It’s all over for Nigel Farage, now he’s secured his role as our newest, oddest historical figure

How this public school Arthur Daley has got to this point is one of the mysteries of an endlessly perplexing age, says Matthew Norman

As it ends for Nigel Farage with a whimper of wounded ego, a word of thanks to the froggish rascal. He sold the credulous among us a sliver of hope at a time of abject despair.

With hope, as with digitalis, it’s all about the dosage: a little does the ailing heart good. For a few days the prospect of his party/commercial enterprise (it isn’t entirely clear which) costing the Tories a majority hoisted dismal Remainer spirits.

A larger dose tends to be lethal, however, so spare some sympathy for those on the other side of the Brexit divide, such as Wayne Bailey. The erstwhile Brexit Party candidate in Tory-held Crawley contests the notion that falling for Farage’s latest con cost him no more than the novel £300 candidate’s fee. “And the rest,” he tweeted. “I employed a full time campaign coordinator last week on a 2 month contract which has cost me thousands. I also have an outbuilding FULL of Brexit Party leaflets and signs ready for next weeks launch. Nigel owes me over TEN GRAND.”

Good luck retrieving a farthing of that. If Bailey took the matter to the small claims court, the judge would mutter “buyer beware” – or “caveat emptor” were Jacob Rees-Mogg lounging on the bench – and throw the case out.

And the judge would be right. Anyone who purchases whatever Farage is selling is guilty of a kind of auto-entrapment, and forfeits the right to legal recourse. It may not be long before some 52 per cent of the referendum electorate have painful cause to reflect on that.

How this public school Arthur Daley was transplanted from the role of Terry-Thomas’ sidekick on a 1950’s second-hand car forecourt is one of the mysteries of an endlessly perplexing age. The skill set needed to flog dodgy MGs to ageing lounge lizards worked beautifully in a grander context until his Gerald Ratner moment. He never described his Brexit Party Ltd as “crap”. He didn’t need to. He read the polls and editorials, and imploded in a sulphurous flash of yellow smoke.

All that remains to him now is the deranged bluster of the poker player who carries on with the bluff after showing his busted flush. He calls on the Conservatives to withdraw in his favour in Labour seats in his favour. But no one is buying from him now. Not after he did the classic Daley on his own people by lumbering them with the boxes of Free Nelson Mandela T-shirts the day before Mandela left Robben Island.

In a sense it matters little (if at all) whether he raises a second white flag by pulling his candidates out of non-Tory seats. When a brand is ruined, it stays ruined. Who would vote for a party, or a company, whose boss has given grudging approval for a Brexit deal he dismissed days ago as no Brexit at all? What Brexiteer will support the outfit its chief executive has implicitly designated as a clear and present danger to Brexit?

One assumed the chance to study the Grifter Supreme close up might have taught him the basics of the big con. In the event, he learned very little from Donald Trump.

On his LBC radio show, he whined to Trump about the Tories’ inexplicable refusal to hire him as a negotiator with the EU. This week, he negotiated nothing in return for his surrender – unless you consider Johnson’s “promise” not to extend trade talks beyond the end of next year as something. Had Farage been in the room with Barnier, he’d have handed Gibraltar to Spain for half a kilo of Iberico ham, and traded the Isle of Wight to Latvia for a blast-from-the-past rumble with a barmaid from Riga.

Johnson isn’t wilfully self-destructive. With a majority and oodles of political capital in the bank, what pressure would he be under to flip the form book by keeping a promise in the certainty that no deal would deal terrible damage to the economy and his chances of re-election in 2024?

Farage isn’t a fool either, or not as foolish as he looks. You might argue that no one outside a Jim Carey movie is as foolish as Farage looks, but that would be needlessly personal. For decades he painstakingly built himself into a historical figure. He lied and distorted and swaggered his way to a chapter of his own in the history books of tomorrow. I guess he’ll retain that, along with however many thousands the Brexit Party Ltd has separated from marks like Bailey.​

But it’s over for him now. As the next wave of polls will presumably confirm, he has shrunk his target audience to the lobotomised, and that is not a frutiful demographic base for a populist demagogue manque.

When he accepts the peerage he claims repeatedly to have been offered and refused, that £300 House of Lords daily allowance will come in handy if he wants to repay the likes of Bailey their fees. Somehow, one suspects he will find others uses, such as commissioning his heraldic crest.

There was a time when he could have got away with the pitbull rampant. Now that he’s Boris’s bitch, I’d recommend the lapdog suivant.