Are the Tories about to fall into Farage’s trap – again?

Nigel Farage’s tail is up. The Reform party election campaign has gone better than he dared hope and its poll rating is up by several percentage points since he re-entered the fray. Today he went to South Wales to launch what he insisted was not a manifesto, but a ‘contract’ with the electorate over its campaigning priorities for the next five years. He also tacitly acknowledged that its contents were not quite as honed as he might have wanted, owing to the election happening in early July rather than the autumn.

Farage has admitted that Reform can’t win this election, but is mainly expecting to secure a Commons bridgehead to assist it in 2029. He probably hopes to nullify criticisms by manifesto nit-pickers from the bigger parties and the media. He is likely to succeed in this. That’s partly because he was able to blow out of the water Rishi Sunak’s repeated salami-slicing of National Insurance rates.