General election: Why Nigel Farage’s return to the fray matters

Nigel Farage is one of the most influential politicians of our time.

Quite the achievement for a man who has never been an MP, despite trying to become one seven times.

Would the UK have left the European Union, would people in the UK have ever had a say on EU membership, without him? Possibly not.

Maybe you love him, maybe you really don’t.

Nigel Farage has made it his life’s work to disrupt, delight, dismay, horrify, and he reckons he is not done yet.

We reporters squeeze into an upstairs room of the Royal Cinque Ports Yacht Club, overlooking the English Channel.

He had already announced that he wouldn’t try to win a seat in Parliament himself at this election, prompting a reporter from The Sun to tease him that he was a chicken.

He argued that from the bitter experience of more than half a dozen defeats, he had little chance of success without working a seat for months in advance.

Doing so would also tie him geographically to his chosen patch for much of the contest, which is why I reckon what he has said now is more significant than what he said last week.

His capacity to be – potentially at least – a significant influence on this election is arguably greater by attempting to stride the national stage rather than plough a narrower and probably doomed personal furrow in a particular constituency.

And stride the national stage is exactly what he is going to try to do.

Mr Farage’s choice of backdrop, Dover, was intentional.

Immigration, the topic that electrified the arguments around Brexit, arguably turning a relatively niche issue about sovereignty and governance into a mainstream concern, is the spine of his argument again.

Little wonder: the Conservatives and Labour grapple about searching for solutions to the issue of small boat crossings, with numbers high.

And legal migration numbers are sky high too.