By any reasonable assessment Reform UK is toast.

According to the most recent polling, Reform is now trailing in a poor third place behind the Conservatives, with Nigel Farage’s own personal ratings also crashing to record lows.

With Farage’s party also losing a string of recent by-elections, it’s no surprise that bookies now give him a vanishingly slim chance of winning the next general election.

Now given this apparent downfall, you might expect the UK’s national broadcaster to reduce, or at the very least significantly alter, their coverage of the party accordingly.

If so, you would be badly mistaken.

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As the US President abandons Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s invading armies, Trump’s long-standing defenders in the UK are now desperately seeking to distance themselves from him.

For years Boris Johnson was Trump’s main defender on this side of the Atlantic.

In Parliament and on the pages of the British press, Johnson repeatedly mocked Trump’s critics as being “puffed up pompous popinjays”, who were engaged in a “whingearama” about the President.

Even after Trump’s disastrous first term in office, Johnson continued to defend him, insisting that his re-election in 2024 would make the world a “safer” and “more stable” place.

Yet after two years of abject chaos and betrayal, Johnson has finally been forced to admit that he was wrong, describing the US President’s betrayal of Ukraine as “sickening”.

He’s not the only one. Across politics and the media, many of Trump’s most committed British apologists are now finally being forced to admit that his critics were right all along.

On Friday the Daily Mail published a front page piece promoting a piece by long-standing Trump cheerleader Richard Littlejohn, describing the US President as being “toast”. Similar pieces have appeared right across the right-wing press in the UK.

So is this a genuine turnaround or something far more cynical, and why is it only now that they’ve started to publicly admit what everyone else knew all along?

Here’s what I think is really going on.

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There was a highly revealing interview this week between Nigel Farage and two Telegraph journalists, in which the Reform UK leader set out his plans to prosecute the undercover ITV reporters who recently exposed the endemic racism, Islamophobia and misogyny inside his party.

“They’re behaving like criminals. They need to be prosecuted. We will prosecute them,” he told the paper’s Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan.

Now you might expect that two journalists listening to a far-right leader set out his plans to lock up their colleagues would push back against him in some way.

You might expect, at the very least, for them to defend the longstanding tradition of undercover journalism as a tool for uncovering dishonesty, corruption and law-breaking.

Yet far from pushing back against Farage, Halligan and Pearson can both be seen nodding along to his comments, before later proudly promoting them on social media.

They’re not the only ones.

As I’ve recently seen first hand, far from being willing to stand up to the authoritarian and outright fascist tendencies of Reform UK, many in my profession now seem more than happy to go along with it.

Here’s why.

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Two things can be true at once. The first thing that is true is that this has objectively been a bad week for Zack Polanski.

His absence from the vote on the Green Party’s ‘Zionism is racism’ motion has opened him up to attacks from both left and right.

His decision, which came ahead of his defeat in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, has caused senior Green Party figures to publicly question his leadership for the first time.

It has also led to a barrage of attacks from commentators lining up to dismiss both him and his party as a busted flush.

However, whilst Polanski finishes the week in bad shape, the truth is that his party actually still has quite a bit to smile about.

Here’s why.

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I’ve been a lobby journalist working in the Houses of Parliament for some 13 years now.

In that time I’ve attended dozens of party conferences, including with the Conservatives, and I’ve never had a single complaint about my behaviour, or coverage.

Even under Boris Johnson, who I was probably more critical of than any other recent Prime Minister, there was never any attempt to prevent me from attending.

However, as I explained to James O’Brien on LBC yesterday, that all changed when Kemi Badenoch became Conservative leader.

Here’s why.

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As I first predicted last year, the wheels are now finally coming off of the Nigel Farage project.

Three major polls this week found that support for Reform UK has slumped massively over the last few months, with Farage’s party set to come in a poor second, or even third place, were a general election held today.

This collapse is no accident. Not only has Andy Burnham’s appointment as Prime Minister transformed Labour’s electoral prospects, it has also helped to highlight quite how unpopular Farage now is as a prospective prime minister

However, there is another, more significant reason why I believe Reform’s prospects of winning the next general election are now so slim.

Here’s how Farage really threw it all away, and why it could be about to get even worse for him.

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I turned on the BBC this morning, only to discover that our national broadcaster believes that one of the biggest stories in the world right now is the latest series of anti-migrant, anti-British comments, by the billionaire tax exile Jim Ratcliffe.

Ratcliffe’s comments, in which he claimed the UK is “on the slide” due to high taxes and immigration, came just months after he was widely condemned for suggesting that the UK has been “colonised” by migrants.

Yet this latter fact was not even stated until the very last line of the BBC’s online news report of their interview.

