Has Nigel Farage become Britain's most influential politician?

Whatever one thinks of Nigel Farage, back in the news for bringing about the resignation of NatWest's chief executive Alison Rose and Coutts boss Peter Flavel, he has been instrumental in changing Britain. Few observers would argue that his campaign to remove the UK from the European Union has led to a beneficial change, but almost everyone would agree that it's been a profound one.

- Andrew Anthony

In Britain, where the first-past-the-post voting system neuters small parties, single-issue politics tends to be the preserve of eccentrics and obsessives, carrying about the same parliamentary influence as the Monster Raving Loony party. The glaring exceptions are Farage's Ukip and the Brexit party, which between them helped deliver the harshest of Brexits.

An almost anachronistically English figure with his beer and blazers, Farage is an easy man to underestimate. But, as his biographer Michael Crick says, he is "one of the great communicators of our age". A virtuoso on the dog whistle, he is also a master of using his opponent's strength to his own advantage. He rose by encouraging dissident Tories to drag the party down to his level. Ukip was a crank outfit before he took over in 2006 and reverted to one again the moment he left, following the EU referendum, in 2016. But in between it was a crank outfit that got the Tories to dance to Farage's Little Englander tune, eventually securing the referendum that his side won.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, confidence in globalism and political elites plummeted. Plenty of politicians on the left sought to capitalise on the discontent, but it was Farage and wealthy backers like Arron Banks who saw the opportunity for rightwing anti-elites populism.