Politics is what interior decorators call a “mood board” – a collage of tones, emotions and contrasts intended to convey an underlying message.

That spectrum at the over-eventful Reform UK conference ranged from gloomiest black mood, peddling victim status to the teal-suited larkiness of Nigel Farage. Even so, the biggest showman in UK politics laced his gutsy “I will survive” message with a bleaker one about his family wishing he would quit frontline politics.

The mood of the Birmingham gathering therefore veered wildly between the excitement Reform generates (to the envy of other parties) at its rallies, with Boney M belting out 1980s hits at the Friday night disco and the aggrieved response to a expose. The expose, first deemed “hoax” but then lead to instant suspensions and news that Farage was “not pleased” with the role of his adjutants in the documentary.

It was a reminder that Reform’s core strength and its Achilles heel simultaneously is that so much that happens in its power structures and public presentation depends on the day-to-day mood of one man and his instant preferences. Reform has” founder syndrome” – the dominance of one person who created it from the roots of Ukip and the Brexit party – and who can give an instinctive thumb up or down on every issue that matters in his ranks.

It is, as one now-disillusioned member of his team puts it: “Like living with Nero – and often a Nero you can’t get hold of on the phone at that.” But these days, Nero himself seems to have mood swings about staying in the job. Insiders accept that in a rocky summer – particularly after the killing of Ann Widdecombe, a former senior Conservative-turned-Reformer who was close to Farage – his family begged him to quit, fearful for themselves and him. Now, however, the official message is that he will lead the party into what may be an early general election.

But the problem for his senior team is that they do not really know how long a man who has also come and gone from the official leadership role will hang around. It is like living in permanent audition mode – and that also defines the way competitors for the crown conduct themselves – swearing loyalty and laying out their own stall.

After the fallout from the expose and Farage’s explanation that he had not listened carefully to what was on the table when briefly introduced to the apparently generous scion of a US family office, we swung dizzily into the message that the party is ready to govern and a kind of pre-budget on how that would roll. But as Farage himself expressed, a lack of professionalism and unclear lines about who can do what on his team is part of Reform’s problem.

At the same time, the party wants to go toe-to-toe with Labour and Tories on plans for the next government. Robert Jenrick as Treasury spokesman giving a Saturday barnstormer, which promises his own resignation if, after 100 days, he has failed swinging tax cuts on the basic rate. Slick, keen and relentless – indeed, it struck me as what would have been a promising speech for the Tories to make, focusing on the unfairness of the tax system for lower earners, rather than beneficiaries of inheritance tax arrangements.

But Jenrick is still a carpetbagger in the eyes of Reform’s “long marchers”. Richard Tice, who always floats around power-adjacent – he stood aside from the leadership to allow Farage his return – feels like an unsatisfied power as deputy leader and business spokesman. Zia Yusuf as home affairs spokesman and general firebrand is frequently at odds with Jenrick over the detail of how deportations of immigrants who end in council housing or receiving welfare would work.

Jenrick – who has the benefit of living through Tory budgets – worries that uncertainty about practical detail could cause Reform problems in an election campaign. But no doubt the crowds in Birmingham warm more to the old religion of Yusuf than they do to solid timeservers like Tice – or ambitious Tory imports.

One of Farage’s more bookish insiders jokes about this as the “Bolshevik vs Menshevik” pre-revolutionary split in Russia, which pitted Lenin, who favoured a core party of professional revolutionaries against Julius Martov – the Menshevik – who favoured a broader party base, drawing in other movements and supporters. Well, history records who won that one. “And Zia is our Lenin,” jokes the source.

Practicalities will decide who stays in the post-Farage race. There is only so far Reform can run on what Labour would call “vibes-based” politics. It needs to move from 8 to 326 seats to get a majority or around 200 to get into contention for a deal with the Tories (the numbers, not the antithetical “vibes” will decide the fate of any such arrangement).

The most likely outcome is that Farage, still the stardust of Reform however tainted by a slow of funding scandals, will be the candidate at the next election in a do-or-die moment. In his on-stage comments admitting that he had not been his cheerful old self over the summer but was now on board for “whatever comes”, he was essentially renewing vows with a party which dances to his tune but has become uncertain what the drumbeat is.

Even so, senior Reform figures can, however, calculate odds – and whether it is Tice, whose friends describe him as “always on standby” if a new leader is needed, Jenrick, whose old Tory frenemies joke he wakes up every day with the mantra “I will become leader…” or Yusuf, the man whose diehard views could pave the way to a rapprochement with Restore Britain, this party is in search mode for what follows the Nigel era.