Also featured prominently in the BBC’s coverage was Ratcliffe’s criticism of the UK Government for “failing to invest further in North Sea oil and gas,” which he described as “insanity”.

Less prominent in their coverage, however, was the fact that Ratcliffe made his fortune as the founder and CEO of a major petrochemicals company, before leaving the UK for tax purposes some six years ago.

So why did the BBC decide that Ratcliffe’s latest bigoted and self-interested views were worthy of being given such a sizeable platform?

Here’s what’s really going on.

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Last night the Telegraph revealed that the Crypto billionaire Ben Delo has handed a further £36 million to Reform UK, on top of the £8 million he’s already given to the party.

Let’s just remind ourselves of who and what Delo is.

Four years ago Delo pled guilty to what was described as “willfully” breaching US anti-money laundering laws with his Bitmex firm, which was described as being “in effect a money laundering platform”.

Prosecutors accused Delo of being the “leader of a criminal enterprise” who knew that his platform had become a “magnet for money laundering and criminal activity”.

After pleading guilty, Delo received a 30 month probation and $10 million fine, before later being let off the hook by Donald Trump.

However, Delo isn’t the only figure associated with crypto money laundering to bankroll Farage’s party.

Here’s how the corrupt crypto industry bought up Reform UK.

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I returned from my holiday this week to find that my accreditation for Reform conference had been revoked and that I would be banned from attending.

It’s the second year in a row that I’ve been banned by the party, and follows the Conservatives also banning me from attending their annual conference last year.

Neither party gave any explanation for why they chose to ban me, nor would they respond to any further enquiries about it.

So what’s really going on here and why is my attendance at these events something they appear so determined to prevent?

Here’s what really lays behind it.

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Anyone reading a newspaper, or tuning into a news show this week will have been met with a wall of coverage about Prince Harry and Meghan moving back to the UK.

This coverage, which has spread right across the media, from the tabloids to ‘respectable’ outlets like BBC Newsnight, has continued despite there being little obvious public interest in the story.

And I use that term quite literally. The public simply aren’t interested.

Asked by pollsters YouGov this week how much they cared about the story, just three per cent of respondents said they cared a “great deal” about it, compared to 87% who said they either didn’t care at all, or not very much.

In other words it was a complete non-story, which next to nobody cared about, yet it absolutely dominated the news this week anyway.

The same could be said about the Jason Arday story.

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You could tell how bad the Clacton by-election result was for Nigel Farage by the fact that he immediately went into hiding after it.

Reform UK cancelled not just one, but two victory speeches by Farage - at the count itself and at a planned rally afterwards.

His non-appearance at the result itself was particularly startling.

After all, this was a by-election that Farage had staked his entire political career upon and yet he couldn’t even face turning up in person to hear the result.

Even his excuses for not appearing quickly fell apart.

After he initially claimed that the police had advised him of a “credible threat” against him, Essex Police immediately released a statement making it clear that this was a lie.

Yet it was his subsequent statement that he didn’t want to be “demeaned and humiliated” by standing alongside all the other candidates that was the most revealing.

So was this by-election really a stunning victory for Farage, as he claimed, or was it actually a demeaning “humiliation” for him, as he then admitted?

Here’s why the Clacton result and his extraordinary response to it has inadvertently shown exactly how Farage’s career is now going to end.

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The biggest failure of Keir Starmer’s premiership was his refusal to effectively take on the rise of the far right across the UK.

Andy Burnham now risks repeating that same failure.

In the past few days a large violent racist mob has taken to the streets of Thetford, Norfolk, where they have attempted to drag migrants and refugees from their homes, whilst calling for them to “have their f**king heads chopped off”.

At the same time, journalists attempting to report on the violence have been bombarded with rocks, whilst police seeking to stop them have been attacked and bitten.

Now you might expect that three nights of such unimaginable horror, taking place on mainland Britain in 2026 would have elicited a serious and punitive response from our Government and all of the main opposition parties.

If so, you will be disappointed.

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Last December I predicted that the wheels would soon fall off the Nigel Farage project and boy is that prediction now starting to pan out.

Last night Reform UK lost the Greater Manchester by-election by a landslide 30-point margin against Labour.

This is the fourth previously winnable by-election that Farage’s party has now lost in a row and it is by some margin the worst of the lot.

Their latest heavy defeat comes as polls this week also showed a collapse in both Reform and Farage’s ratings, amid multiple investigations into his personal finances.

So is the Reform leader now done and dusted as a political force, or could there still be a route back for Britain’s great political survivor?

Here’s what I predict will happen next.

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I spent the past two days at the Womad Festival in Wiltshire where Byline Times were running the ‘World of Words’ tent.

One of our speakers was Green Party leader Zack Polanski.

