Nigel Farage is adept at riding the currents of British politics. When he named Reform after the Canadian party in 2020, it was a statement of intent. Like Preston Manning in the 1990s, he aimed to displace this country’s main centre-right party and refashion it in his image. But where Manning fell short, handing over the reins to Stephen Harper, Farage aims to go one better by becoming prime minister himself.

A keen angler, Farage has spent his few moments of downtime this summer fishing. On one such trip, he took an assembled group of journalists to the English Channel to highlight the small boat crossings. Amid rising discontent, with protests outside asylum seeker hotels, Farage has netted a tidy haul of Tory defectors, including the Welsh MS Laura Ann Jones and London councillor Lail

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