It's a bit rich of Ken Clarke - aka Bozo the Swivel-Eyed Euromaniac - to dismiss UKIP as "clowns"

That great wobbling mass of liberal flatulence Ken Clarke has been on TV today wearing a bizarre cream sweater and following in his leader’s footsteps by claiming many member of UKIP – and its supporters – are clowns, fruitcakes, and closet racists, and that the party has no policies. He’s right – up to a point – but only because every mainstream British political party contains a sizable number of clowns, fruitcakes and racists.

Here’s what Fatso had to say:

It is against the political class, it is against foreigners, it is against immigrants. But it does not have any very positive policies. They do not know what they are for…The temptation to ordinary voters to UKIP is these are very difficult times, the political classes are regarded as having got us into a mess… It is very tempting to vote for a collection of clowns or indignant, angry people, who promise that somehow they will allow us to take your revenge on people who caused it.

Let’s face it, the political classes did get us into this mess, and we have a perfect right to be angry and indignant: indeed, it would be bizarre if we weren’t. As for ordinary voters’ desire for revenge, I think he’s dead wrong. What’s maddening is that the members of the political class we voted into office in 2010 are barely doing anything to put things right: we don’t care about the past – we care about this country’s future if the Coalition government keeps pursuing its current namby-pamby policies, and we’re terrified at the prospect of Labour getting back into power, led by a twit like Ed Miliband and a proven economic incompetent like Ed Balls, who was one of the chief architects of our current woes, and appears to have learned nothing since being booted out of office.

The idea that UKIP is “against foreigners” is just silly: it’s against unelected foreigners governing this country. And it isn’t against immigrants – it’s against useless, costly and  criminal immigrants.

As for Clarke’s lazy name-calling – well, it’s nonsense. For instance, I hate to think how many Labour and Lib Dem activists and their Guardian-reading supporters are convinced that white Anglo-Saxons are responsible for all the evil in the world. That’s racism, isn’t it? And Labour and the Lib Dems harbour an awful lot of rabid anti-Semites masquerading as pro-Palestinians. And if Clarkey-boy imagines the Tory backbenches are free of racists, he’s even more deluded than I suspected.

In addition, all three main political parties are simply stuffed with fruitcakes so terminally deranged that they actually believe the European Union is A Good Thing and that Britain should be planning to adopt the Euro – a currency rapidly attaining a similar status to the North Korean won.

Not only that, but at least half the Labour Party, most Lib Dems and a handful of Tories – most notably Ken Clarke himself - are convinced that the best way to bring down crime is to not send criminals to prison, when all the evidence points to the opposite conclusion. (Of course, these days, Labourites and Lib Dems have a strong vested interested in keeping prison numbers down.)

In short, there are plenty of nut-jobs in all the traditional parties, despite the fact that they’ve had decades – in some cases, centuries – to weed them out.

As for Kenny’s claim that UKIP is merely a protest party without any real policies – well, sort of. They’re certainly keen to protest at the takeover of the Conservative Party by centre-left liberals like our Ken, on the reasonable grounds that their policies don’t work and voters don’t like them. As for UKIP’s lack of policies – check out their website and you’ll discover a raft of proposals which are broadly Thatcherite. As we know, Ken Clarke was the first of Mrs Thatcher’s ministers to tell her to stand down as Tory leader – no doubt because of his eagerness to destroy British sovereignty by helping create a European superstate and the opportunity it afforded him to stand (unsuccessfully) for his party’s leadership - so he probably sees what he’s doing today as just another round in his battle against Britons who don’t much fancy being governed by Germany and fleeced in perpetuity by France.

Clarke demonstrated his lack of soundness – and his disdain for British interests – early on by opposing the retaking of the Falklands by military force. His fundamental lack of patriotism - and common sense - have manifested themselves for the past quarter of a century in his obsession with Europe – and that’s what his real beef with UKIP’s all about: they think Britain should be governed by Britons, and Clarke doesn’t.

Despite his myriad faults, Ken used to be a serious politician – after all, he did a decent job as Chancellor in the dying days of the Major government. But his pronouncements – and actions – since being invited into David Cameron’s cabinet (in which, for reasons which escape me, he still occupies a seat) have been distinctly – well - clownish.

No doubt UKIP are feeling under the cosh this weekend – and there’ll be plenty more of this sort of mud-slinging to come (some of it, admittedly, deserved) – but the Party should take heart from the words of its heroine, Mrs. Thatcher:

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.