TREMORS from the UKIP quake are shaking the roots of every political party – its dream results are the stuff of their nightmares.

One good outcome – the only one – is that so many more people have realised that their vote counts. Old certainties are gone. New life is being breathed into the democratic process, poisoned in the past by a toxic cocktail of apathy and dwindling numbers going to vote. A giant has woken up and the next General Election promises to be more open that anything we have seen in years.

Without doubt the best result of Scotland’s independence battle was that more than 90 per cent of voters took part in the referendum. The winner was democracy. All of the power discovered by so many more people at the end of a stubby pencil is tremendous, apart from the fact the sole beneficiary south of the border is Nigel Farage. Surfing on an anti-politics wave, he somehow pulls off every political trick in the book.

Douglas Carswell, produced out of the hat like a square jawed rabbit, was followed by another Tory bunny switching burrows, the aptly named MP Mark Reckless.

Clacton, described as a friendly resort trying not to die, inhabited by friendly people trying not to die, proved an easy target for right-wing cuts king Carswell. One UKIP voter in the seaside resort said he had “just come back to this dump” after 17 years in America and found too little work and “too many foreigners”.

His view shows how easily many of us are seduced by UKIP, it didn’t occur to him how few “foreigners” actually live in Clacton, or that in the US he was the immigrant.

Two million Brits are living, working and retiring in Europe. Except we call them ex-pats, so it doesn’t really count. Except it does.

The second defection, timed for maximum damage, rocked the Conservative boat at the start of the party conference: it didn’t sink, it may be holed below the water line.

So the Tories were lucky that Mr Forgetful, Labour leader Ed Milliband waded in to rescue the leaking ship, with a flat as a mill pond conference performance. Tim Farron, outgoing Liberal Democrat president, said the Labour leader did well remembering half his speech – it was 50 per cent more than anyone remembered.

Labour almost lost a “safe” seat in Heywood to UKIP, which was fighting with one hand tied behind its back while busy throwing the kitchen sink at Clacton.

All of us know that by-elections are no guarantee of success in a General Election, but if this was just a protest vote, it’s some protest.

Over at the Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow, which I attended with Di, the message to the party faithful was “we have the fight of our lives”. Only candidates rooted in the community with a huge personal vote will win that fight.

One man interviewed on TV, not a previous supporter, said: “The Liberal Democrats have done lots of good things in Government and been given no credit for it at all.” Sounds about right.