Farage must be prepared to pack the Lords

One thing that is absolutely vital for Reform UK to do before the next election is to write a comprehensive manifesto. Anything the party and Nigel Farage would like to do in the five years after Labour’s near inevitable fall must be spelt out. There is no room for waffle, no room for complacency. Nothing should be, as Labour is doing now, brought in but not pre-announced.

The reason for this urgency is the constitutional set up of the country, our bicameral system. Due to a combination of bad faith, spite and personal moral horror, nobody from parties run by Nigel Farage over the past 20 years has ever received a peerage (barring Baroness Fox – but that award was for decades of efforts fighting for freedom of speech, not her short interlude as a European parliamentarian). Indeed, probably the biggest political unforced error by the establishment in recent years was in not giving Farage a peerage in 2016 after the referendum.