I’m afraid I have given up. I may be one of the last to throw in the towel, but now I am leaving the Conservatives and joining Reform. I am not going to be phased by such an obvious coordinated pile-on against Nigel Farage, by the terrible murder of the courageous and principled Ann Widdecombe, or the Blank Canvas Burnham roadshow.

We need policy revolutions, not just tinkering: law and order, defence, welfare, the NHS, net zero, economics, immigration, governance for starters.

I back Nigel Farage to be that revolutionary Prime Minister and Reform for its positive, upbeat and radical set of policies. He indeed is our last hope.

I have tried hard to help reform (small r) the Conservative Party from within, as I know there are many decent, hardworking and committed members. But they have been treated with arrogance bordering on contempt by the central party. Yet more powers over choosing MPs are being taken from members constitutionally, so CCHQ can pursue its left-leaning, woke, globalist agenda. The formation of the left-leaning Prosper UK under Davidson and Street is a warning of further drift toward a mushy Lib Dem model.

I am afraid I have zero tolerance for institutional corruption; especially at the expense of members with so much to offer. I co-founded the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO), with the incredibly hard-working Claire Bullivant and generous Lord Cruddas, with the democratic constitutional trooper John Strafford. We had real impact, but the Party was unwilling to put members back in charge, and members are voting with their feet. The Tories are hiding their membership, which could now be under 100,000, down from two million in the 1950s.

The party is dying because it has driven out its lifeblood – ordinary members – treating them as stupid, ignorant and unworthy of consultation.

There is no point in Kemi encouraging more great talent to step forward. The system is still rigged to serve an inner core of self-appointed manipulators and shadowy interest groups. Some of these are running candidate training. Real talent is being led up the garden path.

I like Kemi’s feistiness, but I don’t like who is managing her and the party.

The true tipping point for me was Kemi declaring “let’s stop talking about elections” to Laura Kuenssberg. I know decent, hard-working councillors in Norfolk who lost their seats for no fault of their own. Kemi’s response was that they were a “free hit”, as the counties are being abolished anyway.

The Aberdeen South win was an aberration – a referendum backing oil and gas. But losing the Conservative deposit in Makerfield with just 2% demonstrates irrelevance.

There is now a bunker mentality of ‘hard-core true blues’ who tell each other how well Kemi is doing at PMQs and how winning Westminster and Wandsworth are signs of great progress despite losses across Britain. I am sorry, but I think Kemi comes across as an analyst, not a leader. She summarises the problems well; but fails to set out solutions.

Ultimately, Kemi is not cutting through – the party’s dial is stuck at around 17 points. I stood for Westminster in 2001 and remember how William Hague dominated Prime Minister’s Questions in 2000 but was slaughtered in the 2001 election, with just one net Conservative MP gain. No wonder Kemi is conspicuous in not calling for an immediate General Election.

I am asked: will the party survive? There are 140 registered parties, so yes. But the real question is can the Conservative Party ever form a national government again?

At present, the Conservatives are destined to be the new Liberals, plunging into irrelevance with a ceiling of 60-70 seats. Only allowed out for occasional forays every 50 years: think of the 1974 Lib Lab Pact or Cameron-Clegg in 2010.

Of course, things can change, and as we have seen, politics can change very rapidly. Burnham wasn’t even an MP a few weeks back; now he will be Prime Minister on Monday. However, this is the trend, and polling relentlessly repeats that view. The problem is that the Conservatives are still not recognising reality or showing humility.

All those I respect on the centre right of the Conservative Party, with a few noble exceptions, have moved to Reform. The Reform Party is the true Conservative Party now. Nigel himself was a Conservative member in Kent and admired Lady Thatcher.

But Reform is far more than an alternate Blue Party – it is the party of patriots, of sovereigntists not globalists, a key dividing line in British politics identified by the fine Labour Brexiteer Lord Maurice Glasman drew recently; it is a party that can win big in Left-leaning Wales, Scotland and former Conservative councils in heartlands such as Kent, Lincolnshire, Essex, Suffolk and my own Norfolk, as well as once biblically solid Labour seats such as Sunderland, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Barnsley. The old Left and Right labels are redundant, Reform now represents sovereignty, change and the national interest. Far from peaking, Reform maintains a healthy lead in the polls. Even over Burnham’s Labour.

I have known Nigel a long time and have always admired his courage, tenacity, and political instincts. He’s a smart operator.

When I saw the Commons baying at Nigel for speaking up for the angry public over Henry Nowak, I was reminded of EU Presidents baying at him in the European Parliament. Nigel was the bear in the bear pit. It didn’t stop him then and it won’t now. Trump showed that ‘lawfare’ doesn’t work.

Nigel has not just galvanised British politics, he has created the conditions for similar fightbacks around Europe and beyond. The Brexit referendum win inspired shy Trump voters to make their vote count. We’d never have got a Referendum without Nigel’s pressure; without his campaigning Cameron would not have given us one and heroic Conservative Eurosceptics would not have been empowered to defy a three-line whip to demand one.

But Reform is not just Nigel – he has created strength in depth and quality. A great team is developing. Yes, the party is young and has much to learn, but learning it is.

I leave the Conservatives with sadness yes, but with surety; and look forward now to helping Nigel and his core team deliver a transformational and revolutionary new government. The future really can be much brighter on the Right.