Farage Fever swept the nation - but will Ukip wake up sweating?

Credit must go to the party for taking the local elections seriously

UKIP supporters celebrate as UKIP's Colin Guyton wins the Drybrook and Lydbrook seat, at the count in Oaklands Snooker Club in Cinderford, Gloucestershire (PA)

UKIP’s success in the local election show that either people don’t read what’s written on leaflets or if they do they don’t really care. With most promises being about national issues with the EU obviously featuring highly but Equal Marriage and Immigration often making appearances, many UKIP candidates didn’t quite get the ‘local’ bit of these elections. In the end it didn’t matter.

Farage Fever swept across Britain last night and this morning. Whether it be a protest at in increasingly out of touch, depressingly similar and elitist political class or not is something for psephologists to work out.

Credit must go to UKIP for turning around their approach, for too long while I was a member even senior figures told me that there "wasn’t enough time" to fight "unimportant" elections like the locals as we had to leave the EU instantly before it was too late. UKIP have finally realised that to turn the popular anger that has seen them shoot up in the polls into General Election votes they have to turn it into local election votes first.

This could mark the long await professionalisation of UKIP that has been mooted for years, but with candidates such as the one who believes exercise ‘cures’ homosexuality winning for UKIP I am sure we can expect some interesting comments from UKIP’s 100 odd new spokesmen.