Nigel Farage knows the Tories are there for the taking

The one thing that had gone right for Rishi Sunak in the election campaign to date has now gone wrong.

Nigel Farage has been so energised by the first ten days of the election that he has taken back the leadership of the Reform party and decided to stand for parliament in Clacton after all.

Tory staffers who had expected to be running a ‘Stop Farage’ operation but were then stood down will now have to be stood back up again.

Farage has discerned that this time round, the Tories are truly there for the taking. They have drifted so far from their base on immigration, taxation, crime and net zero as to ignite white hot hostility among parts of it. They are also so far behind Labour that the traditional squeeze message that voting for a Farage vehicle will risk putting socialists into power has lost its potency. 

Rishi Sunak’s catastrophic November reshuffle – in which he sacked Suella Braverman as Home Secretary and made David Cameron Foreign Secretary – was the moment he made everything possible for Farage.

Reform’s poll ratings increased, and Farage himself began to actively ponder and scope out a frontline political comeback.