Who's laughing now? Nigel Farage forces Ukip into the political mainstream with a stunning haul of seats in the local elections but how will he cope with the big time?

His party was dubbed a bunch of clowns – but they emerge as serious nationwide threat to three main parties. 

 
What Farage definitely has is a populist “this guy is actually saying what he thinks” appeal.

This has stood him well as he tells voters deeply disillusioned by an economic mess for which they still blame all the main parties that their leaders are “all the same” and went to the “same schools and Oxford colleges”.

And he has finally fused his obsession with EU withdrawal, which isn’t a hot issue for voters, with immigration, which is, by claiming the first is the answer to the second.

Farage – who, it’s rumoured, is not an easy man to work with – is a one-man band presiding over an “outfit” he himself complains is difficult to lead. He has yet to deal fully with the apparent undesirability of some of his candidates, since the excuse that Ukip does not yet have the resources to monitor all 1,700 of them in these elections will not wash a second time.

For now, however, he looks like being on a roll, at least until the European elections. As the man himself, quoting Bob Monkhouse, likes to say: “They’re not laughing now.”