NIGEL FARAGE may not have led the Brexit Party to victory in the Peterborough by-election, but he’s successfully re-established the stranglehold he had on the Tory Party, via Ukip, in early 2015.

At the general election in May that year, to counter the perceived Ukip threat, David Cameron promised an in/out referendum on our membership of the EU. Of course, this strategy worked in the short term, with the Tories winning an overall majority and Ukip, along with Nigel, being humiliated.

But now Nigel’s repeating the three-card trick. After the Euro elections and the Peterborough by-election, the Tories are again running scared, because their abysmal showing means that, at a general election, the Brexit Party could win enough seats to let Labour in.

The only option for the new Tory leader and Prime Minister will be again to acquiesce to Nigel’s demands, meaning a hard Brexit in October. Anything less will see Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street and a Tory party more fractured than at any time since Sir Robert Peel repealed the Corn Laws in 1846.

Steve Kay (Ind), Redcar & Cleveland councillor, Moorsholm