Nigel farage

National Harbor, Maryland “Oh, that’s Liz Truss,” a young attendee says as the former British PM passes us in the corridor at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “She sucks. What’s she doing here?” Trying to sell books, apparently. Truss is one of two Brits — alongside mainstay Nigel Farage — addressing CPAC. Her visit forms part of the promotional tour for the US release of her book Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons From the Only Conservative in the Room, which has been handily retitled for US audiences: “Leading the Revolution Against Globalism, Socialism and the Liberal Establishment.

After ‘it’s not happening’, ‘it may be happening, but for different reasons’, and ‘would it be such a bad thing if it was happening?’, we have finally arrived at the ‘it’s happening and it’s a good thing’ stage of the Nigel Farage banking story. This now-familiar pattern of motivated reasoning was first identified by conservative writer Rod Dreher in his law of merited impossibility, which described how progressives could simultaneously hold the views that gay marriage wouldn’t diminish religious liberty and that the religious liberty of opponents of gay marriage ought to be diminished. As Dreher put it: ‘It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.

Dallas, Texas Howdy from the Lone Star State, where Cockburn is braving 100-degree heat, overpriced IPAs and America First applause lines to bring you coverage of CPAC Texas. The conservative conference has come to the Hilton Anatole in Dallas for the second year — and is once again headlined by former president Donald Trump, set to speak this evening. Appropriately, the hotel’s two bars are called “Media” and “Gossip,” as if they’d been purpose-built for your intrepid correspondent. Cockburn managed to finagle his way into the $375-a-head Cattleman’s Ball for free on Friday night, where he sat at a table with a cadre of fellow hacks, chief among them John Fredericks, the “Godzilla of Truth.

The vaccines make you magnetic, didn’t you know? And Covid is a form of biological warfare, released by the Chinese to weaken the West. New 5G technology is melting people’s brains and the Bank of England is owned by the Rothschilds. I am listening to three delegates from Reform UK’s first party conference, held in parallel to the Tories' much larger jamboree just down the road. They are outside chaining cigarettes and they’re fired up. At last, they feel they can talk about this stuff without being shut down. I nod along. I’m not a scientist, I explain, and I don’t really know how central banks work. But why, I ask, aren’t these things being discussed on the Reform conference stage?

I can’t claim to know any behind-the-scenes rivalries or boardroom brouhaha motivating Andrew Neil’s departure from GB News but I am glad to see him go. Neil is out at the still ill-defined channel which can’t decide whether it’s a populist classical-liberal network, standing up to authoritarian cancel culture, or a British version of Fox News. It excels at neither. Given wobbly ratings, staff departures and one instance of very off-brand knee-taking, it's not entirely surprising that Neil has finally had his fill and walked away. He was not only chairman but the underwriter of the promise — issued in his opening monologue — that the channel would dissent from the broadcasting mainstream with quality, rigour, open-mindedness and intelligence.

Five years ago, London’s affluent French poured their dosh into the campaign of Emmanuel Macron. This time around, supporters of France’s rising provocateur are trying a similar tactic. Eric Zemmour is the Tucker Carlson of French media. A potential rival to Marine Le Pen, he is planning a visit to London in October. His undeclared but badly concealed French presidential campaign has the backing of 'Generation Z', a shadowy group of French political consultants and fundraisers, who are looking at the monied expatriates of South Kensington and seeing potential campaign money. If Macron’s people aren’t spooked by Zemmour, they aren’t acting like it I profiled Zemmour in the magazine in March.

On Monday, Vince Cable appeared on Nigel Farage’s 'talking pints' segment on GB News. This, if you haven’t seen it, is where Farage places a guest in front of a pint of beer while having his own and the two figures talk politics for a quarter of an hour. Really, it’s like any other political segment on a British news channel, only with Farage and alcohol involved. It started off well for Vince. Farage asked him about the coalition, and unlike most Lib Dem politicians who would have unveiled a litany of apologies for that government having ever come into existence, Cable staunchly defended it. ‘As a government, it worked well. We didn’t necessarily like each other politically, but we were grown-ups and we worked well together.

Almost the whole of the British political class failed to understand that the rise of Ukip after the 2010 general election was not some fringe irrelevance but was in fact likely to have major consequences. Academics Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin were two of a select band of political futurologists who were onto the Ukip advance early. By the time their insightful book Revolt on the Right was published, Ukip had already forced an EU referendum pledge out of David Cameron and the book was therefore read by many dumbfounded Westminster insiders as if it were a crammer for a module that had unaccountably not been covered in the standard curriculum.

Is Nigel Farage about to rebrand as a tech entrepreneur? Since quitting UK politics, the former Ukip leader has had a varied portfolio when it comes to new work. He has tried out broadcast journalism, Cameo (£75 a pop) and climate activism – as a spokesman for the green finance firm the Dutch Business Group (DGB), which invests in forests in a bid to reduce carbon emissions. Now Mr S understands Farage's post-Brexit reinvention is about to step up a gear – by entering the world of crypto. Last week, his company DGB acquired a controlling stake in a software development outfit called Statix Artificial Intelligence, with the aim of using its artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data and drone technology to validate the carbon offsets that they sell.

How's this for a terrible confession? There has always been a small part of me that admires Nigel Farage. As a Remainer liberal, it's hard to admit. I disagree with Farage on many things. And my (partial) admiration doesn't mean I forgive him for some of the low points of his political career, not least the disgraceful ‘Breaking Point’ poster unveiled in the lead-up to the EU referendum, nor his earlier comments about migrants with HIV. Yet I have a soft spot for outsiders, particularly ones like Farage who beat the odds.  What Farage achieved, all from outside a two-party system pitted against him, is unprecedented in the history of British politics.