We are three-and-a-half years from the next general election but I predict even now that, given their current performance, Reform UK will struggle to get an overall majority. Worse still they might allow Labour in again which will cripple the economy and spell the end of Britain as an independent country. The stakes could not be higher. The launch of the Reform “shadow cabinet” demonstrated an initial lack of coordination and forethought with regard to trailing policies as the “shadow front bench” pursued individual hobby horses. It also laid bare the leader’s discomfort with the concept of relinquishing control. Mr Farage will probably be thinking it evidenced why he was right not too. In the coming years of scrutiny and examination, Reform UK’s lead can easily fade away.

I don’t say this with any satisfaction. The last thing this country would want is another but even more Marxist regime than the one we have at the moment, destroying the economy, undermining our sovereignty and making people poorer. Not to mention attacking our civil liberties and free speech.

This must be avoided at all costs, even if it means the right-of-centre parties putting the country above party politics. We will see.

The next election will define Britain’s future. Will we become a province of a failing and technocratic EU super state, driven by Germany in its own interests and with the vitriol of a malevolent and jealous France?

Alternatively, we could go on to become a successful, high growth and wealth-creating economy, armed to the teeth in our own interests and non-aligned other than to NATO, so long as it defends Britain and our interests. With respect to this, it is important to recognise who owes what to whom.

Markets don’t lie and we have increasingly traded goods and especially services, the strongest part of our economy, with the rest of the world rather than the EU.

Our interests increasingly do not lie in Europe, but elsewhere in the wider world. Only 8% of UK businesses export to EU while 100% of business would be burdened by its regulations and taxes were we to rejoin.

The UK has also historically, since World War Two, spent excessive amounts defending Europe, while Europe, in particular Germany, invested in its own economy rather than its own or our defence.

Britain needs to boost defence spending but to protect our own interests. Let Europe put “boots on the ground”. Let us not continue to be useful fools – an EU/NATO gimp.

Britain is only the 38th richest country in the world and falling, based on Purchasing Power Parity (GDP per person). We need to stop our politicians behaving as if we had an empire and a supreme industrial base.

Politicians, all too keen to strut on the world stage and give away other people’s money to bask in the glow of virtue-signalling, steal taxes from the poor as well as the well-healed.

As a post-imperial, “re emerging” nation, the only interest we should have is our own and it is to be pursued with extreme prejudice.

In order to save Britain, the parties of the right must ensure a working majority in Parliament, even if that means a supply arrangement. Anything else is unforgivable self-indulgence. The alternative is serfdom within an EU superstate, or worse, at the behest of Messrs Putin and Xi.

John Longworth is Chairman of the Independent Business Network of family businesses, an entrepreneur, businessman and former MEP