Cat Neelan

Theresa May is running a minority government and struggling to clarify what the referendum result really means.

After two and a half years of negotiating, the cabinet agrees a deal which immediately angers both Remainers and hardline Brexiteers.

There are resignations from May's cabinet and people plotting to oust her from Number 10.

Nigel Farage is watching Brexit unravel and his main backer, Aaron Banks, is causing unwanted attention.

So if he wants to keep campaigning for Brexit, he's going to need a new party.

And some new financial backers.

It's late December 2018, and Catherine Blakelock is at home.

She's recently left UKIP, the party that had been her political home for years, concerned about Tommy Robinson's involvement.

She sits down to register a number of entities, small companies or organisations that could germinate into a political party.

But it's not a party she thinks she can lead.

She's acting, if not on instruction, then at least in agreement with veterans of the Leave campaign.

So very quietly, the Brexit Party is born.

Like many people we spoke to for this story, having given time and energy supporting Nigel Farage's political goals, she's since fallen out with him and with the party as a whole.

Remember, the Brexit party simply rebrands when it becomes reform.

So the rise of the former and how it got its money is inextricably linked to the latter.

By 2019, Nigel Farage has been out of frontline politics for nearly three years, having quit as leader of UKIP after the 2016 referendum.

But, ever the political opportunist, he suddenly announces he's back.

At the public launch of the Brexit party in April, Nigel Farage unveils a raft of candidates to stand in the following month's European elections.

These were the elections the party said shouldn't be happening.

But because of the status in the House of Commons, Nigel Farage says he's left with no choice but to return.