In the last week, since the results of the English local elections emerged, we have been presented with a version of the future. This version of the future, heavily predicted by Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney, culminates in Nigel Farage being Prime Minister in 2029.

It is not unthinkable.

Mr Farage’s Reform UK party has topped nine of the last 13 opinion polls, with the other four resulting in a tie with Labour.

And in a ‘real’ poll of voters last Thursday, the party emerged with by far the highest vote share which, extrapolated into Westminster, would have resulted in Reform winning almost as many seats in the House of Commons as Labour and the Tories combined.

We have seen a similar trend in other countries around the world. A population, despondent about the impact the cost of living is having on their lives and disillusioned with their mainstream political offering, looks for an alternative. The alternative emerges, usually in the form of a strong and outspoken figure, speaking their language and offering some hope for them.

That hope is generally based on the abolition of three things: net zero (it makes you cold and poor), immigration (they’re taking your jobs), and wokery (what a lot of nonsense).

The formula has had success already, most obviously in the United States with the re-election of Donald Trump, and perhaps second most famously in Italy with the election of Giorgia Meloni, who has taken her Fratelli d’Italia party from two per cent of the vote to the Palazzo Chigi in less........

© Herald Scotland