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.