Good afternoon. Reform’s gimmick at the launch earlier of their manifesto – which they are calling a “contract”, because “when I say manifesto you think lie” – was for Nigel Farage and Richard Tice to sign it. But when it came to the big moment, Nigel didn’t have a working pen.
If that had been him, Rishi Sunak might bitterly reflect, it would have been viewed as the kind of symbolic unforced error that would justify further headlines about his campaign being in chaos. But nobody really noticed, because Farage has momentum, and a narrative, on his side.