Farage reclaims centre stage as Reform’s Sarah Pochin keeps the world at bay

Sarah Pochin is unwell. She hasn’t been seen for days. Not at any of the three Reform press conferences in three consecutive days this week. It’s not as if Reform has so many MPs to go round that her presence wouldn’t be missed. The last Sarah sighting was on TalkTV last Saturday where she could be spotted frantically counting the number of black and Asian actors in adverts. One, two, two too many …

Safe to say that Sarah now can’t even bring herself to turn up to the House of Commons. Not out of shame but because it causes her to go even madder when she has to observe all the black and brown faces on the benches.

But Nige at least was in the chamber for prime minister’s questions. Unlike last week when he sat the session out alongside his old Brexit mucker Arron Banks in the gallery. Apparently that was meant to be a protest at not getting enough attention during PMQs. His narcissism is offended that parliamentary rules only allocate a question to the leaders of small parties every five or six weeks. In NigeWorld everything revolves around Nige. If he got the full half hour it still wouldn’t be enough.

There again, Nige is a terrifically slow learner. It’s only been well over a year but he still hasn’t realised he is entitled to enter himself into the MPs’ ballot. Or perhaps he just prefers to play the victim. That’s his usual safe place. If he ever does become prime minister, Nige is going to be spending a lot of time blaming Nige for the country falling apart. He will soon have to split himself into a million little pieces.

But Farage was content to sit this one out. To lap up the attention when Reform got the inevitable shout-out. He seemed to take it as a badge of honour when the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, yet again mentioned Reform’s links to Russia. Nige doesn’t seem to think a pro-Putin stance does him any harm. Maybe he’s right. In any case, what Nige had really turned up for on Wednesday was to introduce his 10-minute rule bill on leaving the European convention on human rights.

This is just the kind of meaningless performance politics Farage enjoys. The whole point of a 10-minute rule bill is for the proposer to whang on about a subject dear to their heart and then for parliament to agree to do precisely nothing about it. But Nige can’t resist an audience and the Lib Dem benches were full. The Labour and the Conservatives not so much. They seem to think that the best way of dealing with Nige is to ignore him. So far, the approach hasn’t worked particularly well.

No matter. Shortly after 3pm, Nige was on his feet and parliament was obliged to listen. But even he seemed rather overwhelmed by the futility of the occasion. This was not one of his best speeches and he did seem to be visibly irritated when some MPs barracked him. Shouting out is fine when it’s by him: not so much when directed at him.

So what we got was a lazy drive-by, with only a tangential nod to the truth. There was fear and anger in the country, he said. Most of it whipped up by him. Nige would be lost without fear and anger. Brexit wasn’t Brexit without getting rid of foreign courts and foreign judges. Nige won’t rest until the last vestige of anything foreign has been wiped away from our streets. Now that’s a policy Sarah P can really get behind. One day she hopes to be released from her all-white gated community and be introduced to someone who is only a little bit brown for a few minutes. Baby steps and all that.

Davey spoke rather better in reply. Nige was guilty of misinformation, he said. Surely not. Whatever next. Instead he talked of all the benefits the European convention had brought to Britain in terms of holding the powerful to account.

He also observed that New Zealand not being in the ECHR was not the killer line Farage thought it to be. The clue was in the location. Rather he highlighted that Russia and Belarus were also not in the ECHR. They were rather closer to Europe. In it, in fact. Nige seemed surprised. I guess geography isn’t his strong point. Unusually the motion went to a vote where it was easily defeated. To be forgotten until the next time Nige chooses to bring it up. Probably tomorrow.

As for PMQs, that was a non-event. Two leaders getting a battering in the polls and struggling to get their messages across. Kemi Badenoch thought she had a gotcha moment when Keir Starmer refused to rule out an increase in income tax, national insurance or VAT, but Labour has been virtually shouting from the rooftops that one of the three will be going up in next month’s budget. So no one was that bothered.

A more interesting line of attack might have been to ask whether manifesto promises should be honoured. But since neither Kemi nor Keir have a good record in that department, they chose to descend into a slanging match over who was worse at handling the economy. Frankly it’s a bit of a toss up. Sadly, this one will run and run.