Will Farage be Reform leader by end of the year?

The chamber that once carried Farage to Brexit victory now can't agree whether he'll even keep his own job, with a narrow no putting the odds against him lasting the year as Reform leader on 47% support for yes. That the doubt runs thickest among the youngest voters, who broke against him most heavily of any age group, hints at a generational read of Farage less as an insurgent and more as an ageing brand facing internal rivals and a security row of his own making.

The clearest fracture sits by age rather than gender: the under-35s were the most convinced he won't see out December, while the 55-to-64s split almost down the middle, tilting fractionally towards yes. That gap suggests older voters, who lived through his decades of near-misses and comebacks, still bet on his staying power, while younger ones are quicker to write him off amid talk of Restore Britain and party tensions.

It is a small, telling echo of the wider question hanging over Reform since 2016 — whether the party is Farage himself or something that can survive without him, a question sharpened by his refusal of a downgraded security package and the shadow of Ann Widdecombe's murder.

The floor's top yes case was brisk: Farage as "prime minister in waiting", a man too central to the project to step aside now. The most-respected no voice was blunter still, dismissing him as "an untrustworthy spiv who'd never put the good of the country before his personal wealth and ambition" — a verdict on character rather than tactics.

Whatever the chamber believes about his politics, it is not, for now, betting heavily on his permanence.