You’d be hard pressed to find a better response to the Tory ‘smear campaign’ on UKIP than this one.

“If we return that favour and did exactly the same to the other parties I’m sure we’ll find more skeletons and more scandal but we wouldn’t do that because we are better than that. We are grown up and we want to fight this on principle and policy” Paul Nuttall

The statement was swift, effective and made the Tories look like desperate conspirators. Nuttall’s statement came quick on the heels of the news that a handful of UKIP candidates have links to groups such as the BNP and have allegedly made racist and homophobic comments to their handful of low-grade followers and friends on Twitter. This insidious rumour was no doubt started by the Tories.

Personally I feel the Conservatives have made a right meal out of this. The recent local elections showed a surge in UKIP votes, the Tories saw this coming, and attempted to cock block in the ugliest, and frankly most hypocritical way possible. Let’s face it, they are hardly immune to political scandal themselves! As a life-long Tory, it’s sad.

UKIP’s minor success at the recent elections is just that; minor. Although the papers have had an absolute field day with this story - harping on about how UKIP is gathering disaffected Tory votes, and ordinarily politically apathetic working class voters, but in reality, the local elections have little political merit.

I’d have rather seen a strong assertive response from the Tories. UKIP has done them an amazing favour. It’s effectively spelt out the issues that are considered the most pressing to the public namely:

1. A stronger, clearer, and more greater publicised stance on immigration
2. An immediate referendum on Europe (consistently promised, yet not delivered)
3. Take 4.5 million of low incomes out of tax altogether with a simple, flat rate income tax. With a threshold set at minimum wage.
4. Restrict free access to the NHS for non UK citizens, and ban access to the welfare system for those that have not been here for 5 years
5. Scrap all green taxes, wind turbine subsidies and adopt nuclear power to free us from dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil and gas
6. Get Abu Qatada out of our country
7. Get rid of Quangos
8. Support Grammar schools and vocational education

Yet among these common sense policies are some utterly shocking ones that I’m surprised they would want to showcase on their website. Not only are they proposing to reintroduce smoking in pubs, are against gay marriage (note the proliferation of typos in this and sit back smugly), they also want to meddle with the NHS.

Why they haven’t learned from the early mistakes of the Tories is beyond me. They want to cobble together elected County Health Boards to allocate resources, set and monitor standards, and oversee education and training of staff. Who exactly would sit on these CHB’s? Well it’s not stated. It seems logical that the very same people who currently sit within the Department of Health (that UKIP plans to descale) would get the honours. What a faff…

Not only this - they propose to let businesses decide whether to offer maternity and paternity leave! Don’t worry though - it’s fine. An SME which refuses to offer parental leave will ‘either have to offer young women higher salaries than other businesses which offer a long leave period or simply have to recruit from a smaller pool of potential employees’ - what the actual f*%k?! Okay, I’ll have my babies, take a bit of time off with them, then re-enter the workplace and demand an extra 50% salary then? Yes please Nigel. As long as I fit all this in before I start to look withered and lose my child-bearing hips, I’m on to a winner here.

There’s simply no threat here. UKIP are simply riding the waves of public discontent and have money-no-object manifesto that appeals to the masses. They can’t afford to do all the things we all like, and we seriously don’t want to see them do the things we don’t. We were simply testing you Dave. We simply wanted to give the Tories a rude awakening and give them a hefty kick up the bum. This is the spirit in which the great UKIP surge should have been regarded.

The Tory response has been as disappointing as an episode of University Challenge hosted by Ben Shepherd; underwhelming. We want need them come out fighting with clear and new voter-friendly directives (here I refer to the great unwashed that graced the polls for the first time) that aren’t swathed in political rhetoric. I’m so fed up of watching politician’s evade a direct line of questioning - say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and ‘why’ and we’ll all respect you that little bit more.

Instead we were entreated to Theresa May’s dreary response whilst dressing for work the day after the elections. I can hardly think of someone less appetising to complement my orange juice. Educated by the state, she might have been regarded as a breath of ‘common air’ by her Etonian puppeteers, but she’s so utterly uncharismatic that I found myself yawning before I’d even got Dex out from his cot. So, what did the Tories propose to do about UKIP’s success at the booths…

“We’re conscious of the fact we need to work hard to get those votes back for the… erm… for the election. But what we need to do is show that we are working hard for hard-working people; for people who work hard and want to get on in life… that we’re dealing with the issues that want us to focus on… uh… that we’re dealing with the deficit, that we’re controlling welfare, that we’re controlling immigration. Now we have been doing these things, but we’ve always been straight with people about the size of the task we face given what we inherited from the last Labour Government… and eh so… we will carry on working hard to deal with those issues that hardworking people want us to focus on.” Theresa May

ERM… What?! What have you actually said there Theresa Bore? In-between all the umm’ing and err’ing you’ve once again whined about Labour, and once again reiterated the ‘hardworking theme’ that gets on our wick. It’s not wrong. It’s not terrible. But it’s not exactly the sexy impassioned speech we all wanted to hear.

When asked about the public perception of the Tory party, she cited some drivel about us effectively wanting more of the same, and that we want to see the Tories ‘continuing to deliver’… hmm let us all know when you make good on the Qatada promise then Theresa. There’s a good girl.

This is a bit of a moot point to be honest. With Nigel Farage being pictured downing pints at his local and his stupidly candid remarks about being taken ‘against his knowledge’ (nudge nudge) to a lap dancing bar, it’s mildly amusing that the public image of the Conservative Party has been criticised for being ‘out of touch’ with voters. Personally I’d rather my Prime Minister stayed off the booze and out of whore houses when he’s deciding policy. No? Just me then.

“I was taken once unwittingly and I did say that I wasn’t appalled by it,” he said. “I did quite like it. What you want me to say? I hated it?” Nigel Farage

Of course we’re not serious about letting this prat run our country. Would you really trust him with something as innocuous as planning a child’s birthday party, let alone controlling the deficit? Of course not! We’re not even calling for Cameron to whip his shirt off on holiday in a sad bid to woo the female votership like Toned Tone. Nope. Dave we just need for you to look a little less stiff.

So there you have it. Less of the continual bitching about the state Labour left the country in, less of the political waffle we hear on Question Time, and no more £200 silk ties that look exactly like Burton’s offering please Dave. You don’t need to pay teenagers minimum wage to wade through the Facebook and Twitter profiles of Farage’s menagerie either - just give us something to get our teeth into and come out fighting! Oh and when you’re ready, a referendum would be nice.