OK but what I am telling you is that this has actually damaged Farage's standing in his own party and among his own supporters. There's actual evidence for this.

And I presented that scenario in the form Farage understands it. Remember: he literally started this.

If Farage steps down — he's done it before, and I agree that there is a very good chance he does so before the election — then Reform is finished. There is nobody else, even though a few Reform people like to excitedly tell you that Zia Yusuf could do it.

It's the same with Trump: who is going to take Trump's mantle with the same authority when he goes? Nobody.

But in the UK, the chances of a populist party appearing at the fringes and seizing real power is very much held back by the way our system works. Farage is a unicorn; incredibly rare. Even the Tory party would have difficulty seizing back populism for the next decade or two.

And there is no establishment "overreach" here at all. Farage is a democratically elected MP who is being investigated by the parliament he joined for things any other MP would be investigated for. He could just sit and wait for that to be done, because he's an MP regardless and the people who ultimately judge whether he keeps his job are his own constituents anyway. If political parties choose not to play his game on his own terms and timescales, that is a decision for each of them.