Last Thursday, I spent 20 joyous minutes standing outside an office block in Northamptonshire, loudly arguing with a very wealthy former Tory donor who is standing – for another party – in next week’s Wellingborough byelection. We debated such issues as immigration, knife crime and the dire state of the NHS, before he told me what he thought of the politicians he used to give his money to.
The Tories, he said, were now hopelessly held back by people who were “remainers” and “large statists”, and deserved nothing less than extinction. “The reason I joined Reform UK,” he concluded, “was to obliterate the Conservative party.”