For the past year Polanski and the Greens have been locked in what he described as a “toxic” fight with his Labour opponents, who he has insisted he will “replace” as the main party on the left of British politics.

Yet with Andy Burnham now in Number 10, Polanski appears to be subtly shifting his approach.

In an expansive and personal interview with our editor Hardeep Matharu, Polanski said he now has “hope” for a better and less “toxic” relationship with a more left wing Labour party under Burnham.

“I do think Andy Burnham is on the left of Keir Starmer, and I think it would be churlish to pretend any other way…” he said strikingly, adding that he now believed there could be a “reset” in relations between the two parties on issues like electoral reform and the cost of living.

So is Polanski right to sense a shift in our politics under Burnham, or are we all being set up again for another great disappointment?

Here’s why I believe there are now at least some good grounds for optimism.

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A new Survation poll out this week put Labour level with Reform for the first time in over 14 months.

It comes as a series of expanding scandals continue to engulf Nigel Farage and as a much more popular Labour Prime Minister prepares to enter Downing Street.

So is this the beginning of the end for the Farageists, or could a decision about to be taken by Andy Burnham mean that Labour somehow clinches defeat from the jaws of victory?

Here’s why the coming days are set to be the most consequential in British politics since the general election.

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Nigel Farage’s entire political career has been based on what is essentially a confidence trick.

This trick has involved convincing a certain section of the population that he alone has the interests of “the people” at heart.

In reality the complete opposite is the case.

Far from working on behalf of the common man, Farage has always put his own interests first.

Instead of representing his constituents in Parliament, where he has taken part in just a handful of votes this year, we now learn that Farage has instead been personally enriching himself, whilst seeking to hide the sources of that enrichment from the public eye.

So will Farage’s desperate by-election gambit work, or has the confidence trick he has long pulled over the people of Britain finally run its course?

Here’s what I now expect to happen.

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They say all political careers end in failure and after more than 30 years in politics, many in Westminster are starting to question whether Nigel Farage’s own career might soon meet a similar fate.

Questions about the Reform leader’s future are becoming common currency in SW1.

Whispers about his health, combined with fears about the ongoing parliamentary investigations into his finances have added to growing suspicions that he could soon be looking for a route out of politics altogether.

So is time really running out for the Reform leader? Here’s what I’m hearing.

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What kind of Prime Minister will Andy Burnham be? That’s the question being anxiously asked in Westminster right now by people who stand to either gain, or lose, a lot depending upon the answer.

At the heart of the question is the issue of who he will choose as his Chancellor.

For a long time it had been accepted wisdom that Burnham would appoint the former Labour leader, and current Energy Ed Miliband, to the job, should he ever become PM.

Miliband is a former Treasury staffer and a highly effective operator, who has pushed through controversial, but transformative plans, for a clean energy revolution in the UK.

His appointment as Chancellor would signal that Burnham is genuine about his pledge to transform how politics works in the UK.

Yet ever since Burnham won the Makerfield by-election there has been a concerted campaign to prevent Miliband’s appointment.

This week the Times - the Westminster establishment paper of choice - gave a full account of what they describe as the “battle” to block Miliband.

“It is an unholy alliance. Bankers, union leaders and some of Andy Burnham’s most senior allies have joined forces with a single objective: stopping Ed Miliband becoming chancellor” they reported.

So what’s really going on here and is Burnham really going to give into those forces now fighting to stop Miliband from entering Number 11?

Here’s what I now expect to happen.

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Peter was almost alone among election experts to predict a big Burnham win in this contest, suggesting that the pollsters and pundits could have been greatly underestimating the scale of his support in the constituency.

Unfortunately we suffered some technical problems meaning we lost our host Adrian Goldberg for most of the discussion, but Peter provided some fascinating insights into what is really happening with the big shifts we are now seeing in British electoral politics.

You can listen to our full discussion by clicking the video above, or read my full take on the result here.

Regular readers of this newsletter will know that I have been predicting for some time now that the wheels would soon fall off the Nigel Farage project.

Reform’s heavy defeat last night in the Makerfield by-election, which follows similarly heavy defeats in Gorton and Denton and Caerphilly, shows that when offered a choice between the politics of rage and riots, and the politics of hope and unity, voters are increasingly tending to pick the latter over the former.

Of course the fact that more than 40% of the electorate in Makerfield still backed parties of the far-right should alarm us.

That so many British people are prepared to back a party which just encouraged and defended racist pogroms on our streets, shows the danger that Farage and his fellow travellers still pose.

But after a long period in which the consensus in Westminster has been that Britain is inevitably heading towards a Reform Government, today’s result is another reminder that an alternative future is still there for the taking.

Here’s what I think the result tells us about what now awaits.

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