I am surprised he is so blatant but he might as well put his cards on the table. I suspected the only reason he changed his mind is because he saw his path to power open and it is likely his best shot - stand in the election, lead Reform on a mission to wreck the Tories, offer a merger if he leads the combined parties and then he runs against the damp squib Starmer in thr next election and barrels into power on the kind of populist vote that gave BoJo the top job. With Trump in the White House and the hard right rampant in Europe, they’ll help usher in a very dark, undemocratic time. It will likely coincide with a worsening climate apocalypse leading to water wars, mass migration out of the south as it becomes uninhabitable and societal decay for they’ll offer themselves as the solution. Hard men for a hard world. At least until we get further down the road of automation when they don’t need the bulk of humanity and they’ll solve the Malthusian dilemma with targeted viruses.

Hopefully, Starmer divines the oncoming storm.and steps aside for Andy “King of the North” Burnham to ride south to our salvation but things are going to get rough either way.

Or, you know, we might drown him in milkshake…