The May elections are a perfect opportunity for Nigel Farage to peddle his politics of grievance

For his next trick, perhaps Comrade Farage will belt out all the verses of The Red Flag and tell us that his favourite book is The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists.

- Andrew Rawnsley

Brother Nigel has popped up on the government's left flank by demanding the immediate nationalisation of the steel industry. He's also expressed a solidarity with trades unionists hitherto undetected in this longtime admirer of Margaret Thatcher.

At an event at a working men's club in one of the more deprived wards of County Durham, the old fraud even claimed to have a personal affinity with steelworkers because he used to be in the "metals business" himself. This was a disingenuous reference to his time as a trader at the London Metal Exchange, which involved long lunches in the City fuelled with copious quantities of port. Or maybe he was thinking of his gig as a paid "brand ambassador" for a firm that deals in gold bullion.

Many descriptions come to mind when contemplating the leader of Reform UK, but I'm finding it a stretch of the mental elastic to get to working-class hero. Maybe he's forgotten his recent vote against outlawing fire-and-rehire and his party's opposition to banning zero-hours contracts.

So what is going on here? With his trademark malevolent grin, he told us exactly what he is up to during an attention-seeking swing through Labour heartlands in the north of England where Reform is hoping to make hefty gains in the local elections. He cackled about "parking their tanks on the lawns of the red wall", a phrase he's used before, but not previously with quite such an intensity of intent. The plan makes sense. If he is to advance on his stated ambition to be the next prime minister, it won't be sufficient to get the better of the Tories in the scrap between the two of them for traditionally rightwing voters. He's also going to need to garner support from at least some of the voters who backed Labour last July.