The Conservatives are “doomed” because fundamentally law-abiding, respectable middle-England no longer sees Boris Johnson as a fun cavalier but as a dishonest rule-breaker, ‘Mr Brexit’ Nigel Farage has said in the wake of the government’s double-by-election defeat.

While mid-term by-election defeats for sitting governments is considered normal in UK politics, for the Tories to have burnt a 24,000-vote majority in one of the country’s most loyally Conservative seats is seeing tough questions asked of the Prime Minister’s leadership on Friday. For Brexit leader Nigel Farage, who just yesterday warned Boris Johnson’s failures to deliver on right-wing basics would spell electoral defeat, the only choice the Conservatives now have is getting rid of Johnson and finding a low-tax, truly pro-Brexit leader.

Writing in the government-adjacent Daily Telegraph newspaper Friday morning as the dust around the double defeat and the resignation of the Conservative’s chairman Oliver Dowden settled, Farage made the case to those who had not long-ago realised that Boris Johnson could not conceivably be called a small-c conservative that he had failed.

While pointing to a wide range of moves the Conservative party could take now to save itself and Britain, perhaps most damningly for Boris Johnson himself Farage pointed to the fundamental sense of fair play and decency that the majority of ordinary conservatives feel as defining their outlook on life. Farage wrote:

…this is above all about the character of Boris Johnson and his cavalier approach to the truth. Middle-class shire-England is a law abiding place where honesty and truthfulness really matter. A growing number of these people who once regarded him as an amusing chap now see him as a rule breaker and an outright liar. These views will not change. They don’t laugh along with him anymore, and don’t believe that he even looks or acts like a Conservative.

Without immediate change, the Brexit leader wrote, “they are on course for a 1997-style wipeout. Can the party still be saved ahead of the next election?”.

In terms of his recommendations — beyond leadership change — Farage hit similar notes to those articulated in his writing and television appearances on Thursday, as the by-election votes were ongoing. As Brietbart London reported then, the former UKIP and Brexit Party leader looked to the basic failures of the government to deliver a meaningful Brexit, or to deliver Brexit benefits to the British people.

Standing in the way of this progress was on one hand a ‘deep state’ permanent government in Westminster — the Civil Service — which subscribes to a world outlook of negativity for Britain, the idea that their job is to “manage decline”, not to fight for a stronger Britain in the future. This swamp should have been drained years ago, Farage said, but the government was content to continue with the status quo.

Also holding the nation back, he aserted, is Britain’s continuing membership of the constellation of EU-adjacent bodies which the country did not leave at the same time as the European Union. The Council of Europe, which is the parent body of the European Court of Human Rights,  shares the flag and anthem of the EU, has headquarters next door in the ‘European Quarter’ in Strasbourg, and all applicant states have to join it before being accepted into the European Union. Despite this, it is still a technically separate body which the UK has not yet left.

Yet as a member of the council the UK is subject to its court’s rulings, and even the country’s milquetoast attempts at border control have recently been struck down by the foreign court. This, Mr Farage says, is an outrage to the spirit of Brexit and Britain becoming a self-determining nation.

As the Brexit leader notes, taking Britain out of the European court will be a long, messy job and draining the Westminster swamp of misanthropes is not the work of a day. Nevertheless, he observes there are small, practical steps the UK government could — if it wanted to — take to help ordinary people feel some Brexit benefit. The most obvious of these is Britain’s newfound ability to cut taxes.

Farage wrote yesterday:

…folk out there need to see some direct benefits from Brexit, and what could be clearer than the five per cent VAT on our fuel bills. Everybody on the Brexit side of the referendum said when we leave, we’ll get rid of it. For some reason, Rishi Sunak seems to be too busy putting up taxes and redistributing money — he’s forgotten what he’s there as chancellor [to do], why they’ve got a majority. Let’s [cut tax] as quick as we can, show every household a Brexit benefit…

Indeed. As Farage wrote this morning in his roundup of Boris Johnson’s woes, a new Tory leader willing to cut taxes and make some fundamental fixes could succeed in staving off a left-wing alliance taking control of the country and maybe even driving it back into the EU’s regulatory orbit. On the other hand, he mused: “If Johnson stays on they are doomed.”