Nigel Farage's Reform U.K. Party - the latest incarnation of the right-wing, anti-immigrant political movement that he has led for twenty years - has been atop the British polls for the past six months. It is currently polling at thirty per cent, ten points ahead of the Labour government. If there were a general election tomorrow, there is a plausible chance that Reform would win hundreds of seats in the House of Commons; that the duopoly of Labour and the Conservatives, which has ruled British politics for a century, would be broken; and that Farage, once nicknamed Mr. Brexit by his friend Donald Trump, would be Prime Minister.

There are plenty of sane, sensible arguments for why this won't happen. For one thing, according to the law, there doesn't need to be a general election until the summer of 2029. But British politics haven't been sane or sensible for a long time—since Brexit, really, the last time that Farage jolted the country's traditional two-party system off the rails. So, instead of looking upon the rise of Reform with resolve or equanimity (the Party currently has five members of Parliament, less than one per cent of the total), everyone is losing their mind. Whether out of shock, revulsion, or genuine affection—according to the polling firm YouGov, Farage is the most popular politician in the country—all that anyone can talk about is the unthinkable possibility of a Reform government, thus making it more thinkable by the day. The political center, occupied by Keir Starmer's Labour Party and what remains of the moderate wing of the Conservative Party, is the most morbidly mesmerized of all. Watching mainstream British politicians obsess over the threat of Farage is a bit like watching the video on the internet of the guy standing motionless on the beach in Thailand, the water draining around his ankles, waiting for the tsunami to arrive.