With Nige still sulking, Honest Bob was left to unveil Reform’s latest ‘policies’ | John Crace

The sense of futility hanging over the room was almost overwhelming as Robert Jenrick took the stage

I t’s turning out to be one of the longer sulks in Nigel Farage’s already sulk-filled career. Few politicians are better at having a strop and holding a grudge than Nige. At least on this side of the Atlantic. Donald Trump could give Farage a run for his money, but skin doesn’t come much thinner than Nige’s. He’s the soul of the Reform party as long as he’s the centre of attention and the yes-men and women – that’s everyone – around him are saying yes. But the moment reality challenges his narcissism, the mirror cracks.

There was a time when you couldn’t keep Nige away from a TV camera or a gathering of reporters. It’s what he lived for. But ever since the Guardian revealed his £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, Farage has gone all shy. Unable to bear the humiliation of being seen for the man he really is. The posh. The entitled. The venal. The grifter. Everything he has spent the last 25 years trying to persuade people he isn’t.

Even with the Reform party conference just over a week away and the pressure on him to be at his sparkling best, Nige is still playing hard to get. His one concession has been to give the softest of soft interviews to Jeremy Kyle, Reform’s pet stooge from TalkTV. When GB News is too challenging for Nige, then you know he is in a very delicate state. Nor is there any sign of his self-imposed exile having improved his frame of mind. His latest fantasy is that immigrants are on the verge of forming their own standing army and going to war with the UK. Not even Kyle could quite keep a straight face. Fever dreams all round.

So for the latest instalment of the Reform summer press conference-athon, we were back to Robert Jenrick . Back, because the front-of-house formalities have been almost exclusively left to him and Dicky Tice, and it was Honest Bob’s misfortune to have drawn the short straw on Wednesday morning. The sense of futility hanging over the room was almost overwhelming. Even had it been Nige on stage, the event would have been an uphill struggle. With Honest Bob at the helm it was dead in the water before he had said a word. Reform are tanking in the polls and, in any case, to see Honest Bob is to dislike him. A little goes way too far. The stench of opportunism is overpowering.

The purpose of the presser was supposedly to highlight Reform’s latest – unfunded, natch – promises to small business. Though as no one was really listening and were instead wondering what sins they had committed in a previous life to have to endure 45 minutes of a burbling, fantasy-driven Honest Bob, this was really a public demonstration of the sort of waste of time Reform was trying to save businesses from. Though its possible that someone in Reform HQ has recently developed a meta-brand of existential humour and is now actively toying with the media to see how long it is before anyone realises the party has nothing to say and no longer bothers to show up.

Honest Bob raced through the sell. A relaxation of the rules on data protection. Who cares if Big Tech get their mitts on your personal information? They will mine your data one way or the other, so we might as well make it as easy as possible for them. The VAT level for business would be raised to £150K and anyone kept on hold by HMRC for 30 minutes would be entitled to a £30 tax credit. Cue the whole country ringing HMRC at the same time just to save a bit of money. You don’t even have to listen to the music when you’re put on hold because no one is ever going to answer. Do this several times a day and you might never have to pay tax again.

This is personal for me, said Honest Bob. Look into my eyes. Trying to sound sincere. Though it’s hard to trust a man with a track record of betrayal and dishonesty. Nige, Dicky, Zia and Bob. All working-class boys from the wrong side of the tracks. It’s as if he had never read this speech before, passing it off as his own. The whole point of Reform is that everyone at the top of the party is posh and has absolutely no idea of what it’s like to have no money. Nor are they even on each other’s side, let alone that of small business. Zia can’t stand Honest Bob and Nige seems to hate everyone at the moment.

Then the final giveaway. Grandparents and parents would be able to invest £250k in a child’s business tax free. Because everyone has a quarter or a mill to spare. It was just delusional. Honest Bob doesn’t understand himself, let alone the average Brit. And don’t worry about where all the money to pay for all these giveaways would come from. Just offset them from the imaginary savings they had made from last week’s nonsensical pressers. Dicky Tice extolling the virtues of marital fidelity was quite the moment.

There was just time for a few questions. More out of habit than genuine inquiry. All of which merely exposed Honest Bob’s limitations. Like trying to pretend that the energy price increase had nothing to do with the war with Iran that Nige had insisted the UK would be better off joining. Then there were the polls which really, really didn’t show that the Reform surge had long since peaked. But there were moments of light relief, such as Jenrick going for Kemi Badenoch over her invented conversations with Giorgia Meloni. It takes one delusionist to spot another.

It took the reporter from the Press Association to mention the elephant in the room. The crushing sense of ennui. Please could Reform get around to talking about defence, foreign affairs and health, because they had long since exhausted all the topics for which they had spokespeople. Honest Bob hesitated. Reform not having any MPs it could trust on defence, foreign affairs and health should be taken as a sign of strength not weakness. No way was the party a reclusive one-man band. There was Dicky and Honest Bob after all. Not forgetting Honest Bob and Dicky.