Nigel Farage is the ultimate political gambler, so it was fitting he used a racing metaphor to describe Reform UK’s overnight surge.

He compared the substantial gains to a notoriously difficult jump in the Grand National, where even experienced jockeys lose their seats in a flurry of spruce branches and runaway horses.

“This for me was our Becher’s Brook,” Farage said, in early morning comments. “If we cleared Becher’s Brook and landed well, we go on to win the Grand National. What is very clear to me is that our voters will stick with us now all the way through. They are not lending their vote to Reform.”

Farage’s suggestion that his party was on course for a general election victory after these local successes now doesn’t look outlandish. He has shown that Reform isn’t a fresh Ukip, doomed to stutter and fall. His clear wins might even silence those who claimed his party is a modern SDP, which flew high at the start of the 1980s but never converted high polling numbers into actual votes.

Of course, we........

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