OH DEAR, oh dear, oh dear … poor Nigel Farage, the Ukip Fuehrer just can’t seem to get a break these days.

Beaten out of sight in Oldham by a resurgent Labour in the recent by-election and now getting the full Caesar treatment from the party’s only MP.

“I came, I saw, I cocked up spectacularly.”

I know what you’re thinking, if only there had been some indication that two faced Tory defector Douglas Carswell had a track-record for disloyalty.

Yes the political weathercock, whose luring into the fold was seen as such a feather in the collective Ukip hat at the last election, has once again about-faced and stabbed his leader in the back in ruthless fashion.

In an interview with BBC Essex, Clacton MP Carswell said that Farage had taken the party as far as he could and Ukip needed to “change gear.”

Is it just me or did that sound like a hint that he wants to replace Farage with Jeremy Clarkson?

He went on: “We all

need to think very carefully as to whether or not we can build beyond the base we have now got without that change.”

He said the party should avoid being seen as “unpleasant” and “socially illiberal.”

Good luck with that, they’re its main selling points.

Instead, Mr Carswell suggested Ukip would make a breakthrough in the polls if it was an “optimistic, sunshine, smiley, socially liberal, unapologetically free-market party.”

Eh? Er, isn’t that the … Lib Dems?

Then, hilariously and with no sense of irony, Carswell came out with: “I am 100 per cent Ukip and I’m very committed to Ukip, I’m not going anywhere.”

Now where have we heard that before? About two minutes before he jumped ship the last time, I seem to recall. It could happen to anyone Nige, but it doesn’t, does it? It happens to you. Again and again.

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer” was the sage advice issued to would-be despots by arch political manipulator Niccolo Machiavelli.

But then he wasn’t dealing with the Tories. If he had been he would no doubt have counselled: “Don’t let the slippery bastards anywhere near you.”

Thatcher found that one out the hard way.

Farage would perhaps have done better to heed another ancient maxim: “Never take an idiot along on a journey, you can always pick one up when you get there.”