DAN HODGES: Farage is learning that when voters are shouting at you, it’s bad. When they’re laughing at you, it’s over…

‘I will accept Nigel Farage’s request to be appointed Steward and Bailiff of Northstead Manor. This is a farce and a desperate distraction and the people of Clacton deserve better. But if he wants to spend the summer arguing with a trash can, I won’t stop him.’

With these words, Chancellor Rachel Reeves formally accepted the Reform leader’s resignation as an MP. And with thinly disguised glee, he hammered what I suspect would be the final nail in the coffin of his career.

Farage has made the biggest and probably last mistake of his political life.

Twenty-four hours earlier, he and a close-knit group of advisers who were the only people who knew about his decision to leave parliament and call a by-election were declaring that he had achieved a game-changing masterstroke.

He would short-circuit the investigation into his finances, turn the tables on the despised political establishment, and take his cause to the admiring constituency of his own electorate. This carefully prepared plan is now in the trash. Really.

For some reason Team Farage never entertained the idea that they might, bordering on criminal negligence, refuse to step into the massive hole their political rivals had just dug, and helpfully put up the ‘Great Big Trap’ sign. Please Jump In.’

In 2008, then-shadow home secretary David Davis called a bizarre by-election over the Government’s 42-day terror detention plan. The rest of Westminster looked on, shrugged and left him alone.

This is exactly what happened to Farage. He expected to spend the upcoming campaign raging against Britain’s political elite. Instead, he’s about to spend the next six weeks yelling at a self-styled intergalactic space warrior who walks around with a trash can on his head.

When Reform’s leadership was awakened by a series of disastrous newspaper headlines, it quickly became clear that their rivals were about to turn the tables on them. Or, in the case of Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, pick up the table and start hitting them over the head with it.

“We don’t march to the beat of Farage’s drum,” he explained coolly. ‘If it’s about the people versus the establishment, I think Nigel Farage might be like the establishment and Count Binface might be the people. So the whole thing is complete nonsense.’

Accusations of disastrous midterm election fraud have already begun. As one angry Reformation insider told me: ‘The whole thing is a clown show. We’re run by a bunch of childish, cocaine men.’

Another senior source said: ‘It would be good if Nigel stood up and told the establishment where to land. But opening everything with a by-election is crazy. You never know how these things will turn out.’

Farage’s decision to make decisions without consulting anyone outside his immediate circle also increased domestic anger. I was told the plan was initially released over the weekend, keeping some MPs in the dark until just before the speech was due to be delivered.

This reflects long-standing concerns about the Reformation’s dysfunctional governance structures. As another senior source told me: ‘We are supposed to be a government in waiting. And Nigel still runs things like he’s in the pub with a few friends. ‘You can’t work this way.’

This may not be necessary for a longer time. It is impossible to overstate the extent of Nigel Farage’s political miscalculation. Because the leader of Reformation chose to instigate the Unwinnable By-Election and then throw himself into the middle of it. There is literally no way he can prevail. With the major parties deftly fending off his challenge, the measure of success will no longer be determined by him, but by his looming nemesis, Count Binface.

The man running on a manifesto that forces rule-breaking cyclists to ride unicycles and water company bosses to swim in polluted rivers could get 5 percent of the vote. Or he could get 50 percent. It’s not important. Every vote in his favor will represent a new humiliation for Farage. And underline a golden political rule. It’s bad when voters yell at you. When they laugh at you it’s all over.

There is another practical reason why Clacton ended in disaster for the increasingly bewildered leader of the Reformation. Farage intended to use the contest as a diversion from a growing avalanche of questions about an undisclosed £5 million gift from a British-Thai crypto billionaire, as well as undisclosed financial backing from convicted fraudster and confidante ‘Posh George’ Cottrell and his undeclared property portfolio.

Instead, he guaranteed that no questions would be asked about anything other than that for a month and a half. Before yesterday, Farage had largely managed to evade his pursuers and hide in Reform’s Millbank Tower communications bunker, posting a strange message carefully edited for social media.

Now he has no choice but to go the public campaign route. As one Westminster communications expert put it: ‘All summer long he will be mentioned in the same sentence as a) A thousand and b) Financial jerk.’

But the biggest problem for Farage is that his latest desperate attempt to dynamite the progress of the Westminster ‘One Party’ is set to blow up in his own face.

Over the past nine months Reform’s lead in the polls has been in steady decline. Like Farage’s own personal ratings.

Slowly but surely the Conservative Party and Labor are eating away at his leadership. And now, thanks to his disastrous blunders, they are ready to destroy him. The labor sources I spoke to were very happy. One of them said to me, ‘This is definitely what Andy needs.’ ‘The review will be closed for the next few weeks. This gives him the space he needs to bring his strategy and team together. ‘This is a gift.’

Ms Badenoch’s supporters were equally grateful. ‘Last summer Farage completely set the news agenda with his press conferences and demonstrations on small boats,’ said a Conservative MP.

‘He had every chance to do it again and instead he will spend the next month dodging questions about his £5m cryptocurrency and arguing with a man dressed like garbage. Meanwhile, Kemi will start to look like a future prime minister by holding Andy Burnham to account.’

This is a contrast that will not go unnoticed by the British public. Farage thought his stunt would free him to recast himself as the insurgent force in British politics. Instead, he will be eclipsed by a dustbin-sporting spaceman who claims to be from the planet Sigma IX and to be over 5,900 years old.

As another source close to Ms Badenoch told me: ‘Farage takes his voters for granted. And this is very, very risky. The British people are disrespectful and bloody-minded. It’s not surprising that the Boat McBoatface effect is developing here.’

Farage thought the Clacton stunt would reinvigorate him as a national hero. The best-case scenario right now is that he emerges as a national laughing stock. At worst, he becomes the first politician in British political history to be unseated by a man dressed as a dustbin.

Farage boasted at the first meeting of the European Parliament after his Brexit victory: ‘You all laughed at me. I should say you’re not laughing right now, are you?’

Maybe it wasn’t then. But today we are.