I can’t help but think that Nigel Farage’s recent political manoeuvring isn’t a bold march towards Downing Street, but a carefully choreographed stumble away from it. Because if you genuinely wanted to become Prime Minister, you probably wouldn’t start by surrounding yourself with Robert Jenrick and Nadhim Zahawi. Would you?

Farage has spent his entire career doing what he does best: shouting very loudly from the sidelines. It’s a role he’s played with great enthusiasm and, let’s be honest, considerable financial reward. Champion of deregulation, darling of tax dodgers, professional outrage merchant. In his world these are all perfectly respectable callings in modern politics, but not exactly a CV screaming “steady hand on the nuclear button”.

Responsibility

The small problem is that power brings responsibility, and responsibility brings homework. And being Prime Minister requires more than one policy repeated at increasing volume until someone rings a bell. Ending immigration “by hook or crook” is not a governing programme; it’s a pub rant with branding.

So perhaps this is where my self-sabotage theory comes in. By welcoming a pair of Tory alumni whose names trigger involuntary eye-rolls across the electorate, Farage may be deliberately tanking his own poll ratings. After all, nothing says “fresh political alternative” like hoovering up the most toxic waste from the Conservative scrapyard.

Positively Giddy

Farage was positively giddy today, boasting that Kemi Badenoch had “gifted” him Jenrick. In reality, Badenoch probably opened a bottle of something fizzy and checked the exits. Losing Jenrick is potentially less a gift to Reform and more an unexpected act of self-care by the Conservatives.

Jenrick and Zahawi are about as popular as a parking fine wrapped in a tax bill. Combined with Farage, they form a holy trinity of political toxicity that could make even hardened protest voters reconsider their own stupidity. Maybe Farage believes that if you put enough alleged conmen in one place, power will eventually materialise through sheer audacity.

Is it al a Plan

Or perhaps this is the plan all along?

Because failing is Farage’s comfort zone. If Reform crashes and burns, he gets to play his favourite role once again: victim of the establishment, betrayed by the system, thwarted by shadowy forces who definitely aren’t just the electorate saying “no thanks”.

And that failure — loud, theatrical, blame-heavy failure may be exactly what he wants. Governing is hard. Being outraged forever and making money out of it is easy.