A collective noun for a group of clowns is apparently a “pratfall”.

This is quite apt already but I’m writing to the Oxford English Dictionary to suggest a better one, a “Farage” of clowns.

The images of Nigel on every news broadcast with a Cheshire cat grin, holding half-a-shandy and a fag is already becoming extremely irritating.

He’s already referring to the European Parliament elections in 2014 where he expects to do well and, unfortunately, with some justification. I just don’t see where the opposition is going to come from.

Labour is pathetically silent, the Tories seem intent on emulating him and to outdo him in regards to animosity to the EU and verbally beating up immigrants. As for the so-called Liberal Democrats, they have obviously had a glossectomy.

So it seems by 2014 the UK will be represented in the EU by a cross between the BNP and the Monster Raving Loony Party and that the UKIP circus troupe will spend the next five years being obstructive and learning how to fill up their expense forms. Not a good image and hardly one that will increase the UK’s influence in the EU.

What the UKIP and their supporters need to realise is that leaving the EU will cause mass unemployment and that the UKIP MEPs will be the first to go. Around 50 per cent of the UK’s exports go to the EU and there’s no way that level will continue should we leave – indeed, with the EU procurement laws, there’s no way that it could.

Please no-one suggest that we can simply trade elsewhere because if that was possible, it would already be happening.

In fact, with Cameron’s promise of a referendum, I can only presume that he’s hoping Labour will win rather than preside over the devastation that leaving the EU would cause.

R. LEE Burford Road Witney