Nigel Farage likes a gamble. Crypto bros and hedge-fund managers bankroll his enterprises; his social circle is filled with traders, bridge players and money men who fancy a flutter. It was Malcolm Muggeridge who claimed that ‘to succeed pre-eminently in English public life it is necessary to conform either to the popular image of a bookie or of a clergyman’. Farage is firmly in the former camp.

But the man who has never been afraid to take a punt is now betting on playing it safe. In his bid to kill off the Conservatives, Farage has sought to woo the party’s voters by poaching their talent and ridding Reform UK of all suspect economic baggage. The manifesto of 2024 has been binned; full-fat nationalisation is out, save for British steel and key strategic industries. He has pledged to keep the Bank of England independent and retain the Office for Budget Responsibility. The triple lock would remain for pensioners. As one Tory observes: ‘We are all Sunakites now.’

A game of mirroring is now playing out, in which the Tories and Reform both assert their dominance

A game of mirroring is now playing out, in which the Tories and Reform both assert their dominance

Within Reform, there are mixed feelings about this. There are some who fret about ‘Tory-fication’: older hands with long memories recall betrayals of years gone by. One ex-candidate notes the switch in the party’s slogan from the bright-eyed ‘Change Politics for Good’ to the more conventional ‘Family, Community, Country’. ‘Party of the centre-right’ is a phrase now endlessly trotted out on media rounds by Reform spokesmen.

Farage believes the experience brought by the party’s new arrivals is........

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