So, here they were: the three you know, the three you don’t know, and Stephen Flynn, who is somewhere in between. Or, as Aris Roussinos put it, “4 HR managers, two Celts, and a Kentish Groyper”. Last night’s multi-party election debate — featuring Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, Liberal Democrats deputy leader Daisy Cooper, SNP Commons leader Flynn, Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer, Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner and Conservative Commons leader Penny Mordaunt — was in some ways more interesting than the earlier Sunak-Starmer face-off, but it mainly rehashed familiar subjects.

An initial barrage between Mordaunt and Rayner raised an interesting question about Britain’s defence: which is more dangerous, having the Armed Forces under the control of Labour, which might fund them properly but has no credibility, or under the Conservatives, which still maintain some credibility but may not fund them properly?

Farage, following on from his dedicated broadcast yesterday, continued to capitalise on Rishi Sunak’s D-Day Dunkirk dip ’n’ dash as a wedge issue between the Prime Minister and literally everyone else in Britain. Then, as the questions swung to the NHS, new lows of political pandering were reached. One audience member had been thanked for the service of his father; now, they thanked a medical student for hers too.

Flynn pointed out that the SNP could be proud of its record on the NHS with record funding, the best-paid nursing staff and no strikes — but increasing backlogs, decreasing life expectancy and lower numbers of patients being treated all suggest that funding might not be the solution to the NHS’s woes.

When Farage suggested that the NHS model simply wasn’t working, Cooper of the Lib Dems argued that money — and not the model — was the real source of success. Which would be a great argument, if it weren’t for all those other healthcare systems out there that spend less than ours for better results. At one point, someone simply shouted: “National treasure”.

If leaders can’t articulate a compelling and unifying future, they fixate on who’s to blame for what’s wrong with the present. This has a trickle-down effect, fostering a more cynical and fractious society. If there was one winner from the debate, on grounds of format alone it was Farage, whose love of combative debate was evidently satisfied by a line-up which held him in contempt. He accused Mordaunt of having “front”, and when Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer claimed she had experience of how green energy could be profitable in her career as an engineer, he simply waited for a pause and said “subsidy”.

A telling moment came when Rhun ap Iorwerth accused both the Tories and Labour of speaking like Farage on immigration. A smile crept across the Reform figurehead’s face. Politicians may not be on his side, but the polling is: he knows he’s winning the argument. Farage has cut through at this election more than any other figure from the secondary parties, and last night it was clear why. Beyond some limited efforts by Denyer, who was hampered by her own use of obfuscating language, the others could only present themselves in opposition to one another.

They appeared to be an amorphous blob, arguing for minor changes within the confines of a political system increasingly unable to meet the public’s demands. Only Farage, and only momentarily at that, was able to articulate dissatisfaction with the existing settlement by placing himself outside the Overton Window of frontline politicians, just as he was on the edge of the line-up on stage. If nothing else, he managed to communicate that the solutions offered, and the “personalities” offering them, were a great deal more minor than the challenges Britain actually faces.

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