What a week it’s been. The aftermath of the Scottish referendum rumbles on, with the focus firmly on the English Question.

I for one will not support any further devolution to Scotland unless and until the rights and interests of my English constituents are safeguarded.

That can only be done by removing the ability of Scottish MPs to vote on English matters, including the Budget and the Queen’s Speech. Labour of course will never agree to that. This one will run and run.

The Recall of Parliament on Friday was of course necessary prior to any possible military action.

But the bland acceptance that we backbenchers must always vote on these matters (which, of course readers of my new book ‘Who Takes Britain to War?’ would notice is a brand new and very unsatisfactory convention) means that the motion on which we voted had to be so constrained as to make proper use of force for humanitarian relief in Iraq and Syria difficult, if not impossible.

Another of my little hobby-horses on which I pressed the Prime Minister.

I am dodging the Party Conference this year – they are increasingly media and lobbyist events with none but the most politically ambitious attending.

Instead of cocktails and canapés, speeches and schmoozing, I opted for the induction of Rod Key as vicar of Tytherton Lucas, and visits in Calne to the outstandingly good Springfields Academy and to the brilliant recycling depot The Repair Academy and several similar worthwhile if less glamorous engagements.

I suspect that the raft of exciting new proposals which are already starting to emerge at the Party Conference will more than trump the two egotistical MPs who have defected to UKIP.

As a dyed-in-the-wool Eurosceptic myself, I can say that they have done our cause no favours.

Only a majority Conservative Government will deliver the in/out referendum on the EU which we all want. Their defection is more about personal status than policy; and their disloyalty is a disgrace.

It used to be that politics went into a sort of coma over the summer, only vaguely re-awakening at the conference season. Not so this year. Never can there have been a more exciting and fast-moving time. And never can the future have been so unclear. Exciting times indeed.