DAN HODGES: How Nigel Farage COULD become Prime Minister. With Tory wipe-out guaranteed, this chain smoking populist now has a plausible path to Downing Street…

Oh, how they laughed. Asked on Monday whether it was his intention to campaign for outright power in 2029, Nigel Farage was clear. ‘Yes, absolutely,’ he told the BBC. He planned to ‘build a bridgehead in the commons’ at this election, then construct a ‘big national campaigning movement around the country over the course of the next five years for genuine change’.

The response was mockery. ‘Ridiculous,’ said departing Cabinet minister Michael Gove. ‘Don’t be silly,’ proclaimed Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul.

They’re wrong. Our political establishment may not want to hear it. But with only two weeks of the campaign left, Reform’s leader now has a clear and credible path to Downing Street.

Stage one involves him winning in Clacton. And that currently appears to be a formality. A projection published yesterday by pollster Ipsos has Farage on 52 per cent, with Labour way back on 24 per cent. The bookies have him 1-5 on to win the Essex seat. Yesterday he packed out the 820-seat Princes Theatre, in an event that one journalist likened to a rock concert.

Stage two is even easier to navigate, because it involves Tory wipe-out (guaranteed), followed by a realignment on the Right (equally inevitable). The current state of the Government’s fortunes was perfectly summed up by Mel Stride’s performance on this morning’s media round. The fact the hitherto anonymous Work and Pensions Secretary is now regularly being sent out to act as a sort of political pinata tells its own story.

But if anyone failed to get the message, Stride himself spelt it out. ‘You could see a Labour government with 450 or 460 seats, the biggest majority in the history of this country,’ he explained helpfully.

Once that wipe-out has occurred, the remnants of the Conservative Party will draw a single, simple conclusion. That they can never again go into a campaign with their electoral coalition split in two.

Indeed, many Tory MPs aren’t even willing to wait for that result. Last week it emerged former minister Dame Andrea Jenkyns was distributing campaign literature with photographs of her attending Nigel Farage’s birthday party emblazoned across the front. When challenged, a spokesman said: ‘She finds it regrettable that party leaders have not been able to see the bigger picture in uniting the right to stop a socialist supermajority. After the election, Conservative MPs will need to work with a wider conservative movement to achieve their goals.’

Jenkyns reflects the view of many of her colleagues. Which is why this will almost certainly be the last general election fought by the Conservative Party as currently constituted. The New Conservatives or Reformed Conservatives will be on the ballot paper in 2029. And when that realignment happens, stage three of Nigel Farage’s five-year masterplan will fall neatly into place.

Because as soon as the new party is established, Farage becoming its leader will be as inevitable as night following day. Whoever is elected as Rishi Sunak’s immediate replacement will have been forced to run on a ticket of reaching out to the Reform leader, and bringing him into the Tory fold. And when they do, it will be a similar scenario to the one we saw when Theresa May brought Boris into her Cabinet. Everything the new Conservative leader does will be run through the prism of ‘what does Nigel think?’ He will slowly but surely consume their political oxygen. And then, when the moment is right, strike out and replace them.

At which point all bets are off. Farage will be official leader of the opposition, with all the stature the office bestows. And the only thing then standing between him and power will be Keir Starmer.

Yes, the new Labour government will almost certainly enjoy a huge majority. But it will also be confronted by an enormous set of challenges. An ailing economy, record taxation, unprecedented borrowing, crumbling public services, zero fiscal headroom. This will be Starmer and Reeves’s inheritance. Small boats. Putin. China. President Trump the Sequel. A resurgent European Right. A higher-education crisis. Wokery running rampant. A law and order crisis. Red Wall betrayal. Blue Wall suspicion and resentment. A Corbynite insurgency. Resurgent Welsh and Scottish nationalism.

A single slip by Starmer or maybe a black swan event will be all that it would take to fatally undermine his premiership. At that moment, the famous door to No.10 will swing open.

Is any of this pre-ordained? No. The Conservatives could look at how Donald Trump has hijacked U.S. Republicanism, and turn their backs on Farage’s Faustian allure. Boris could return, and go head to head with Farage in a gripping Tory version of Kong v Godzilla. Starmer could go on and on and on, patiently grinding Farage and his populism into the dust.

But make no mistake, the chain-smoking populist does now have a plausible path to power.