On an overcast Monday morning in November 2019, Nigel Farage walked up to the podium at a hastily convened press conference in Hartlepool’s Best Western hotel.

After three years of bitter political infighting and failure to pass a Brexit bill, the prime minister,  Boris Johnson, was at an impasse. He’d called a snap election to “Get Brexit Done”, his last roll of the dice, and Farage – mid-campaign, riding high as ever on the oxygen of free publicity – had summoned the press pack north. 

Behind him was the banner of the Brexit party, the new insurgent political party that he’d founded and was leading into the final Brexit battle. This was the election that would finally decide, once and for all, whether and how Britain…