It is an irony that a column called “Inside Westminster” should be about Nigel Farage, who has tried seven times to get inside Westminster and never succeeded.

But he is not the outsider he pretends to be. The launch of the Brexit Party’s election campaign took place “here, in this stinking, rotten borough of Westminster”, as Richard Tice, the party chair, put it.

Indeed, Farage’s career has been devoted to trying to use the power of those who feel shut out by the system to obtain a share of the spoils of that system for himself. This week he deployed the biggest pillar of the global establishment, putting the most powerful person on the planet on his radio show.