But now we really must start to get serious.

For reasons that I outlined in this column before the election, the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) poses more immediate problems - both tactically and strategically - for the Tories than Labour. UKIP could do to the Tories what the SDP did to Labour in the 1980s by taking away enough of their potential supporters to fatally weaken the opposition vote. Five to 10 per cent for UKIP in a general election would see Labour and the Lib Dems laughing all the way to Westminster.

There is a more important issue at stake here, however, than short-term electoral advantage. UKIP represents the sour old face of narrow English nationalism. (Forget about the UK bit of the title: the party is Little Englandish to its bitter, malcontented core.)

It's the suburban anti-asylum seeker sorts, who've never spoken to an asylum seeker in their lives. It's the petrol pump desperadoes who put cheap motoring before schools and hospitals (and whose idea of civil liberty is the inalienable right to roads free from speed cameras). It's the subsidy-hugging irrationals who think the world owes no one a living except themselves. It's the anti-government angries, who are against not just this government but any government that isn't only for them.

It's England as it never was imagining an England that will never be. And although UKIP may be loathe to admit as much, far from being something specifically English, it's actually a localised eruption of a more widespread European disease, with long-suppurating sores such as the French Front National now being joined by the likes of the League of Polish Families - and UKIP.

In the glowering visage of Robert Kilroy-Silk, moreover, England has now got its very own shock-jock tinpot demagogue to compare with the worst of Europe's far-right ranters. Kilroy's wild-eyed interjection signalling an intent to 'wreck' the European parliament looked for all the world like the action of a man who's been mainlining vitriol for so long that he's run out of veins to stick the needle in.

Eyes bulging and arteries throbbing like a suntanned Norman Tebbit on amphetamines, Kilroy has the presence of an Ian Paisley about him, but without the belief in any god other than himself - or of a latterday John Tyndall, but with a more certain conviction about his own perfection. If there's another ego in UKIP that's half as big as Kilroy's, the entire continent of Europe will not have space enough to contain the explosion when they clash.

You wonder, when you see him in action, how or why this man ever served as a Labour MP. And then you recall the political trajectory of one Oswald Moseley.

The times are different. Kilroy is no Moseley. (He lacks the refinement, for a start.) UKIP has no programme beyond 'wrecking' the European Union and no prospects beyond the European elections. Most of their supporters would no more like to see Kilroy in Downing Street than I would George Galloway if the prospect should somehow ever become a real one.

Yet the ragtag collection of prejudices that rallied millions under the UKIP banner represents an ideological army with which the left must do battle. The British National Party may be a more obviously nasty political enemy on the far right, but in essence UKIP is only a more respectable manifestatation of the same forces.

I only managed to vote at all last Thursday by breaking the electoral law. Although not living in one of the all-postal voting regions, I nevertheless have a postal vote. Having managed to delay posting it until the last-possible minute (a journalists and deadlines thing), I suddenly realised that I'd not got anyone to sign the new slip that must accompany the ballot paper verifying who you are.

With just five minutes left before the last post that would give my vote a chance of arriving in time, I filled in and signed the paper myself. Did anyone notice? Will the police come knocking on my door?

I doubt it, but the whole postal voting system seems so open to abuse that a lot more thought needs to be given before rolling it out nationwide.