THERE was precious little to smile about yesterday for those of us on the left.

But you would have needed a heart of stone not to guffaw when Nigel Farage failed to become an MP for the sixth time.

After half a dozen failed attempts, you’d think he would have got the message by now. And maybe he finally has, although I wouldn’t bet on it.

The Ukip supremo — now ex-supremo — looked like someone had handed him a soft drink instead of a pint when the result finally emerged shortly before lunchtime yesterday.

Having promised an earthquake, Farage was quickly waking up to the realisation that it had been nothing more than a tawdry knee-trembler bitterly regretted in the cold light of day.

The result, in Thanet South, saw Farage comfortably beaten by his Tory rival, with Labour coming a distant third in the poll.

As the count was read out and the result became clear, the venue rang out with mocking cries of “Bye bye, Nigel!”

Farage’s grandiose predictions that his party would be kingmakers fizzled out like a damp squib.

The significant political gains he had confidently predicted signally failed to materialise — rather like the millions of Bulgarians he claimed were going to swamp the country.

Ukip even lost one of the two seats they’d pilfered from the Tories earlier this year through defections, when Mark Reckless failed to retain Rochester and Strood and the constituency reverted to the Conservatives.

In his resignation speech, Farage attempted to put a positive gloss on the steaming canine excrement of the Ukip campaign.

“I have seen a shift in our vote,” he said, in possibly the understatement of the year. “I saw it yesterday in Broadstairs. I saw people saying: ‘Nigel, we’re going to vote for you in the local elections, we love what you stand for, we agree with you, we can’t afford to have a Labour-SNP coalition.’”

For the last time, Nigel, the voices in your head are NOT real people.

He said he would “take stock” after the electoral drubbing. Well, that should take all of five minutes — make sure you’ve still got all your MEP’s expenses squirrelled away and bugger off.

The first thing on his agenda however, he said, was a holiday.

I’d avoid Europe if I were him.