Ukip ready to pounce on spaced-out Tories

While everyone else was getting excited about the robot probe that landed on a comet last week, there was radio silence from the Tory backbenches.

But then the space programme was a European project and it seems increasingly that there’s a section of the Conservative party that just hates everything emanating from the continent.

The robot lander Philae was also of course taking advantage of freedom of movement, another current Conservative bugbear, though there’s no suggestion it travelled four billion miles just because it had heard the benefits regime was a soft touch on ice object 67P.

It was this distaste for anything European that led to chaotic scenes in the Commons at the start of the week. After apparently promising a vote on whether Britain should opt back in to the European Arrest Warrant the Government then seemed to execute a classic reverse ferret, offering up the opportunity to debate a range of measures but only vote on the ones the Government was sure it was going to win.

But the knife-edge vote which the Coalition won by only a handful of votes and which required David Cameron to turn up to vote in white tie and tails, apparently hotfoot from a swanky event but causing many on the Labour benches to suggest that’s just what he wears around the house, wasn’t even on the security measures up for debate, it was on how long should be spent discussing them.

It’s this sort of parliamentary silliness that feeds the anti-politics Ukip vote.

Nigel Farage’s party is sure to bag its second elected MP this week when voters go to the polls in the Rochester and Strood by-election.

That result has the potential to unleash chaos on the Conservative benches that will make Ed Miliband’s recent troubles look like a particularly genteel tea party by comparison.

When Douglas Carswell became Ukip’s first elected MP last month it could be put down to special circumstances a charismatic and popular character in a particularly fertile seat for Ukip.

Not so in Rochester where the defector Mark Reckless is barely more popular with the people there than with his erstwhile Tory colleagues who’ve lined up to assassinate his character. And the seat is apparently way down in 271st place on the Ukip hit list.

Yet he’s going to win, and win under the Ukip banner. That’s got lots of Conservatives worried and it’s why many are getting even more anti-European. The European Arrest Warrant is a fairly straightforward measure that allows the police to catch baddies even if they try to flee to a different country.

Yet some Tories denounce it because it’s born in Brussels. The problem is, if they think that’s going to endear them to Ukip voters they are going to be disappointed.

The “kippers” don’t hate Europe as much as they hate Westminster. And the sort of procedural paddy that took place on Monday night is held up as evidence that the place is past salvation.

They’re wrong.

There is evidence that parliament can work, that people care about it and can make it work well. That came at the other end of the week. Once a year the Youth Parliament is allowed to sit in the House of Commons.

MPs are on recess yet again so instead the green benches are filled by teenagers from across the country. And they are massively impressive. They debated issues that really matter to them like exam resits, work experience and votes at 16.

They disagreed but listened to each other respectfully and no matter their view they willed each other on during their short speeches and clapped and cheered afterwards.

The boffins landing craft on comets look to the heavens for their inspiration, anyone whose faith in politics is waning should look to the youth parliament, it’s full of stars.