Why Nigel Farage will be Britain's next Prime Minister, writes Andrew Marr

Britain is on course for a Reform government with Nigel Farage as Prime Minister.

It’s not inevitable, of course.

There are about 171 weeks or nearly 40 months before a general election must happen, and life is coming at us fast. But I’m struck by how desperate people in other parties are to write off what seems like the bleeding obvious – Reform has peaked, they tell one another; the public have seen through Farage, they sagely nod… Let’s all of us serious folk move on.

Meanwhile, quietly, remorselessly, Reform keeps advancing. It isn’t politics as usual: Nigel Farage tells LBC that he’s stopped in the street by women pleading, save us, save us. This is a popular revolt not just against politics but against daily life inside a flailing economy and a demoralised culture. It goes back to Brexit and UKIP and Boris Johnson’s “levelling up”, but it is unassuaged, and it keeps on spreading. We see it in front of our noses. Why do the old parties refuse to believe something so clear?

Second takeaway tonight: Keir Starmer, the prime minister, says he takes “full responsibility” for the absolute battering he and his party have had from voters across Britain. This government may be killing the Labour Party, but he’s “not walking away”. So what is he going to do - big, significant, attention-grabbing -  in those 40 months that fundamentally changes the nation’s mood?

That is a question for the party as well, and all the possible challenges for the top job. Labour MPs, including cabinet ministers, have been talking for some time about a “political earthquake” arriving this month. But talking about an earthquake and living through it is rather different.

I can see no obvious answers. I can see no obvious saviour. If you think Britain needs to be better defended, and that means curbing spending elsewhere, including on welfare spending, who is the alternative Labour leader prepared to take on the parliamentary left, and do it? If you believe in growth and you are prepared to do radical things to get it, what are they? We have heard endlessly from “friends of” Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham: all of them must now, to be serious, answer those questions in their own voices and in public.

There are plenty of other things to think about – the Conservatives, also being hammered in their heartlands, haven’t been forgiven. Does Kemi Badenoch, who is doing better in the Commons, try to lean towards the rhetoric of Farage, or does she pull back towards the centre? It’s a nightmare choice. The Greens, meanwhile have taken much of Britain’s younger, urban vote; but the psephologists tell us the net effect is to help Reform disembowel Labour.

Politically, we are living in a new world in which parties and party leaders who viscerally dislike one another will have to work together to survive. They have not yet, it seems, really noticed this very different landscape. Let’s not mock them for that: all of us are only beginning to find our way around it.

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Andrew Marr is an author, journalist and presenter for LBC.

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