Could Farage do worse as prime minister? Absolutely

We ought to take Reform seriously as a possible party of government - and Nigel Farage as a possible PM - so let’s give his ideas the scrutiny they deserve (PA)

- JOHN RENTOUL

Nigel Farage wants to be taken seriously as the leader of a potential party of government, so let us take him at his word: his ideas for government are terrible. He should be taken seriously because he has a good chance of being prime minister after the next election. It is no use saying, “The election is probably four years away; anything can happen.” The things that might happen are just as likely to increase Farage’s chances of winning as they are to decrease them.

Incidentally, though, on the timing of the election, it was interesting that Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, assumed it would be in 2028, four years after the last one. This was the normal pattern, before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act that held sway between 2011 and 2022: if things were going well for a prime minister, they would go to the country a year before they had to. If things were going badly, they would run the full five years.

Perhaps McSweeney had been so used to assuming a Sir Keir Starmer government would be gratefully acclaimed by the British people that, even when he wrote a memo last year about what could go wrong for Labour, he took 2028 as his target date for the election. The memo was leaked to Tim Shipman, political editor of