THIS week my colleagues are tweeting horrible things they’d rather do than defect to UKIP – jumping naked into a barrel of wasps particularly caught my eye.

I wonder at the motivation of the two ex-colleagues who have jumped ship.

It can’t be to do with policy.

After all, why would you knife your friends for supervising an economy that’s powering ahead and that, once relieved of the Lib Dems, are the only conceivable prospect for delivering the in/out referendum that constitutes the sunny upland of your political horizon?

Let me make my position clear. I have every confidence that David Cameron will seal a deal, including on immigration, with Brussels that I can recommend to my constituents.

But if the EU insists on the status quo, or something similar, I will vote for “Brexit” in 2017.

It would be a mistake to think all the country’s ills are to do with the EU or immigration but both, being very important to the public, need to be addressed directly.

This administration has ended the previous government’s open door policy and made it difficult for people without skills and the means to support themselves to migrate here from countries outside the EU.

However, it is currently bound by EU treaties on migration that others signed. We can’t break them summarily or get changes past Labour or the Lib Dems.

The aforementioned new deal with the EU should admit those with skills and resources we need and can benefit from, while politely declining those without. It’s really that simple.

Congratulations to the thousands entering higher education this month.

However, I’d be worried if young people with grades suggesting talents outside academia were nudged expensively towards questionable degree courses in not very useful subjects at obscure institutions that fitted them for jobs they might have got anyway as school leavers.

That hardly seems fair. I’m much more interested in the apprenticeships announced this week by the Chancellor and an emphasis on growing real economy and career-enhancing skills.