While I have never liked Nigel Farage’s politics, I have admired his toughness in adversity. Never forget that he survived a terrifying plane crash and a very nasty bout of cancer. He is often attacked in public places, in ways which must be unnerving even if they end up with no more than a ruined suit.Also never forget that one major newspaper made a sort of joke out of that cancer. So I look with a certain amount of sorrow on his current plight. I think he must be very tired and very drained. His recent petulant snarling at TV reporters shows that he has reached the end of his tether.I think I know why. He has now realised the dismal truth – that his entire huge and, so far, successful movement relies entirely on him, and on his good fortune.It is a brilliant one-man act. It has all but destroyed the Tory Party. It has split the Labour Party. It has been the pillar of no fewer than three rebel movements. But it has relied on two key things.Mr Farage himself has always been the mocking rebel and the outsider. And he has never really had to explain what he would do if he got real power.He won his enormous vote in last year’s General Election because so many Tories suffered a wild emotional spasm, and decided to punish themselves by having a Labour government. He must suspect that they won’t do that again, and helium is plainly beginning to leak from his once-impressive political airship, which sags and wrinkles in the wind. Nigel Farage's recent petulant snarling at Sky News TV reporters shows that he has reached the end of his tetherNow he is the one being mocked. He must spend the next few weeks being teased and provoked by a Left-wing comedian wearing a dustbin on his head.This will harm him anyway, but if he handles it badly or loses his temper, he can lose his self-inflicted by-election in an afternoon. And on top of that, he appears to have become enough of an insider to attract the colossal sums of money which established politicians control. But he lacks the advisers and financial bodyguards to help him avoid the difficulties he now faces. He has nobody to tell him, ‘Don’t meet x’ , ‘Don’t take money from y’, ‘Get rid of z’ or ‘Don’t resign’. The mocker is mocked. The outsider has been dragged into the establishment.And this exposes the real problem. Mr Farage really has nothing much to offer the country. He is a male Margaret Thatcher tribute band – amusing to watch on a summer evening, provided you don’t listen too carefully.He expresses, in a shrug, a wink or a smirk, the opinions of millions, as long as he says as little as possible. But he has no idea what to do about mass immigration, let alone the economy, or defence or the police or drugs (especially drugs).And now things have got a little rough, he cannot cope. This is sad for him but probably good for this country. It would be really good if those who oppose our horrible cultural revolution realised that Thatcher worship and Trump worship will not get them anywhere.Ruth Ellis should not have been hanged – and the furore spared a far more cruel killerWe are terribly keen on reforming the past, condemning the actions of the generations a few decades before us.A couple of weeks ago, there was an apology for ‘forced adoptions’. These were not pleasant. But were they really worse than the abortions which have replaced so many of them? A lot of the children involved had happy lives, who nowadays would have no lives at all.Are we so superior to our forebears? Or are we just bad at seeing our faults and good at seeing those of others? I don’t exactly object to the strange ‘conditional pardon’ given to Ruth Ellis, who killed her husband David Blakely, by the King last week, writes Peter HitchensI’d prefer it if we thought harder about many of the things we do now, such as drugging healthy children with amphetamines and similar, and effectively legalising the disastrous poison marijuana. I don’t exactly object to the strange ‘conditional pardon’ given to Ruth Ellis by the King last week. There was not the slightest doubt that she was guilty and she openly admitted her action was premeditated.Yet she should certainly not have been hanged, though it is very difficult, in modern Britain, to explain why not. Her crime, savage as it was, was not heinous enough to overcome the strong revulsion most feel at the execution of any woman.The forgotten Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd-George, who refused to reprieve her, has much to answer for. His hard heart weakened justice.By contrast, the Moors murderess Myra Hindley should definitely have been hanged, despite her sex, for her far more horrible child murders, as she herself admitted. But by then the law did not allow it, partly thanks to the revulsion against the death penalty which followed the hanging of Ruth Ellis.I stick to the view that if we can ever make our courts fair again we should keep the power to execute the worst killers. But I see no sign of the courts becoming fair, so I oppose it.Those who keep saying that if my views were followed Lucy Letby would have been executed, please note you are wrong.PM gets to go out with a bangTurkey's President Erdogan is an amazing combination of absurdity and creepiness, a democratically elected despot.Nato’s decision to hold its latest summit in his capital Ankara was an admission that the West’s pose as a defender of liberty is just that – a pose.Whatever is our outgoing Premier Keir Starmer going to do with the revolver Erdogan gave him, below, as a farewell gift, thoughtfully engraved with his name? Several bad jokes spring to mind but Sir Keir is not allowed to import the weapon until it has been made harmless.So I picture him in his garden in retirement, in a ten-gallon hat and leather chaps, fanning the hammer and making ‘blam! blam!’ noises, as he ponders his bizarre and brief political life.