Farage is a MAGA politician operating on British shores. To all intents and purposes, he is an agent of Trump’s regime trying to transport his agenda from Washington to Westminster.

The reasons for Farage’s America-obsession are multi-faceted. Some are ideological, and some are purely financial.

The showmanship of American politics also appeals to Farage. U.S. elections are gruesome spectacles of ego, money, and emotion. Corporate-funded attack adverts harangue voters and appeal to their worst instincts. Politicians are celebrities rewarded for sensationalism over substance.

This is Farage’s mode of politics. He’s bored by Britain’s village politics – potholes, planning meetings and parish disputes – one of the reasons why he’s rarely seen in his local constituency. On the few occasions that he does press the flesh with the general public, he’s almost always pictured with a pint in hand. My theory is that drinking is the only way he can stomach interacting with ordinary people.

As his close ally Raheem Kassam told the New Statesman in December: “If England were the 51st state, Nigel Farage would be one of the senators.”

In this spirit, Reform’s annual conferences are more akin to MAGA rallies than the modest, humdrum affairs staged by other parties. Farage and his clan walk out on stage to turquoise fireworks as they try to put the assembled masses into a hypnotic trance through strobe lights and anti-immigrant diatribes.