There was a time when I was one of UKIP’s most vocal critics. Some took that to mean I was opposed to UKIP’s aims. That has never been the case but there was always room to question the leadership decisions and the overall strategy. We are now at a juncture where we have left the EU, but sadly we are no closer to reform of the establishment or getting a grip on immigration, and that, ultimately is down to the failure of Brexiteers to define specific demands, thereby allowing the Tories to define it for us.

What was missing from UKIP was a coherent intellectual foundation that would inform its messaging. That left UKIP making up policy on the hoof without any consistency or quality control, leading to one embarrassment after another – to the point where even Farage denounced UKIP’s manifesto, which included plans to repaint trains in traditional colours, bring in a uniform for taxi drivers, as “drivel”.

That era of UKIP was marked by its rank amateurism. It wasn’t simply a lack of professionalism. UKIP was winging it because ultimate, that’s how Farage operates. The disarray was a testament to his leadership. That UKIP failed to define an intellectual foundation is in part what allowed Vote Leave to move in on what should have been a campaign owned by UKIP, and when it came to the referendum campaign, UKIP found itself on the margins. The establishment took ownership of the leave campaign, gave us Boris, and landed us more or less back at square one.

It’s true that we have left the EU, but leaving the EU without the commensurate domestic reform leaves the job only half done. Farage, though, almost immediately declared his retirement and allowed the movement to wither on the vine. It has never quite recovered its potency and has been beset by destructive infighting ever since. Instead of a reformed and renewed Brexit Britain, we have a lame duck PM and a Net Zero agenda running at full steam.

This is about what I expected would happen without a Brexit plan. The game was lost more or less at the beginning when Vote Leave moved in on what should have been a people’s campaign. I’m of the view that the Vote Leave operation was an insurance policy designed to ensure the Tory establishment retained control of the agenda if we voted to leave.

Ultimately the decision to appoint Vote Leave as the official campaign was that of the Electoral Commission, and it’s difficult to see what else they could have done. UKIP was not organised or coherent enough to form a campaign organisation, and Arron Banks’s application to the EC was sloppy compared with the Vote Leave application.

You might then ask why I’ve re-joined UKIP when I hold it partly responsible for the failure of the Brexit insurgency.

In 2015, I voted for the Conservatives for the sole purpose of securing the in/out referendum, but we did have a very active local branch of UKIP, and the local candidate was UKIP’s current chairman, Ben Walker. I went along to a public meeting in Filton, and for the first time in a long time I saw the UKIP I was involved in way back in the day. Ben had built up an impressive local operation independent of Farage’s dog and pony show. It paid off too. Ben pulled off a staggering 7,261 votes, making me wish I’d voted for him.

Ben has deservedly taken a senior post in UKIP by way of his own efforts, and if that energy and dedication can be replicated then UKIP still has a future. The other factor is UKIP’s current manifesto. Whatever you might say about UKIP, the manifesto is presently the best one on offer. All of the policies are rooted in a philosophy, giving it the intellectual foundation necessary for any movement. This is more than the Reform party has managed with all its money and exposure and more than Reclaim can muster.

I still have my points of disagreement with UKIP, but on the defining issues, immigration and Net Zero, UKIP gets more right than any other party. UKIP is the only party with the stones to say outright that there is no climate emergency. Global average temperature is a meaningless metric that tells us nothing about what’s happening in the climate system, same as GDP tells us nothing about what is happening in the economy.

That said, there is a cost to joining UKIP. There is a stigma to it. I’m just past caring. Labour spent the last six years trying to put an antisemite terrorist sympathiser into Number Ten, and half of Starmer’s party daren’t even define a woman as an adult human female. The Labour Party is more answerable to the NGOcracy and its lunatic fringes than the electorate. I will take no lectures from the left.

As to the assertion that voting UKIP risks letting Labour in, I think we’re past the point where that matters. For now at least. Over the last few weeks, writing on this website, I have outlined why the Tories are not going to achieve anything of lasting value. Patel tinkers around the edges on immigration, expecting praise for deporting only a handful of criminals while new records for illegal immigration via dinghy are set every single month. If she’s going to get a handle on it, she needs to take on the human rights blob and the NGOcracy. But she won’t. Nor will Johnson. The Conservative Party is not willing to take the fight to the enemy.

