The New Messiah: Nigel Farage will disrupt our future and divert Labour from its course

Having spent four years on the sidelines, if that can be done while broadcasting four times a week, he could no longer ignore his followers who needed him to lead them so he had to return to save his country. “I could not stand aside” he announced.

So it was that Nigel Farage returned, cast aside the major donor to his limited company disguised as a political party, Richard Tice, and was resurrected as Leader of Reform UK.

So it was with particular interest, if not more than a little masochism, that I watched the whole of the Reform UK rally in Birmingham.

While it would be offensive to compare it with others elsewhere in Europe now or in past decades the cult of personality, the tone and the atmosphere were decidedly worrying and right- wing populist.

There was no coherent programme, indeed it consisted of a series of assertions and slogans from Ann Widdicombe’s “War on Woke” to Richard Tice calling for Common Sense.

But the man himself was the peak performer of contradiction, misinformation, abuse and paranoia.

On abuse he could not control himself. It was “slippery Sunak” and Keir Starmer has the “charisma of a wet rag” The unsaid implication was – unlike me!

But the BBC was the main focus of his anger and abuse. How could they dare to have an audience where he was asked direct questions? It was a set up to have a questioner ask why it was that he attracted racists and homophobes to his party.

So he came to the conclusion that he will launch a campaign to remove the BBC licence fee to punish them. I know from membership of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that the BBC is held in high regard in all of the member countries as the broadcaster of the highest impartiality and integrity in the whole of Europe.

But Farage is, as we know no Europhile. Having been one of the main culprits who inflicted Brexit upon us he now wants us to withdraw from the ECHR, founded here in the UK 75 years ago, which protects the human rights of individuals in all of Europe, except Belarus and Russia.

But no doubt he would like us to join with Belarus and Russia, where his hero, Mr. Putin, jails journalists and opposition leaders and invades its neighbour.

Whenever Farage has been put under direct scrutiny he refuses to answer questions and then refuses to subject himself to further scrutiny.

So he is able at his rally to promise “massive increases in armed forces spending”, other major spending commitments and tax cuts without facing the scrutiny other party leaders have faced.

As well as rubbishing Keir Starmer, who ran the Crown Prosecution Service successfully for many years, Farage takes a swipe at the Governor of the Bank of England as “utterly useless” yet he has never run a whelk stall, let alone a big public agency. Indeed he could not even organise his candidate selection properly and although he has admitted they have “ a few bad apples” we have no guarantee of the integrity and ability of Reform candidates as there was no due diligence in their selection.

Thankfully there is little time for him to promote his rancid agenda widely and already most minds have been made up and postal votes cast, but this dangerous nonsense will influence the outcome in some seats and they could win some.

If they do win, including Clacton, then I fear we are in for a disruptive future. The Tory party will be the main loser but it could divert Labour from the task of recovery that the UK urgently needs.