British politics has fundamentally changed and there’s one question on everyone’s minds.

Nigel Farage is at the centre of this monumental shake-up (Image: Getty)

I was having a drink last night with a former Tory cabinet minister of some standing and we were approached by a gaggle of bright-eyed students keen to say hello. Wanting to curry favour, one nascent TikTok politico chipped in “but Nigel Farage will never be Prime Minister will he?”

“F*ck yes!” replied my true blue MP of 30 years standing giving it the full Anglo Saxon, “he’s already got one foot in the door, didn’t you hear his speech?” And indeed the Reform UK leader this week delivered one of the most brilliant political addresses of the last 10 years. And yes, if there was an election tomorrow the keys to No10 would be jangling in his pocket.

No pacts, no deal with the devil, just Farage, large and in charge, of UK plc. And the reasons are neither complex nor the stuff of arcane political discourse. It’s just that, love him or loathe him, Farage (oddly like fellow gazillionaire Boris Johnson) has an innate grasp of mainstream British public life. He knows what we want and he knows how to get it.

In a world of deliberately over complicated bs Farage keeps it simple. And this is a concept which has signally bypassed both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer.

Tuesday saw the first political speech for years where the man delivering it seemed to actually believe the words he was saying.

Compare and contrast to Sir Keir Starmer who’s Enoch-like “island of strangers” address last week was pure scripted panto. Where are your political beliefs Keir? “They’re behinnnnnnd you!!”

He didn’t believe a word of it.

And yes Farage was instantly accused out-and-out populism by opponents.

As if that was a bad thing.

For too long in British politics any policies the bulk of the public might actually agree with have been immediately condemned as bigoted and wrong by our existing ruling class. Sneeringly damned as “populist”… a sort of Islington dinner-party version of the word “racist”.

Why is it bigoted to want the Brexit we voted for to be enacted? Why is it bigoted to think devolving our immigration policy to gangs of Albanian people traffickers might not be the best plan? Why is it bigoted abhor the quiet voice of the silent majority being drowned out by the shrill warblings of self-interested pressure groups who dominate the national agenda?

And of course it is this silent majority which has found its voice in Reform. And the other two parties are running scared. So they should be.

The Conservatives signed their own death warrant by inexplicably forcing their one-man vote magnet Boris Johnson out and replacing him with the charisma-free void that was Rishi Sunak.

The ridiculously out-of-touch billionaire who signally failed to listen to the people of Britain, was so useless he might well be the last ever Conservative Prime Minister. On the other side “Things Can Only Get Better” was once the signature tune of the Labour Party. Oh the irony.

It is plain to see that Sir Keir Starmer and his idiot, student-politics cronies are hopelessly out of their depth and are destroying Britain on a daily basis.

In 1976 Jim Callaghan had to beg the IMF to bailout Britain’s economy, like some failing banana republic. Anyone fancy a wager that, 50 years on, Starmer will be following in his political idol’s footsteps next year?

Britain is demoralised and angry.

Demoralised and angry at the Labour and Tory parties who no-longer believe in Britain as a going concern, who bow down at the altar of woke, who buy into the self-harming trope that Britain is useless, racist and done-for, and politicians who treat the hard-working portion of the British electorate as a contemptible cash-cow, at once to be vilified for their views and milked of money to pay for their dinner-party vanities.

Nigel thinks we’ve had enough – and he’s right.

Of course he came under immediate attack because his soundbites lacked thorough financial rigour. Which, in fairness, they do.

“He’ll be eaten alive by the bond market,” said one “expert” – as if it was a given that our hard-won democracy was now nothing but another fiscal lever for the greedy sods in the City.

“It’s not a serious plan it’s a gimmick,” said another. What? Like rinsing brilliant private schools to look tough in front of Labour’s lefty friends?

And my favourite – the Institute for Fiscal Studies weighed in saying Nigel’s admittedly opportunistic and decidedly lefty (but vote-winning) call to scrap the two-child benefit cap, restore the winter fuel allowance, and allow the first £20k of earnings to be free from tax would cost the exchequer about £50bn.

And where on earth would Britain get that money?

I’m no economist… but we are about to pay exactly that amount to, er, give the Chagos Islands away thank to an utterly insane decision by Keir Starmer.

Which would seem to more than cover it.

Look, the Tories aren’t really dead, they just have to stop being this centrist, lefty, Christian Democrat mess they have been for 20 years and get back to being Tories. But poor Kemi, who absolutely makes the right noises, is turning a supertanker and four years might not be enough.

And, pending a vote of no confidence (which I would not rule out), four years to the next election is a long time. And Reform have now got an awful lot of power in the regions so they can start to mess-up just like other political parties. And that will be interesting.

But even with all that, I’d happily stake at least half my mortgage on Nigel Farage’s goofy grin beaming from No10 in 2029.