Farage told me he would quit politics after Brexit. Now, mired in scandal, he should do it and mean it | Simon Jenkins

His byelection stunt shows he is clearly rattled by a perilous position. Wildcards rarely endure: his future is behind him, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins

Britain’s politics was never so weird. First, the people of Makerfield choose who should be the new prime minister. Now the people of Clacton are to confirm the man who is currently his most popular challenger. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is still running ahead of all other parties, and he is ahead of all other current leaders. It would be foolish to underestimate him.

Farage is a cut above the normal populist upstart. His image as the amiable duffer in the golf club bar was once that of a traditional Tory backbencher. He took to Brexit not as an economic theoretician but as a flag-waving nationalist. He exploited race as a populist issue, coded as immigration, but had little interest in any wider political programme. Brexit to him was simply a mid-career adventure.

Whenever I met Farage in advance of the 2016 referendum – occasionally we would talk over breakfast – I found his commitment to Brexit specific. As if to emphasise the point, he told me that if leave won the vote: “I will go back to the pub and you will not hear from me again.” I wondered if this was a Don Giovanni remark, a promise meant strictly for the moment. But he seemed bruised by the travails of running Ukip and its baleful hangers-on. I sort of believed him.

Farage could easily have embarked on a Tory party career. He was not a natural extremist in the British National party mould. First elected as an MEP in 1999, he was exhilarated by his soaring opinion polls but failed seven times to become an MP. Constant splits and personality clashes made his Ukip a running nightmare. It was clear that Farage preferred the role of loner celebrity as a shortcut to populist power. He gloried in the attention he won from Donald Trump’s Maga movement and, true to type, the US president has now come out to bat for him. “They’re Running the 2024 Anti-Trump Playbook on Nigel Farage,” posted Trump. It may lift his spirits, but it may not help.

As a practising politician, Farage was always shaky. Sex and money are the twin toxins of a parliamentary career, but money is the more dangerous. It leaks through every political pore and is always transactional – the party benches in the House of Lords are upholstered with cheques. When, in Farage’s case, the cheques were enormous – £5m from Christopher Harborne and substantial contributions from George Cottrell – any fool could see an accident waiting to happen.

As of now, Farage’s byelection tactic could just succeed, but it will require extreme humility. Prior to the Brexit referendum I recall Farage addressing a hall of hostile students at the London School of Economics. He chose to be derisive of Greece, which was then chairing some aspect of the EU. He jeered: “How could Britain possibly associate with such a wretched place?” A Greek student rose and calmly deplored his contempt for her country, “as we struggle to rescue our economy in most difficult times”. The hall cheered her to the skies. Farage then stepped forward, paused and made an immaculate, grovelling apology. It seemed genuinely moving, and the students gave him a round of applause. I witnessed the power of remorse.

There is no sign of remorse today. Facing serious allegations of having broken the rules, Farage makes no apology, only displaying aggressive anti-media paranoia in the manner of his hero Trump. As for turning on his accusers as the establishment powers, this is doubly unwise. The point of establishments is that they rarely lose.

Wildcards should never be dismissed from the hothouse of Britain’s introverted politics. They are usually a response to a genuine public mood. From Enoch Powell to George Galloway, Dick Taverne to Roy Jenkins and Martin Bell to Caroline Lucas, they can shake the dust from the political rafters. They are also able to upend election results, for a while. The Liberals did that in the 1960s, the Social Democrats in the 1980s and various UK independence parties in the 2010s. All of them forced Labour and the Conservatives to re-examine their policies and reshuffle their personalities.

Yet all failed to break through the iron ceiling that has sheltered the two-party system for almost a century. Newcomers find party unity hard to achieve, perhaps understandably, since all were born of political disunity elsewhere. Reform had no sooner won its cause than it fractured. Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain has outgunned Reform on immigration, and denied it the harmony that a new party needs to get established. These are not movements likely ever to mature into that most lasting of Westminster institutions, the club.

Farage’s has found a plausible public personality, but what gave it bite was Brexit. Once that was achieved, he had made his point. It was for others to clear up after the celebration was over. Others must deal with the Brexit mess or – as he laughably claims – to build on its success. His future is behind him.

That is why this must be Farage’s last fling. He is clearly rattled, and more rattling may follow what could be an absurd two byelections in Clacton. I doubt Reform will disappear overnight, and Farage himself may continue to roam the country, fat on his donors’ generosity and his £73,000 MEP pension. At least for a while, his following will continue to split the right-of-centre vote, thus offering British politics the greatest of ironies. As in 2024, Reform will serve as Labour’s useful idiots, keeping the Conservatives from power.

It would be gratifying to think that Farage’s final legacy might initiate a serious inquiry into constitutional reform. Whether Britain should revise the first past the post system, reforming the bicameral Lords and Commons, or find new ways of electing party leaders, something must change. The weirdness cannot continue.

• Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist