It is 10.19pm when the party leader rises to make his speech to parliament. When he sits down, the clock has moved on to 10.20pm. There is total silence. It is broken only by the sound of an orgasmic stage-whispered scream of approval from the balcony: "Yessssssssss!" It is coming from the leader's speechwriter: "He did it! He did it! To the second! One minute 30 seconds precisely. Perfect!" By now the next speaker is already on his feet. He is greeted with silence too. Silence is the characteristic response to speeches here, especially when it is well past dinner time in the best city for eating out in Europe.  This is the European parliament in Strasbourg, where the debate - on the harmonisation of laws relating to food supplements - is being attended by precisely 17 of the 626 parliamentarians, plus 18 members of staff, eight people in the public galleries and 33 interpreters (three for each of the European Union's 11 official languages). The vast and stunning egg-shaped chamber is lit for the occasion by enough wattage to illuminate a fair-sized third world capital.  The strict time limit is one of the mercies. Hence the speechwriter's delight: a fraction longer than the allotted 90 seconds and the microphone would have been switched off. But the silence that greeted this particular leader's speech was more than normally profound. The speaker was Jeffrey Titford of the UK Independence party, which - according to its 7% win of the vote in the 1999 European elections - is the fourth-largest party in Britain. (The big four party leaders are thus Tony Blair, William Hague, Charles Kennedy and Titford.) It is also the only one of the dozens of parties represented in this place totally committed to withdrawal from the EU. Titford was against harmonisation, surprisingly enough, arguing that British law was perfectly adequate. He's always against. He is the clergyman addressing the sinners in the whorehouse. Or Lucifer in the cathedral, depending on your point of view.  Somewhere between a half and three-fifths of Britain's electorate agree with Titford that Britain should seek an amicable divorce from the EU, and in 1999 Ukip (pronounced you-kip) won three MEPs. However, the former party leader, Michael Holmes, has not been sighted in almost a year, partly through ill-health, partly through disaffection. He is rumoured to be on the brink of joining the Greens, leaving just Titford and his sidekick, Nigel Farage.  Holmes's disappearance is merely one strand in a skein of vituperation and hatred that characterises Ukip. Earlier this month, the party's founder, Dr Alan Sked, claimed in the Spectator that the party was now enmeshed with the extreme right. The front page advertised "Ukip and the fascists".  Sked's evidence seemed slender. Much rested on a meeting between Farage and a party member who also belonged to the openly racist British National party. Farage says this was someone recruited by Sked, and that the meeting was to tell the man he was unwanted. If there was serious evidence linking the party with racists, at least 600 people in Strasbourg would be delighted to use it. But even Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat MEP who is one of their sternest critics, admits: "They're not fascists, they're not corrupt and they're not morons. Some of their members are headbangers, though."  They certainly are. The party's Scottish organiser has just been kicked off the executive for a year after questioning, in letters to newspapers, the extent of the Holocaust. Farage claims Ukip is the victim of "entryism". For what it's worth, the two men sit dead-centre of the parliament's semi-circle, close to the Lib Dems but at the back: traditional refuge of the most truculent members of any class. They are in a loose alliance known as EDD (Europe of Democracy and Diversities): a ragbag of 16 anti-federalists, comprising six French rustics, four Danes, three Dutch Calvinist ministers and the two Britons, but not rightwingers such as Jean-Marie Le Pen.  Even in the EDD, the Britons are out on a limb. Farage and Titford want Britain out, plain and simple. Thus John Bowis, the former Tory minister who is now an MEP, can say: "They are a tiny, tiny extreme element of a fringe part of the parliament. I just think they're irrelevant." But they may be very relevant in many rural constituencies come the general election. And they do at least have a coherent position - unlike the Tories, whose representatives here are horribly split.  Ukip, however, is an incoherent party, and its internal schisms are certainly worthy of the far right. It was founded in 1993 by Sked, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, and bumbled on quietly until the 1997 election, when it was totally swamped in the anti-Europe market by Jimmy Goldsmith's big-money, high-profile Referendum party. Then Goldsmith died, leaving a vacuum which Ukip filled with vicious infighting. But at the 1999 European elections, it was suddenly well-placed to pick up protest votes. And, since Britain was now using a regional proportional representation system, it was even better placed to turn them into seats. "It was a delicious double irony," says Farage, elected from the south-east region. "For a parliament I want no part of, under a system I despise, I found myself blinking into the cameras at one in the morning saying how proud I was."  With just a few more votes, Ukip might have won five seats. But when Holmes, the abrasive millionaire who had succeeded Sked, was dumped and then had a stroke, only this odd couple were left.  Titford is usually referred to as the Frinton undertaker (Frinton-on-Sea is generally presumed to be a good place for the trade). Actually, he had a string of funeral businesses on the east coast until he sold up in 1989 and retired at 55 to concentrate on sea fishing and golf. He had been in politics before, as a Tory, reaching the dizzy heights of chairman of the public health committee (and vice-chairman of recreation and gardens) on the old Clacton urban district council.  Titford was a bit bored by retirement, but he has now ridden his little anti-Euro hobby-horse out of control. In 45 years of marriage, his job never took him much further than Harwich. Now he is away perpetually, spreading Frinton's world- view; his wife is "supportive but a bit exasperated". Except when talking about Sked ("he's demented"), Titford is an emollient man, a sort of Willie Whitelaw figure, and an ideal leader for such a fractious party - "8,000 members and 9,000 egos", as one supporter put it.  Titford says little, which means he is outshone by Farage, a 36-year-old metals broker with wild eyes and the air of a successful estate agent. Both men are rather obviously British: non-linguists in a building of suave polyglots. Together, they can come over like Caldicott and Charters, the old buffers who kept talking about the Test score while travelling Europe in Strangers on a Train. But they are not obvious xenophobes (Farage's wife is German) and have a nice - very British - line in self-deprecating humour. Indeed, the Ukip's European parliament contingent laugh a lot, a rarity in Strasbourg.  They have a fair bit to laugh about. It is not difficult for them to embarrass the establishment, and their most successful ongoing stunt has been to pool the excess on their travel expenses and use it to fund the defence of "the metric martyr", the Sunderland greengrocer prosecuted last month for selling fruit in pounds and ounces. The parliament has demanded the MEPs return pounds 11,500.  Last Wednesday, Titford and Farage were summoned to appear before Richard Balfe, a long-serving Labour MEP who is on the College of Quaestors, a souped-up privileges committee. The meeting was inconclusive. Balfe refused even to confirm it had taken place.  "Can you tell me what the issue is?" I asked Balfe.  "Of course not. It's the College of Quaestors, not a public meeting," said Balfe indignantly.  "Isn't it public?"  "It never has been. Whoever I talked to, (it) is between me and them."  In a Europe full of Balfes, it is not difficult to portray the whole project as ludicrous.  It is easy to subvert the parliamentary process as well. At the EDD group meeting last Tuesday, it was decided on the spur-of-the-moment to turn up en masse at that night's plenary session to try to get the food supplement measure sent back, and thus delayed for ages. It was not a well-planned plot, but the European parliament's sittings are so thinly attended it did not need to be. Their procedural move failed by just one vote: 16-15, with 595 members missing, presumed at dinner.  This would have been a routine oppositional ploy at Westminster, but other (non-British) MEPs were incensed. "Immoral!" they kept saying. The British view is more phlegmatic. It is accepted that the debating chamber is a waste of time. Except for votes (members have to vote to get paid), the room is empty even when it is not dinner-time. "The place where you change minds is in committee," says Huhne. "You can actually alter legislation quite effectively there, and that's where Ukip doesn't play a part. They're a waste of space."  "Yes, it's true," says Richard North, the Ukip staffer who was so proud of his leader's timekeeping. "If you're very, very good, and work very, very hard, you can get to change a couple of words. Wow!"  "I'm supposed to be on the fisheries committee," says Farage. "The cod recovery scheme was introduced with no reference to the committee whatever, because total competence rests with the commission. There's no point in going. We send a staff member to observe instead. We haven't come here to do a Billy Graham bit and convert everybody. We haven't come to change Europe. We've come to find out how it works and what it costs, and take that message back to the British people."  They take the message round tirelessly, despite Mrs Titford's reservations. And there is no doubt it keeps being well received. What that means in electoral terms remains to be seen in May, and in the referendum on the euro that will follow. But clearly few people in Britain doubt that much of what goes on in European institutions is damnable. The question, which we all have to ask ourselves, is whether it is an acceptable price to pay for the greatness of the project.  The two Ukip men left doubt behind long ago. In the members' cafe I asked how they would vote if the European commission proposed a motion in favour of motherhood and apple pie.  "I'd abstain," said Farage, "on the grounds that it's none of Europe's business."  "I'd vote against," said Titford. "There'd probably be a hidden agenda." Classification Language: ENGLISH Subject: EUROPEAN UNION (90%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (90%); EDITORIALS & OPINIONS (89%); POLITICS (89%); ELECTIONS (78%); EUROPEAN UNION INSTITUTIONS (78%); LANGUAGE & LANGUAGES (78%); INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS (73%) Company: EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT (91%); EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT (91%); EUROPEAN UNION (55%); EUROPEAN UNION (55%) Organization: EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT (91%); EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT (91%); EUROPEAN UNION (55%); EUROPEAN UNION (55%); EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT (91%); EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT (91%); EUROPEAN UNION (55%); EUROPEAN UNION (55%) Person: NIGEL FARAGE (79%); TONY BLAIR (58%) Geographic: UNITED KINGDOM (94%); EUROPEAN UNION MEMBER STATES (93%); EUROPE (90%)