UKIP MEP Marta Andreasen switches to the Conservatives

From ITV News:

"Our party is the only one on the up," the UKIP leader Nigel Farage told our cameras in Eastleigh today. 

And yet by the end of the day, UKIP was absorbing the news that one of its most prominent MEPs had defected to the Conservatives 

Marta Andreasen is not a name well known to those outside Westminster or Brussels. But if you were to name a UKIP member other than Mr Farage - she might be the one you would choose. 

It reinforces UKIP's main problem: that the party is nothing without Nigel Farage.