As the FT has noted in an article this morning, referring to a rally that Nigel Farage held in Swindon on Thursday:

Farage told the crowd once he had made it to the stage. “I don't lack courage, I don't lack conviction, I don't lack patriotism and I don't lack determination . . . I urge and I beg you to join our people's army.”

The problem for Farage is that this is not true. As The National has reported:

Polls now suggest that Reform – once framed as the party who could smash the Westminster's two-party system to pieces – may have hit their ceiling already, just before their first major test at the Holyrood and Senedd elections.

As they add:

While Reform were polling safely in the early to mid-30s quite consistently last year, polls in recent days have consistently showed them declining.

A YouGov poll conducted from March 1 to 2 showed them attracting just 23% in Westminster voting intention – a mere two points ahead of the Greens.

So why has this started to happen? As they note

Pollster Mark Diffley, who runs the Diffley Partnership, said the decline in Reform's popularity is more obvious south of the Border than it is in Scotland, where he said it has instead "plateaued".

He said this was "always going to happen" as Reform were only ever going to be able to attract a certain portion of voters.

He spoke about research which showed the vast majority of people would never dream of voting for Reform.

"Generally speaking, on that zero to 10 scale, about 75% of people will answer zero or one or two," he said.

There is, in other words, no "people's army" supporting Farage. There is, instead, at most one quarter of the population who are willing to embrace his toxic racism as an explanation for the failure of this country and who will, as a result, support his policies of hate that will, inevitably, make everything very much worse.

Please don't get me wrong: having one quarter of the country's population supporting toxic criticism is a serious issue, and a disabling force inside the narrative that this country needs to create about a politics of care, which is the only way in which we can solve our problems. But let's not pretend that Farage is going to increase his support when the trend is downwards as a result of people having seen just what he, his absurd group of failed Tory MPs and his incompetent councils have on offer.

The reality is that Farage's promise amounts to nothing more than hot air. He will not be the first politician to be in that position, or the last. But the reality is dawning on people that not only is what he is saying deeply divisive, disruptive, and just ethically wrong, but also that it cannot solve the UK's problems because of the extraordinary costs it will impose on the country.

The likelihood of seeing Farage in Downing Street is diminishing. The fact that Reform will, almost invariably, be the leading opposition party in both Holyrood and the Senedd reinforces that prediction.

I am sorry that the people of Scotland and Wales will have to suffer the spectacle of Reform politicians seeking to disrupt the good governance of their countries, but the evidence that they will have nothing credible to say whilst doing so will be important. It will act as the warning sign that Farage can never lead a government in Westminster.

For that small mercy, we should be grateful.

PDF of article