In some ways, the return of rhetoric as a hugely advantageous political skill feels like a liberation. Nowadays, it’s true, this skill is often deployed in simpler, cruder ways than in the past: in quick, conversational interventions or digressive public statements and question-and-answer sessions, rather than expertly structured formal speeches. Even if Farage becomes the most iconoclastic prime minister since Margaret Thatcher, it is doubtful that his key utterances will be as anthologised and remembered as hers.