Nigel Farage must believe in fairies

For all the terror he triggers in Brian Cox, Nigel Farage is a saloon bar bore, not a beer hall putscher. Winning power doesn’t really interest him. He has never had any sort of governmental responsibility: the perfect tribune for disgruntled Right-winger, who can be safe in the knowledge that none of his ideas really matter. Deport asylum seekers to the Moon? Sounds tremendous!

But Reform UK’s once-and-future leader is a victim of his own success. With the real prospect that a Farage-Davey tag team will push Rishi Sunak into the abyss, many Right-wingers will have been paying close attention to today’s manifesto launch. Sorry – “contract” launch. But unfortunately for those hoping for a serious policy prospectus, the document has the imagination and incontinence of a back of a fag packet doodle after a hearty lunch.

Lifting income tax thresholds. Scrapping net zero subsidies. freezing non-essential migration, quitting the ECHR, and cutting NHS waiting lists to zero. What’s not to love? Yet it’s all too good to be true. Pledging to cut taxes by cutting £50 billion in spending is easy. But what happens when you tell the Treasury – or your backbenchers start demanding a new A&E in their seat?

Farage is great at identifying problems – stifling taxes, ridiculous immigration levels, climate lunacy– but providing genuine solutions would be too much like hard work. If Reform UK ever got into power, the Sir Humphreys of the Whitehall Machine would stump him within a week. Rather than resolve Britain’s problems, he’d soon decamp from Number 10 to drown his sorrows in The Red Lion.

But Farage isn’t interested in power. This is not a plan for government, but a Santa list of cask strength policies designed to woo wavering Tories. Farage isn’t aiming for Downing Street, but to hand every Conservative MP their P45. His proposals will strike many Tories as exactly what we should have been doing in government these last fourteen years. If Labour wins anyway, why not vote for it?

Reform’s “contract” might be a far from serious document. But Conservatives only have ourselves to blame if we find it so attractive.