HAVE Jean-Claude Juncker and his scheming Eurocrats infiltrated the UK Independence Party? The way UKIP went to war with itself the moment its raison d’être—getting Britain out of the European Union—became achievable, tempts the thought. Or maybe quitting Europe, at the “in-out” referendum the Conservative government has promised to hold by the end of 2017, is no longer the “people’s army’s” priority. Nigel Farage, UKIP’s charismatic leader, made more noise during the election campaign railing against immigration, in particular of people infected with HIV, than he did about the EU. Quite what UKIP, which won almost 4m votes—or roughly one in eight of those cast—now stands for, and what Mr Farage intends for its future, are unclear.

Implanting a bit of plain speaking into the Westminster snake pit, which is another of the blokeish UKIP leader’s oft-stated ambitions, can at least be crossed off the list. Straightforward people do not break their promises as shamelessly as Mr Farage has just done. Having pledged to resign if he failed to get elected to parliament, he duly failed, resigned, then changed his mind. He claimed his resignation letter was thrown back at him by the party’s national executive. UKIP’s economics spokesman, Patrick O’Flynn, accused Mr Farage of being “snarling, thin-skinned, aggressive” and presiding over “an absolutist monarchy or personality cult”.

After a week of infighting and riot, Mr Farage bit back, forcing Mr O’Flynn to resign his party role on May 19th. Yet the view Mr O’Flynn dared utter, Bagehot finds, is widely shared in UKIP’s upper echelons, especially among those who consider the party primarily as a means for getting Britain out of Europe—not, as they suspect Mr Farage’s coterie does, for sustaining a growing horde of UKIP MEPs, advisers and hangers-on.

Mr O’Flynn and those other high-minded Kippers had watched with growing unease as Mr Farage resorted to increasingly crude tactics on the campaign. The first time he suggested that barring people with HIV from Britain would be an important plank of UKIP’s health policy, a senior Kipper took issue with him; Mr Farage claimed to have been misquoted. But he kept repeating his suggestion, including during a live television debate, confirming his status as the pantomime villain of British politics.

Mr Farage calculated that, to get UKIP’s disaffected and rather old supporters to turn out, he would need to fire them up. He succeeded in that aim. But the fact that Mr Farage failed to win the Kent seat of Thanet South—where many Labour voters, appalled at the prospect of having him as their MP, switched to the Tories—also suggests the grand folly of turning off most of the electorate.

British voters do not like extremists and they do not like rudeness. That is why no hard-right party has previously gained mass support. Mr Farage’s achievement hitherto was to have made UKIP’s intolerant positions appear sufficiently unthreatening to overcome that nicety. The defection last year of two Europhobic Tories—including Douglas Carswell, the admired MP for Clacton, who is now UKIP’s only parliamentary representative—was also important evidence of this. Greatly enthused, Mr Carswell predicted that Mr Farage’s army would soon emerge as a liberal, outward-looking proponent of free trade. Plainly, he was not in it to bash foreigners with AIDS.

The dismay that he and other senior Kippers felt at Mr Farage’s tactical excesses is the main reason for UKIP’s post-poll meltdown. Seconding Mr O’Flynn’s attack on his leader, but in a gentler tone, Mr Carswell suggested Mr Farage needed to take a break. The Clacton MP meanwhile fell out with his boss on a separate issue, concerning the amount of public money UKIP should draw to fund its meagre parliamentary operations. It is entitled to £650,000 ($1m) a year, which Mr Carswell maintains is almost twice what it needs. More fool the taxpayer, Mr Farage’s aides replied, greatly irritating Mr Carswell; which in turn provoked the UKIP leader to issue him with a veiled threat, to put up or leave. But Mr Carswell, whose majority was heavily reduced in the election, has nowhere to go.

UKIP is now papering over the cracks. Mr Farage has promised to take a few weeks off, and his divisive aides have been pushed out. Conceding that “we in UKIP didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory,” his deputy, Paul Nuttall, has urged the party to focus “on preparing UKIP for that referendum, which after all is why UKIP was formed in the first place.” This was a reminder of how far UKIP has strayed from that mission.

True, its supporters tend to be Eurosceptic. Yet they represent less than 13% of the electorate, and the party’s ability to widen its appeal is now in doubt. As a Eurosceptic pressure group—the narrower remit its academic founders intended—it has long been failing. At the height of UKIP’s popularity late last year, British support for remaining in the EU was at its highest level since 1991, with a clear majority for staying put.

A good week for Europe

Recognising his party’s limitations, Mr Carswell now suggests it should take a quieter role, in support of a broader-based “out” campaign. Hardcore Tory Eurosceptics, who have been watching the riot in UKIP with dismay, also want that. But there is a glum view within UKIP that Mr Farage is nonetheless planning to dominate the “out” campaign in a way that would make it even less likely to succeed.

His hope, it is feared, may be to “own the defeat”, after the fashion of the Scottish National Party, which has enjoyed a regretful surge in support since last year’s failed independence referendum. Given UKIP’s broader agenda, that would be in its own way troubling. Still, for those who do not want to see Britain leave the EU, these developments are encouraging. Mr Farage has emerged this week as both divisive and triumphant. This puts his party on course to do harm to the cause for which it claims to exist.