself for the past year I felt that I had personally and professionally outgrown the party. When Theresa May became Prime Minister and immediately embarked on promoting a policy reintroducing selective education to build social mobility, assenting to explorative fracking for future energy security and approaching Brexit with a pragmatism and determination I find admirable, I knew it was time to go home.”

UKIP having a bit of an existential crisis at the moment…