Wow, just wow! “A new dawn has broken has it not? And it is wonderful. We always said if we had had the courage to change we could do it, and we did it. The British people have put their trust in us. It is a moving and humbling experience.”

Tony Blair’s 1997 victory speech could have been delivered, word for word, by Nigel Farage early this morning. Helpfully, it was indeed dawn over Widnes as the closest – and arguably the greatest – by-election victory in British history emerged at the Halton Stadium, where the votes were counted a short hop across the Mersey from Runcorn itself.

Six votes – six of the most consequential votes in our history – made Sarah Pochin the new MP for Runcorn and Helsby. Or “Reform and Helsby” as one over-excited GB News reporter called it.

She wasn’t far wrong, to be fair. It wasn’t just that seismic by-election result in what, barely 10 months ago, had been Labour’s 16th-safest seat. The upstart newbies were owning boroughs up and down the land: “Reform gain”, “Reform gain”, “Reform gain”. As the wee small hours ticked by, it was clear that not only had Labour been crushed in its north-west fiefdom, but Conservative council seats in Devon were also being annihilated as Farage’s tanks rolled over terrain that had always been true blue. They were still blue, but of a jauntier, more vulgar hue. A cheeky, seaside-postcard, Reform UK blue.

“The sun has got his hat on, hip-hip-hip hooray…” as Nigel sang earlier on that matchless May Day, capturing the sunny optimism, the sense, as Farage has always said, that “something is happening out there”.

Entirely predictable

I wasn’t remotely surprised by the results. They were almost exactly as I predicted earlier this week, even down to Runcorn being “too close to call”. In fact, the narrowness of that toenail of victory is in danger of distracting from the magnitude of what Reform achieved. Mike Amesbury got a stonking 15,000 majority at the general election (with Reform in a distant second with around 7,000 votes), before he repeatedly punched a constituent and somehow got a 10-week suspended sentence (in striking contrast to the jail terms handed out to Southport tweeters).

It was the perfect metaphor: Labour returns by a landslide, arrogantly duffs up the electorate (winter fuel allowance, farms, employers’ National Insurance hikes, businesses collapsing, wealth creators fleeing, disability benefits cut while finding £11 billion for overseas climate aid, record numbers of small-boats migrants, no national rape-gangs inquiry, two-tier Keir) and gets kicked out in disgrace.

For those who don’t inhabit a metropolitan bubble, this epic rearrangement of the political landscape – that term “the Opposition” now rendered meaningless – was entirely predictable. Why? Because people could not wait to vote for Reform. People had a sense of mission – of duty even – as they went down to the polling booth. “We’ve got to save our country while there’s still time,” that is what drove them. The old are perhaps most keenly aware of the dangers of what one Reform councillor, pale with exhaustion but elated at 1am, called “this godawful Government”.

I was flagging myself when I opened an email from Ben, a Telegraph subscriber: “My grandmother, who was a Wren working on Enigma code-breaking in World War Two, is so incensed with how bad things are in the country at the moment. So much so she went down to the polling station by herself today and voted Reform. In three weeks’ time she will be 99 years old.”

There has been no mood like it – this furious euphoria, this rage for hope – since the Brexit vote. Friday morning was keenly anticipated by Farage supporters as children long for Christmas Day. The present to be torn from its wrapping would be nothing less than this: we get our country back.

Andrea Jenkyns, Tory defector and now Mayor for Greater Lincolnshire, wearing a sparkly, silver lamé full-length gown, had the distrait, fading glamour of a May Ball survivor. Her angry, defiant acceptance speech (she claims dirty tricks had been used against her by opponents) summed it up: “We’re going to have a Britain where we put Britain first. We’ll make sure you’re at the front of the queue.”

That’s what this protest vote was all about. Labour came to power barely 10 months ago as the party for change – and change there has been; to something even worse than the despised Tory government. Voters know in their bones that Sir Keir Starmer and his insufferable cadre of human rights lawyers, arguing for the rights of foreign scumbags to avoid deportation on some ludicrous pretext, is “not for the British”.

Well, the British will see about that. Hold my beer! Ethnic minorities are being given preferential treatment in sentencing guidelines and police and Armed Forces recruitment, while white people are stigmatised by their Prime Minister as “far-Right thugs” (Lucy Connolly, a mum, still locked up as Starmer’s political prisoner for one ugly social media post while a Labour MP committed assault and walked free). Housing is being allocated to undocumented males who broke into our country, and British daughters are being endangered by a bien-pensant class of immigration judges who can see every point of view but our own. If the lib-Left establishment was going to treat the majority as thick peasants, then they would have a revolt. A Peasants’ Revolt.

Existential peril

This is what real change looks like, and it takes your breath away. Ours is no longer a two-party system with a complacent handing over of the baton every five years. Now there is a new dominant party of the Right, what hope of recovery for the Tories? This wasn’t just a “difficult night” as their shell-shocked spokesmen were briefed to say; it’s a moment of existential peril.

“My mother is a Conservative county councillor in Devon,” another reader messaged me, “Last time, she got twice the vote of the nearest candidate. This time, she will be lucky to come third. Reform leading all over Torridge and Tavistock, including in divisions the Lib Dems thought they had in the bag.” Success is a potent recruiting sergeant. Now that they are proven winners for conservative values, Reform will attract even more Conservatives. You don’t envy Kemi Badenoch as she tries to stop that rot.

And it’s all over for Labour. Having alienated “wurkin peepil”, Two-tier Keir must now decide whether to fight Farage for them and alienate the university-educated luxury Marxist beliefs crowd. Just think, the majority which Reform overturned in Runcorn, if replicated elsewhere, would win them seats in the Socialist Republic of Hackney. Even the Prime Minister’s north London seat would not be safe from the turquoise tsunami.

What a delightful thought. Impossible? I don’t think so. As Reform’s first woman MP said as this historic day dawned: “Enough is enough.”

It really is. Ben’s grandmother knew that, and did her best to save her country before it’s too late. Millions up and down the country are rejoicing today; this is not a loveless landslide, it’s exciting.

Hang on, I just got a WhatsApp message from the man himself. “It may be a small margin, but Runcorn is a huge win. Reform are now the opposition to a failing Labour Government. We will grow in strength from here and believe that we can win the general election.”

Is that our future prime minister? They will do everything in their power to stop him, of course, but Nigel Farage is a devilishly hard man to beat. Even his enemies have to admit that humbling both main parties, which have dominated the UK for so long, in a single day, is quite the feat.

As we prepare to celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day, people may have looked around this battered, borderline bankrupt nation, its culture, free speech, glorious traditions under threat from its own government, and wondered, did all those young men die for this?

Perhaps, just perhaps, today gives us a glimpse of the spirit of the British people reasserting itself, the nation proudly pulling together to forge a new era. Call it the Reformation.

“The sun has got his hat on, hip hip hip hooray. The sun has got his hat on and is coming out to play. Now we’ll all be happy, hip hip hip hooray. The sun has got his hat on and is coming out to play.”