The tone was set for my entry into the world of Reform UK when I walked in to be confronted by a crowd loudly applauding David Starkey. He is, you may recall, the racist historian who disappeared from public view after claiming that slavery wasn’t genocide because of the survival of “so many damn blacks”. Yet there he was at the first of two appearances at their party conference, pontificating about the welfare state being “the tragedy of the twentieth century” and proclaiming his “absolute indifference” to events in Afghanistan or Gaza.

This cantankerous character was being interviewed by Mark Littlewood, the think tank boss who was the brains behind Liz Truss’s disastrous premiership. Starkey stated that Nigel Farage was “99 per cent certain to win the election” and would then need to d

See Full Page