Now I don’t plan to drink today. I don’t want to drink today. It’s a Tuesday, and chancellor Rachel Reeves is about to deliver her spring economic forecast. If the vibe were any drier, you’d have to itch it. But then, at 11.20am, my phone rings. An invitation from Nigel Farage. Am I free for lunch? My heart drops like sterling after a referendum. I can actually feel my liver entering the brace position. Most of all, I’m kicking myself. I should have known that he would catch me off guard.
“Funny how the timing worked out,” says Farage, when we meet an hour and a half later, at Boisdale of Belgravia, one of his favourite old-school haunts. The man Donald Trump calls “the Brexit guy” has become the most predictable element of British politics, yet he loves nothing more than a surprise. Secrecy is “my trademark in politics”, he says. “Keep as much as you can under the radar, and then try and produce jack-in-the-boxes.”
A mile away, in the House of Commons, Reeves is talking about combining social justice and fiscal responsibility. In Boisdale, Farage is talking about combining gin and tonic. I order a pint. He leads me and his press adviser up the stairs to the smoking terrace. Each time he steps upwards, I get a flash of his union-jack socks.