Last Thursday, I spent 20 joyous minutes standing outside an office block in Northamptonshire, loudly arguing with a very wealthy former Tory donor who is standing – for another party – in next week’s Wellingborough byelection. We debated such issues as immigration, knife crime and the dire state of the NHS, before he told me what he thought of the politicians he used to give his money to.

The Tories, he said, are now hopelessly held back by people who are “remainers” and “large statists”, and deserve nothing less than extinction. “The reason I joined Reform UK,” he concluded, “was to obliterate the Conservative party.”

The Wellingborough contest, let us not forget, was triggered by the fall of the Tory Brexiteer Peter Bone, who was suspended from the House of Commons over allegations of bullying and sexual misconduct, and then removed thanks to thousands of local people signing a recall petition. By way of adding insult to injury, the new Tory candidate seems to be his partner. If the Conservatives are defeated there on 15 February, it will be at the hands of the Labour party – whose likely win in the contest happening on the same day in Kingswood, on the outer edge of the Bristol suburbs, could fuse with the Wellingborough result to compound the government’s air of terminal decay. But that is not the only story that is unfolding.

Reform UK is the latest creation of the people – Nigel Farage and the property multi-millionaire Richard Tice, chiefly – who played a huge role in Brexit and its aftermath, via such vehicles as Ukip, Leave.EU and the short-lived Brexit party. In Kingswood, they are soft-pedalling, reportedly........

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