Sunak’s campaign was a Nigel Farage tribute act

There should have been a line between the Tory approach and the rightwing demagogue’s but, foolishly, the PM dissolved it

Nigel Farage has erupted back into British politics like the sonorous belch that warns of a meal undigested; the bilious portent of a messy regurgitation. His campaign speeches come in familiar flavours with an edge of stale acidity – the scorn for a “Westminster class” that knows no patriotism; the lament for a country in social, economic and moral decline; the warning that mass immigration is gobbling scarce public resources and confected fury at betrayal by politicians who keep breaking their promises to end the scourge.

It is the dish cooked up for Brexit, now back on the menu under the Reform UK brand. Farage claims to be satisfying a national appetite. He was all set to quit the domestic political fray, he says, but was called back to serve the people; his people. (The vanity is spicier, with a dash of messiah complex, this time around.)