On the last Saturday of October, one of Reform UK's handful of MPs was answering questions on a radio show when one listener decided to complain about the number of ethnic-minority faces he sees in TV adverts. And then, in an extraordinary moment, rather than distancing herself from this piece of explicit racism, parliamentarian Sarah Pochin chose to agree with the caller.

"It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people," she said.

Her party leader Nigel Farage leapt to her defence, declaring that her comment had not been "deliberately and genuinely racist" – even though many other people thought it was.

One dreads to thinks what Mr. Farage might qualify as being truly racist if his colleague's expression of distaste at the positive representation of non-white people does not.

Reform's Trumpian mirror universe – in which overtly angry prejudice provoked by the colour of someone's skin no longer counts as racist – again reminds us that, as Rudy Giuliani once famously declared, "truth isn't truth" anymore.

Two days later, Farage's party expelled five of its members from its flagship county council after the council leader had shouted and sworn at fellow members during a meeting. That leader herself had remained in place, while her more vocal critics had been removed.

This seems to be an increasingly common pattern for a party which claims to champion free speech but which, at both local and national levels, seems not only happy to shout down its opponents but also appears vehemently unwilling to tolerate any signs of dissent emerging from within its own ranks.

Most seasoned politicians understand that dealing politely with hecklers and detractors is part of the job, but – whether it's because most of its elected representatives are new to professional politics, or simply are closet authoritarians – Reform UK seems to be set on establishing a discourse of unquestioning obeisance as its standard idiom.

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But politics has always been sustained by its capacity to change, and therefore by the dynamic tensions between its diversity of voices.

This is something which the UK's Labour Party has remembered as – that same week – it chose to elect to its deputy leadership not the Prime Minister's staunchest ally, but someone who appears eager to challenge his conspicuously unpopular approach to government.

The election of Lucy Powell – who, in her victory speech, pledged her loyalty to Keir Starmer whilst also highlighting the public "discontent and disillusionment" prompted by his administration and the impatience of the British people's desire for change – came just two days after their party's catastrophic loss of a Westminster seat at a by-election in Wales – in a traditionally Labour constituency in which Labour (on only 11 per cent of the vote), having held it for a century, were this time beaten into third place by Reform UK and a triumphant Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalists, who (like the Scottish Nationalists) have rebranded themselves as a properly leftist alternative to Sir Keir's party.

It was a loss which, Ms. Powell said, showed her party the extent of the task that it now faces.

There are those who have pointed out that, just over a year into his premiership, Keir Starmer has managed to squander any fondness the public might have ever had for him. He is, after all, extraordinarily unpopular – with a level of dislike that's pretty much unprecedented for an administration that's been in power a decade, let alone one that's only been in Downing Street for sixteen months.

But does this mean that he'll be ousted by his own party, or that he'll trudge wearily towards inevitable electoral defeat in four years' time?

The irresistible rise of Reform is showing signs of faltering, with its unruly and insalubrious bunch of parliamentarians and councillors, so many of whom have already quit or been fired since they surged to power at local elections just six months ago – from Cornwall to Kent, and Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Devon, Doncaster, Durham, Grantham, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamsire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and the Isle of Wight – either for being too extremist or for not being extremist enough – with its only black branch chair leaving the party last month in response to what he characterized as its growing ethos of Christian nationalism and Islamophobia.

So, might Sir Keir have to do nothing more than wait, tutting from the sidelines, until nasty Nigel's flaming torches of hatred burn themselves out?

After all, the forces of progressive centrism democracy tend to return time and again to defeat the powers of fascism. Donald Trump's first presidency certainly burned itself out, and it was perhaps only the embarrassing incompetence of the latter half of the Biden-Harris administration which last year propelled him back into power.

Yet, however absurd they may come to appear, the Far-Right despots do such extraordinary damage to so many people during their time, however brief, in the limelight, that women and men of good conscience (whether Labour, Liberal Democrat or Green, whether Plaid, SNP or even Conservative) must surely do everything they can, all the while, to fight against the lies of those who seek to make their own casual racism feel like the new norm.