Ian Dunt

Now you look at the kind of stresses that are on Nigel Farage at the moment.

So as we're speaking, he's seeing intense pressure from his right, it's kind of laughable, but Rupert Lowe for the Restore Party, who's speaking in kind of almost explicitly fascistic terms, sort of going like calling people from the third world savages, saying they want a mass deportation program, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Now, supported by Elon Musk, so boosted to millions of followers each time, which is then coordinated with Tommy Robinson, all the marches that take place.

Okay, so...

Nigel Farage would love to ignore that because he needs to present himself as much more moderate if he's going to win a general election.

That's obviously where it is.

Over and over again in focus groups, the main concern you hear from people tempted to vote reform is, but are they a bit racist?

And on that basis, he needs to close that down.

He needs to make sure that that's not there.

However, now he has problems on his right flank from Rupert Lowe.

We're talking as there's just a week to go before the result in the

You peel off, what, 10% of his vote, 15% of his vote.

There's very little support for a restore, but you don't need to lose much of your vote, especially when it's five-way sort of battles, in order not to win.

So suddenly he has to try and keep those guys in check, which he's done by talking about cold, hard fury and calling for riots, but not spook all the people that are like,

Why on earth is someone who wants to be prime minister basically stoking race riots, you know, on the streets of Belfast, on the streets of Southampton?

And that's a really difficult political situation.

Not insurmountable, but it's not a great political situation to do, especially not when in the background you're already in decline, and especially not as well when immigration numbers, as they fall, mean the salience of the immigration issue has started to decline.

So your chief political attribute, the one policy you can count on to channel public rage, is also starting to fall in salience.

So look,

It's a big threat.