Similarly, we will see no climbdown on Net Zero. Individual policies may be defeated by reality, but the taxes, targets and finance mechanisms associated with it are here to stay. At its core, the Tory party believes in Net Zero. It is an establishment party and we cannot expect it to behave any differently even with an electoral gun to its head. It must be destroyed. It’s the only way we are going to take our country back.

This is not about the next election or even the one after that. We have already lost the interim battle, and one way or another we’re gong to have to tolerate a left of centre government (Labour or Tory), so we need to be thinking about the long term, building a new movement over the next decade. Brexit took twenty years. Finishing the job will take just as long – especially now we’re back where we started.

Right now the movement is fragmented between Reform, UKIP and Reclaim and a number of other stragglers. There is no point attempting to unite them. Veterans of this cause will remember trying to unite UKIP and the Referendum Party and all the other disparate eurosceptic organisations. It never happened. Every umbrella group ended up a splinter group. Herding cats is easier than getting our creed to agree with each other.

I ask you to consider UKIP on its merits. We still have the party infrastructure, but more importantly we have the intellectual foundation the others lack. Reclaim has just re-launched its website containing only lightweight blurbs as to what it would it would do, with no indication as to how. The party is the ego vessel for its playboy leader who appeals to a very narrow sect of Twitter culture warriors who play out their politics through the mainstream media.

As to Reform, it may have exposure and the resources but it’s the same opportunistic fad driven populism without an intellectual anchor and will change its views for any reason if the circumstances require it. That makes it more akin with the establishment parties than its UKIP roots. In order to gain acceptance and approval by the mainstream media, Tice will say anything even if it means throwing critical issues like immigration under the bus. He already has. Tice wings it the same as Farage and will have similarly disastrous consequences for the movement.

I’ve joined UKIP as a last ditch as I truly believe we are running out of time and running out of options to save Britain from a dismal fate. Backing Reform may be a shortcut to occasional electoral successes, but without firm organisational roots, and authentic activism, and without a concrete agenda, it will accomplish nothing.

Success will not come from getting our talking heads on GB News. It certainly doesn’t hurt, but to punch through we need to replicate what Ben Walker accomplished in Filton, building effective local branches and doing politics the old fashioned way. The people we need to reach aren’t on Twitter. They’re not political geeks, and increasingly we find that those who share our views are not even permitted to exist on Twitter. This isn’t about scoring cheap points. This is a war on an establishment that hates Britain. It’s a war we are losing, and we’re not going to win it by sucking up to the media.

The dysfunction in British politics is the belief that we should all unite behind a leader. Every time we do we end up led up the garden path. Farage led the movement as far as he could be bothered, only to hand it over to Johnson who never cared about it at all.

Moreover, Farage was no leader. He was a capable spokesman but effective leadership is about building a movement that can survive beyond its leader. On that crucial score, Farage failed. The fleeting moment of power our movement enjoyed has evaporated.

If we are going to take back our country, it depends on people like you deciding to act. No millionaire backer is going to do it for you. There is no saviour biding their time on the back benches of the Tory party. Sooner or later the Tory wets will be back in control of that empty husk of a party. Meanwhile, Richard Tice will pop up on Question Time to whinge about it all but it won’t do any good.

We no longer have the European Parliament elections by which to force our way into establishment politics. Our tactics have to change. FPTP is a major barrier to new politics but as Ben Walker proved, with strong local organisations can we make a dent.

That means you need to be your own leader. Join UKIP, get involved, start a branch, start a blog, stand in local elections. Make your own voice heard. We didn’t leave the EU because of the “genius” of Dominic Cummings or the internet voodoo of Vote Leave. Brexit happened because people like you made it happen, with small efforts, little and often while the opposition waved placards and screeched. It worked before and it will work again, but it starts with you.

UKIP didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was built one public meeting at a time in village halls and pub back rooms, often with speakers outnumbering the audience. This was before the mass adoption of internet – walking miles through the rain, shoving leaflets through the door in places like Heswall, Swadlincote and Morecambe. Places most journalists can't point to on a map. We don’t quite have to start from scratch, but that’s what we have to do. It’s a long road, but it’s the only way to save Britain.