Well, it wasn't quite Neil Kinnock taking on Militant at his party conference in 1985, but when Nigel Farage stood up a few minutes ago to denounce Godfrey Bloom, there was a spark of drama that is rare in party conferences now. Because it was not clear whether the party members would support the decision (not Farage's personal decision, apparently - he claimed he had nothing to do with party discipline) to take the whip away from Bloom. Earlier members cheered Bloom enthusiastically when he gave a speech. But when Farage spoke, saying that Bloom's behaviour had wiped out any positive media coverge the party was going to receive, he carried the audience with him.

Here's the key quote

Increasingly over the last few months [Bloom's] pronouncments and statements have left us in a position where, frankly, what we stand for and what we campaign for are irrelevant. [All that is left today] is Godfrey's latest comment. I've had very sharp words from him about it. There were one or two incidents today - you can tell Steve [Crowther, the party chairman who announced that Bloom was losing the whip just before Farage spoke] was in PR because he said it "conditioned" our media coverage. There is no media coverage of this conference. It's gone, it's dead. It's all about Godfrey hitting a journalist and using an unpleasant four-letter word. It's gone. We can't put up with it. We can't have one individual, however fun, or flamboyant, or amusing they are, we can't have any one individual destroying Ukip''s national conference. I'm sad about that but we can't tolerate this.

And here are the key points.

• Godfrey Bloom, a Ukip MEP, has had the whip withdrawn after making a comment about women being "sluts". He said it was a joke.

• Nigel Farage has asserted authority by denouncing Bloom. He was strongly applauded after he gave a short speech at the end of the conference saying that positive media coverage of today's proceedings was "dead" because of Bloom's outburst.

That's all from me for today.