The last time Nigel Farage stood for parliament was in 2015. He wasn’t elected, and it was his seventh failure to win a seat, as his many enemies love to point out.

What has inspired Farage, the new leader of the Reform party, to have an eighth shot? The state of the domestic opposition, perhaps, and also maybe the rise in the last decade of European politicians who, like him, were once considered freaks, failures and fascists.