He may not yet be an MP, but Nigel Farage is still the talk of Westminster

There are even rumblings of a Tory-Brexit Party pact

Love him or hate him, Nigel Farage has had more impact on the political scene than most of the politicians I have covered in 37 years on the Westminster beat. Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair changed Britain. But remarkably, a man who has failed on seven occasions to become an MP has twice shifted the tectonic plates.

The shockwaves caused by Farage’s victory in the European elections are bigger than in 2014, when Ukip under him topped the poll. A year later, the Conservatives won an overall majority at a general election, and Ukip won no seats. No one is betting that Farage’s Brexit Party would suffer the same fate now, even though first-past-the-post is cruel on smaller parties. A YouGov survey putting it in second place behind the Liberal Democrats would give the Brexit Party 141 seats, Labour 202, the Lib Dems 119 and the Tories 110.

These are fantasy figures, not least because the Tories would be mad to allow an election. But the Farage threat is the grim reality for Tory MPs. More than half of the 2017 Tory voters who took part in the European elections backed the Brexit Party.

To say Tory MPs are spooked by him is an understatement. “Theresa May has destroyed our party and handed our supporters on a plate to Farage,” one Tory grandee told me.

Crispin Blunt, a Eurosceptic former minister, led calls for the Tories to enter an electoral pact. With parliament blocking Brexit, he said, the Tories “are almost certainly going to have to go into some kind of electoral arrangement with the Brexit Party, otherwise Brexit doesn’t happen”.

No runners in a Tory leadership race over which the Farage spectre hovers have endorsed a pact. They would rather promise to deliver Brexit. But if May’s successor sought a no-deal exit and Tory opponents stopped them by forcing an election, the Tories might seek a pact with Farage. He would be open to it, saying he would “do a deal with the devil” to secure Brexit.

The failure to leave the EU in March was the perfect launchpad for a party modelled on Italy’s populist Five Star movement. Farage mark two is a more serious and sober figure, in every sense of the word. He has cleaned up his act. The Brexit Party is Ukip minus the “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” decried by David Cameron.

You can’t keep Farage out of it. He will doubtless grab some of the limelight when his pal Donald Trump visits the UK. The Brexit Party will heavily influence Thursday’s by-election in Peterborough. Farage is on to a “win-win”: either the UK leaves the EU or he can continue to shout “betrayal” and might finally make it to Westminster.

Yours,

Andrew Grice

Political commentator