Ahead of the Tory leadership candidates’ flagship speeches this morning Nigel Farage has helpfully appeared on Good Morning Britain to provide his views.

“They’ll speak today in the conference hall to be the next Tory leader – they all think with a new leader it’ll all be fine, ‘the voters will come back to us’ and what they don’t understand is that the Conservative brand is completely damaged they have no chance of winning the next election.”

Farage does beat every single hopeful by a wide margin with the public on having “what it takes to be a good Prime Minister” according to Ipsos. Meanwhile a majority of Tory members want an official merger with Reform and 70% want a closer relationship. Nigel slapped down that idea again, too…

“I wouldn’t trust them anyway, they have a pattern of behavior – pretending to be one thing and then when they’re in government being quite the opposite. And and frankly what I’m trying to do with Reform is to replace them.”

Leadership hopefuls have been jollying around a Conference buoyed by Labour’s bad press. They have made almost no progress on articulating a real strategy for what to do about Nigel. Without one, if Westminster returns to the politics of two parties, the Tories might not find themselves one of them…