Last week’s sting by the Left-leaning Channel 4 News was a disaster not just for Reform UK but also for the Tory Party, and anyone who yearns to get rid of this incompetent, awful Government.

I’m cross with Nigel Farage for presiding over so amateurish a shambles that two of his senior aides could succumb to such an obvious ambush.

Doesn’t Reform realise that lots of people are out to get them? It’s not the ‘Establishment’ that is their enemy, as Farage and his lieutenants continually insist to the point of paranoia. It’s the Left, pure and simple, in every cranny of the nation.

For two grown-up aides to fall for such a scam is laughable. One of them, James Orr, is an associate professor of theology at Cambridge. Why wasn’t he attending soberly to his books rather than trying to squeeze a donation out of a fake foreign multi-billionaire over oysters and wine?

The other aide, Dan Jukes, aged 30, is one of a group of young acolytes of questionable judgment and little political experience who form Farage’s praetorian guard. Jukes, like Orr, who is older, has been suspended but may find a way back.

Other members of Farage’s youthful coterie include press chief Ed Sumner, 30, and George Cottrell (aka ‘Posh George’). Cottrell is a 32-year-old wide boy multi-millionaire and convicted fraudster. Police are investigating donations worth £500,000 made to Reform UK by his mother.

For Farage to have relied so heavily on inexperienced and seemingly flaky young buccaneers reflects poor judgment on his part. He doesn’t have – though sorely needs – a proper chief of staff.

Coming after earlier financial scandals that are still unresolved, this latest discreditable episode is bound to damage Reform. All right, it was a set-up, but Reform was criminally naive to have swallowed the bait along with the oysters.

Is the party finished? I very much doubt it. Reform’s roots aren’t so shallow that it can be pulled up like a weed. It appeals to millions of people. Some may be disenchanted by the evidence that it is run more like a nightclub than a political party, but it won’t easily shrivel and die.

I certainly hope not. One doesn’t have to be a paid-up member to understand that Reform is crucial in the struggle to get rid of a Labour Party threatening the prosperity, security and good name of our country.

While fed up with Farage’s mob, I’m also angry with those Tories who can’t suppress their joy at his discomfiture. If they think they’ll pick up all Reform’s lost support, and swan back to power, they are tragically deluded.

Look at the poll figures. A year ago, Reform was ten points or more ahead of Labour, which was stuck in the doldrums, along with the Tories. Now polls are showing that Labour under Andy Burnham’s new management are a few points ahead of Reform.

Meanwhile, though Kemi Badenoch’s personal ratings are excellent, reflecting her growing political skills, the Tory Party as a whole has only made modest advances in the polls.

In other words, the chief beneficiary of Reform’s tribulations is cheeky chappie Andy Burnham. If Reform were to crumble further, the Tories would of course pick up some support but Labour would do better.

When will the Tories learn that after 14 wasted years, during which they championed Net Zero, turbocharged mass immigration and increased the tax burden, they won’t quickly be forgiven by millions of sensible people?

Maybe in ten years, when memories have faded, voters will be prepared to allow the Tories by themselves to govern again. But they don’t have a divinely ordained entitlement to do so.

Tories are deeply tribal. I don’t particularly mean the people who trundle out to vote Conservative. I’m thinking more of councillors and MPs, of the diminishing band of party workers and various hangers-on.

It is because they are so resilient and tenacious that they have recovered from previous electoral wipeouts in 1906, 1945 and 1997. I expect they could again.

But not now. Not so soon. They must wake up to the fact that they won’t be able to topple Labour by themselves in the foreseeable future. Only the combined force of a Tory and Reform alliance can achieve that.

So I despaired when Kemi Badenoch recently described the prospect of a coalition government with Reform as ‘monstrous’. For good measure, she said that Tories who had defected to Nigel Farage’s party were ‘some of the most dishonest people’ she had met.

That sounds like abuse. I appreciate that Kemi has to fly the flag for the Tories. She needs to be their champion. But in demonising Reform, and dismissing decent people who have joined the party, she sounds like an intransigent cult leader.

Many Reform activists are equally cutting. Farage has also been unnecessarily rude about the Conservatives. Last year he called Kemi Badenoch lazy and her party’s MPs ‘stuffy, boring old b*****ds’, adding that ‘we pretty much despise the Tories’.

And yet on immigration, defence, welfare reform, British sovereignty and (so far as one can tell) lower taxation, both parties are singing from the same hymn sheet. Odd that they are so rude about each other despite being so alike in their policies, but then family feuds can be the most bitter.

What will it take for the Conservatives and Reform to realise they will have to cooperate if we are going to be rid of a government that is steering this country towards bankruptcy while refusing to defend it properly?

The threat was evident in a recent council by-election in Dover. The Greens triumphed with 28.8 per cent of the vote against Reform’s 27.5 per cent. The Conservatives won 17.1 per cent and Labour 14.6 per cent, while hard-Right Restore trailed with 10.7 per cent.

The parties of the Right got significantly more votes than the parties of the Left but, because they fought the seat separately, the Green candidate won. A similar pattern could be repeated up and down the country in a General Election.

There must be a pact between the Tories and Reform – or we will get five more years of a Labour-led coalition. And it has to be a pre-election alliance. It will be too late if the two parties come together after they have suffered the electorally dire consequences of fighting each other.

I realise that it will be extremely difficult to make an accommodation in view of the profound tribal affiliations of both the Conservative Party and Reform UK. But we must contemplate doing the near impossible in order to save the country.

Last week’s shenanigans tell us two things. The first is that Nigel Farage’s party is still frighteningly amateur, and needs urgently to be put on a professional basis if it is to protect itself from its remorseless enemies on the Left.

The second lesson is even more seismic. The centre-Right can’t prevail without Reform. Tories must stop hoping that their rival collapses. They won’t be able to see off Andy Burnham by themselves.

Where, in God’s name, are the politicians on the Right big enough to put country before party?