Sketch: Aha! It's Ukip's exciting new candidate! And so the Ukip juggernaut thunders on. I haven't actually seen the Ukip juggernaut, but I expect it's a decent, honest-to-goodness Eddie Stobart, with the driver's seat on the right, where it should be, unlike one of those strange and unnatural continental monstrosities. Anyway, the latest feather in the Ukip cap (probably a good old-fashioned British bowler hat, actually) is the news that Lord Lawson, the Tory peer and former Chancellor, is calling for Britain to leave the EU. Lord Lawson's fellow Nigel, Mr Farage, has greeted the news in triumph: Lord Lawson's view "legitimises the Ukip position," he honked, and "exposes serious divisions in the Tory party." For Ukip, it just gets better by the day. Indeed, only one obstacle remains to achieving political dominance. Mr Farage aside, they still lack well-known, trusted faces to front their campaigns. He is a proud patriot and Eurosceptic ("French people chomp onions and go "hoh-hee-hoh-hee-hoh," that's a fact"). He has no truck with the language of political correctness ("No way, you big spastic, you're a mentalist!"). He isn't afraid to speak his mind (Ireland makes him think of "bucktoothed simpletons with eyebrows on their cheeks... horses running through council estates... men in platform shoes being arrested for bombings... badly tarmacked drives in this country"). Ukip have also been impressed by Mr Partridge's keen eye for unnecessary bureaucracy. "Crabsticks do not actually contain any crab and, since 1993, manufacturers have been legally obliged to call them crab-flavoured sticks." Moreover, party bigwigs believe his understanding of ordinary people's concerns would give him an electoral advantage against the public-school "chumocracy" of David Cameron's Tories. ("Big Yellow Taxi there by Joni Mitchell, a song in which she complains that they "paved paradise to put up a parking lot" - a measure which actually would have alleviated traffic congestion on the outskirts of paradise. Something which Joni singularly fails to point out, perhaps because it doesn't quite fit in with her blinkered view of the world.") Ukip privately acknowledge that it may be difficult to tempt Mr Partridge away from his successful career in broadcasting, but if he accepts their invitation they hope to be able to announce his candidature in time for next year's European elections, at which he would likely stand in the East of England constituency.