Not so long ago, Nigel Farage was riding high. The press hung on his every word. Broadcasters attended his every press conference. He was reliably introduced as the man set to be the next prime minister.
Now, things are different. He seems smaller somehow, quieter. He looks silly, increasingly irrelevant, a crybaby. It is becoming harder and harder to take him seriously.
He’s spending the summer campaigning against a bin in Clacton. He is beset by reports about gifts and donations. And he is struggling to secure any attention as Andy Burnham claims all the headlines.
The new Prime Minister didn’t even bother inviting Farage to his cross-party talks with the Tories and Lib Dems on the future of social care. Once upon a time, this would have been a difficult decision to make. Reform was topping the polls by a wide margin, for months on end. Its relevance was impossible to deny. It would have looked absurd to block them from talks when they were the bookies’ favourite to form the next government.
Things are different now. The weekly More in Common tracker poll showed Labour overtaking Reform for the first time in a year, 28 per cent to 24 per cent. Survation put Labour on 26 per cent and Reform two points behind on 24 per cent. YouGov had the two parties level, with Reform’s polling plunging and Labour’s rising.
