Reform UK: 24%. Conservatives: 22%.

That's the Techne UK tracker. Not an outlier. Not a rogue poll. A consistent tracker that's been running for months. Farage's lot are now ahead of the Tory party.

Think about what that means. The Conservative Party, the outfit that's run Britain for more years than any other, the party of Churchill and Thatcher, is in third place behind a party that was registered about five minutes ago.

Labour's on 28%, which sounds like a lead until you remember they won a landslide on 33% because of how the votes split. Nobody's comfortable.

How'd we get here? Not complicated, really. People voted Brexit to control immigration. Immigration went up. People voted Tory to fix the North. The North stayed broken. People voted Labour for change. They got Starmer standing at a podium looking serious and doing not much.

Reform is where the anger goes. It's the "none of the above" option that actually has a face and a plan, or at least a bloke on telly who sounds like he means it.

Farage has been smart about it. He's calmer now than in the Brexit days. Does his bit in Parliament. Turns up prepared. Doesn't rant as much. He's playing the statesman game and it's working.

The Tories are stuck. Kemi Badenoch's rebuilding project was always going to take time, but time isn't something you get when a rival party is eating your voters for breakfast. The right flank's gone to Farage. The centre's drifting to the Lib Dems. What's left? The party name and some nice offices in Westminster.

Labour's problems are quieter but just as real. Working-class seats in the Midlands and the North, the Red Wall they spent years trying to win back, are going purple. Reform's message lands harder than Starmer's in Doncaster and Dudley. Always was going to.

British politics hasn't looked this chaotic since the 1920s. Back then it was Labour replacing the Liberals as the main opposition. This time, who knows. But anyone betting on things going back to normal hasn't been paying attention.