Originally Posted by Sky News
I spent Saturday with Nigel Farage. I suspect it's not a prospect some of you might relish.
But for those who can think of little else more fun, I can alas confirm it wasn't a night on the tiles, puffing, supping and fulminating away, but instead a chance to hear him speak to thousands, in my home city of Birmingham, without so much as half an ale in sight.
Only the second event of his new Brexit Party in the second city.
He was electric.
But this was a bit different, and some of the people were different: couples, families, younger voters too. An odd coalition of the curious and the angry, those who rightly or wrongly deeply feel that democracy has been subverted. They all took a Brexit Party placard home. I watched them each take one and leave enthused, clear what they are fighting for.
Initially I had thought that shorn of UKIP and its organisational spine, Farage might struggle. Instead, I came to see it as his biggest advantage yet.
UKIP, to some, to many, always had unsavoury connotations. This new party is a blanker slate - a potentially better vehicle for his ambition. It explains why Farage barely mentioned immigration and didn't talk about Europe as much as you'd think. Instead, his message was one of political transformation. Of fulfilling the true potential of the 2016 revolt. Of draining the swamp; that the failure to implement the referendum proves why it was necessary in the first place.
His is now a simpler and broader message - that Britain has been humiliated, that Westminster is rotten, that the system is rigged, that parliament doesn't represent you and it is only he who can do something about it and make us proud again. For Nigel Farage - this Dulwich school boy, denizen of the political scene for decades - is doing something.
Under his opponents' noses, he is seizing the change mantle, even from those with the word in their name. As a result, in many Euro polls he has already overtaken his old party UKIP and is snapping at the heels of the Tories. If the cards fall right, the simplicity and power of his vision, his branding and operation could mean he ends up in a position with the Leave vote much to himself.
And as I sat there, watching Farage play old tunes and new, I kept asking myself, where is the Remain equivalent of this?
For months it has been obvious that these EU elections would come - it is why Farage registered his new party months ago - yet there seems to have been little action from the other side. Where are the rallies? Where is the cross party agreement on a joint remain ticket? Where are the posters? The agreed messaging? The corralling of the newly empowered pro-European demos in this country? The targeting of EU citizens with a vote?
All seems sleepy and quiet. It is almost as if these elections have taken them by surprise.
I suspect that is because the People's Vote campaign has absorbed the creative and political energies of the Remain cause. That enterprise has not been without profit; it has gone from pipe dream to realistic prospect in little to no time at all. But its success, whilst impressive, has come at a cost. Remainers, so obsessed with the project to legitimise the idea of another referendum, have ignored a landmine which could scuttle all their hopes.
Consider for a moment if Nigel Farage's Brexit party wins the European elections.
It will matter not if it's by half a hair, on half an eyebrow; it will not matter if Remain parties outnumber him in the total vote. Should he take a party which existed not a few months ago called "the Brexit party" to victory in a national election - a feat Farage will have achieved twice - then the prospect of another plebiscite will be zero. It will terrify any Tories thinking of committing and potentially scare Labour into finally making a deal. All the momentum the People's Vote campaign has generated will be neutralised. If he comes second to Labour, it could have much the same effect.
Remainers point me to the march, to the petition, but the truth is, marches don't change anything and nor do names on a page - it is elections which have consequences. Farage understands this only too well.
When I asked him why he thinks he will be successful and his opponents will fail, he replied, with a smile: "Because I know how to butter my own bread. I've done this before." And while Farage marches, the Remainers' great hope - the Tiggers or Change UK - might lead their cause to burn.
They have ambitions beyond what they can possibly be expected to achieve. For if they are anything, if there is any purpose, they should be the Remain party - and that is what they should have been called. It would have been clear and it could have persuaded those who usually vote for another party to lend them their votes this time. That they weren't speaks to the loftiness of their objectives; they see themselves not solely through the prism of Brexit but with a vaguer desire to change politics more broadly.
It is why they also - despite I'm told, entreaties from Vince Cable and the Liberal Democrats - have refused to stand on a joint Remain ticket with other parties. Their sole aim is not just opposing Brexit but to establish themselves as an electoral force for the future. But they need to get real; they are not going to displace the Labour Party nor the Conservatives.
