Just before the 1997 election, when I was invited to give the keynote speech at Ukip’s first national party conference, I told the 900 delegates that the choice before the country on polling day would only be between two parties. One would be the Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem parties representing our new “political class”, agreed on almost everything, including our continued subservience to that weird new “Europe-wide” form of government centred in Brussels. The other would be the UK Independence Party. All these years later, it seems the voters of Clacton and Manchester have begun to get the message.