Britain’s politics was never so weird. First, the people of Makerfield choose who should be the new prime minister. Now the people of Clacton are to confirm the man who is currently his most popular challenger. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is still running ahead of all other parties, and he is ahead of all other current leaders. It would be foolish to underestimate him.

Farage is a cut above the normal populist upstart. His image as the amiable duffer in the golf club bar was once that of a traditional Tory backbencher. He took to Brexit not as an economic theoretician but as a flag-waving nationalist. He exploited race as a populist issue, coded as immigration, but had little interest in any wider political programme. Brexit to him was simply a mid-career adventure.

Whenever I met Farage in advance of the 2016 referendum – occasionally we would talk over breakfast – I found his commitment to Brexit specific. As if to emphasise the point, he told me that if leave won the vote: “I will go back to the pub and you will not hear from me again.” I wondered if this was a Don Giovanni remark, a promise meant strictly for the moment. But he seemed bruised by the travails of running Ukip and its baleful hangers-on. I sort of believed him.

Farage could easily have embarked on a Tory party career. He was not a natural extremist in the British National party mould. First elected as an MEP in 1999, he was exhilarated by his soaring opinion polls but........

© The Guardian