Now we’re out of the EU, it’s time for Ukip to go too

WHAT’S the IRA? my 12-year-old son asked when he heard the name on the radio. He is quite switched on as far as current affairs are concerned – but having been born in 2003, the IRA is just not something that has come across his radar.

When I was his age, we all knew too much about the IRA. Hardly an evening news bulletin seemed to go by without a bomb, a shooting, a hunger strike, a funeral.

He doesn’t know about the Falklands War either, or the miners’ strike or any of those momentous events that shaped our generation. It is undoubtedly a sign of the hugely different environment in which we now live that so much has changed so much that we forget what life was really like back in the ’70s and ’80s.

But it is worth reminding ourselves what we have left behind.

We forget that, back then, the SNP was a fringe political movement for starry-eyed romantics and Nigel Farage was a trader who spent his time cashing in on Thatcher’s monetary revolution.

Everything really was simpler. There were two main parties and one of them would be in power and the other in opposition.

That doesn’t mean everything was better, but it certainly meant a more ordered, staid and predictable political world than now.

And where are we now? We are ripping ourselves out of the EU and, by doing so, are about to leave a massive, UK-shaped hole at the centre of the biggest and most successful collaborative trade area the world has seen.

The Labour Party is tearing itself apart. As a result, the Tories look set for an extended time in charge. But whether you support them or not, everyone must surely agree that politics is a whole lot better when there is an effective Opposition.

To cap it all, we may be about to shred the 300-year-old Union on which this country is based.

It is sometimes hard to make sense of it all but of all the events convulsing our political life, none is more worrying than the continuing rise of Ukip – and none is likely to have a more destabilising effect on Scotland.

That may seem an odd assertion, given that Ukip has a negligible presence north of the Border.

But it is the effect it is having on the English political scene in general and on the Labour Party in particular that should frighten Unionists in Scotland.

As more Labour supporters in the North of England turn to Ukip, so they drift even further away from their comrades in Scotland, many of whom have already deserted to the SNP. It is this polarisation, between the SNP on one side of the Border and Ukip on the other, which is the real threat to the Union.

UKIP has managed to make England appear different from Scotland. This isn’t the reality. The countries are very similar, but it suits Ukip to push the Little Englander mentality – and the more it does, the starker the differences appear to be.

Ukip had a purpose when Britain was still tied to the EU. But now? Now it has managed to secure its primary goal, why is it still around? Why on Earth is anyone still keen to vote for it? But that is what is happening, particularly in the North of England, where disillusioned Labour supporters are backing Ukip because they can’t see anywhere else to turn.

In this mad political world of unintended consequences, Labour becomes so useless it can’t attract even its own supporters to vote for it; they turn to Ukip in England and the SNP in Scotland, giving the impression Scotland and England are diametrically opposed, leading to a severe strain on the Union.

One of the reasons Ukip’s call to leave the EU was so well supported among the elderly (more than 60 per cent of over-65s voted to Leave) was because it seemed to promise a return to the halcyon days of the past. The clarion call to ‘take back control’ harked back to an era when, apparently, Britain really was Great, when it commanded a presence on the

IT’S good to know that, even at the age of 61, Lord Wallace can still put youngsters half his age to shame. The former Deputy First Minister recently returned from a stag weekend which apparently

world stage and everything was fine with the world.

This misleading message was beguiling because it gave the impression that all we need do is turn the clock back to make everything right again.

But this ignores what the past was really like. My son doesn’t remember the IRA, but we should. We should remember the bombs, the killings and the kneecappings. We should remember the miners’ strike, the poll tax demonstrations and the three million unemployed.

Our country has moved on and is better for it. It is time our politics moved on too – and that should mean the dismantling of Ukip because all it is doing now is imperilling the one Union it says it wants to save.

We should say to Ukip: you’ve done your job, now please just pack up and go home. That’s the one return to the past that would definitely make things better.

featured an interesting selection of pre-nuptial shenanigans.

But the noble Lib peer insisted he was extraordinarily well-behaved throughout.

‘Aye, right,’ said a sceptical party colleague.