MP Steve Baker has rubbished the ‘UKIP political earthquake’ and called the European Parliament election results a ‘landslide for disengagement’.

The Wycombe MP has called on his peers to speak truthfully and realistically to a politically disenchanted population, instead of MPs talking to themselves.

UKIP won four of the ten available MEP seats in the south-east last week - including the party's leader Nigel Farage, who had promised a 'political earthquake'.

Turnout in the Wycombe District was 41,381 - 32.84 percent of all registered voters.

Mr Baker wrote on his website: “Politicians don’t care much about turnout. 

"That’s why most politicians and commentators don’t talk about it. What politicians care about is winning.

“Most of the electorate did not vote. That’s not a UKIP earthquake. It is a landslide for disengagement...

“It is a tragic fact that politicians are once again talking to themselves while commentators encourage them to do so. We have failed to inspire the public even to throw us out.

“The challenge after this election is not how to defeat UKIP. It is how to speak truthfully, hopefully and realistically to a population thoroughly disenchanted with the entire political system.”

Mr Baker continues his blog by writing: “For those of us who believe prosperity and joy is to be found in right relationship with other people, it is to set out how our present circumstances are the consequence of abdicating our personal and social responsibilities to the coercive apparatus of the state.

“It is to explain how liberty under the law, personal responsibility, compassion and mutuality are a better basis for a good life and a good society than the old lie that everyone can live at the expense of everyone else through politics and power, law and regulation.

“I don’t doubt that is the harder path. It is the one all politicians of sincerity should take.”