Farage stands in Thanet South and targets 8 more Tory seats

David Cameron returns to his desk today from his Cornish holiday to deal with the IS threat, the Rotherham sex abuse scandal and the risk that Scotland could vote to leave the Union. But the nightmare stalking the PM is the monster that has just landed on the Kent coast – Ukip leader Nigel Farage.

Ukip’s target seats for the May 2015 general election have been leaked and the list shows that Farage is planning to gain a beachhead in Parliament by seizing a string of seats on the south and east coasts of England where the locals are fed up with immigration and Europe.

The list of 12 Ukip target constituencies leaked to Sky News shows that all but three are Tory-held seats: Portsmouth South and Eastleigh are both held by the Lib Dems and Great Grimsby is the sole Labour-held seat.

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Tory MP Douglas Carswell defects to Ukip

Tory seats targeted by Ukip are: North Thanet, Forest of Dean, Sittingbourne and Sheppey, Aylesbury, East Worthing and Shoreham, Great Yarmouth, Thurrock, South Thanet, and Boston and Skegness.

"So much for Ukip’s much-vaunted claims to threaten Labour," writes Mark Wallace on the Tory grass-roots website ConservativeHome. He says the target list blows apart the myth – still being peddled last night by Farage – that his party is aiming to unseat Labour as much as Tory or Lib Dem MPs.

"Similarly," adds Wallace, "so much for the claim that they are interested purely in unseating europhiles or insufficiently pure eurosceptics. Gordon Henderson, the Sittingbourne and Sheppey MP, is a signatory to Better Off Out."

Farage has never been one to hide his ambitions under a bushel and after being selected as the Ukip candidate for Thanet South at a meeting in Ramsgate yesterday, he declared: "We may win enough seats to hold the balance of power".

That might be dismissed as cloud cuckooland thinking, but as Farage himself said last night: "I said three years ago we'd win the European elections. Everybody thought I was stone bonkers and we did it."

However, polling paid for by Tory peer Lord Ashcroft in some of the marginal seats that the Tories need to win suggests Farage's dream of a balance of power is never going to happen. It showed a 6.5 per cent swing from the Tories to Labour which could guarantee Ed Miliband a comfortable overall majority after at the May 2015 election without the need for a coalition.

But if the polls turn out to be wrong, and there is a hung Parliament, a few seats for Farage’s Ukip party could bring Cameron’s worst nightmare into reality. He might have to negotiate with Farage to continue in power if – as expected – Nick Clegg and his Lib Dem partners get creamed.

The Times claims that Boris Johnson timed yesterday's announcement that he, too, is planning to run for Parliament - in Uxbridge and South Ruislip (if the local Tories accept him, which they will) - to try to take the spotlight off Farage.

The paper is running an online YouGov poll showing that 57 per cent think Boris returning to Parliament would be “a good thing” for British politics.

The Mole thinks this is one of the daftest polls ever conducted – what does it mean? Would it translate into votes for Boris? Or is it treating Westminster as the Big Brother House for sheer entertainment value?

It’s not as daft, however, as The Guardian's interpretation of Farage and Boris both chasing seats in the general election.

According to the Guardian, the arrival of Boris is half of a "double headache” for Cameron. Well, Farage's move is certainly pain-inducing, but Boris's decision to go for a seat isn't a problem for Cameron - indeed, the PM has been urging him to stand.

The one who’s going to get a headache – apart from Mrs Johnson – as a result of the Mayor of London taking on two jobs at once is Chancellor George Osborne, who covets becoming prime minister when Cameron's time is up and was hoping for a clear field.

The Times/YouGov poll also showed just 33 per cent think Nigel Farage's candidature for Ukip in South Thanet is a positive thing, versus 54 per cent who think the opposite. At least Cameron would agree with that.