“Sorry about the view,” jokes Simon Dudley as he strolls into Reform UK’s ‘Westminster’ meeting room, so named for its position looking over the eponymous palaces. From the twenty-somethingth floor of Millbank Tower, the nation’s legislative chamber looks uncharacteristically small, practically begging to be conquered. If this is a rather on-the-nose metaphor for the party’s current position of strength, riding high in the polls with the government floundering, the symbolism doesn’t stop there.

Millbank is as iconic in British politics as a drab, international style office tower can be, having at various times hosted both of the traditional parties of government. In moving here last year, Reform stuck one foot in the door of this rarefied club. Meanwhile the parade of big-name Tories that have joined the party’s ranks since then has only underlined the sense that it is trying to make the move from start-up mudslinger to natural party of government. It’s not for nothing that, following accusations of schoolboy antisemitism, Farage has of late been talking up Reform’s credentials as a “centre-right” party in an effort to shake off the less appealing “hard-” and “far-” intensifiers.