Sketch: Farage and Grayling, Together at Last

That a serving cabinet minister should share a platform with Nigel Farage was considered a moment of history - but it was only Chris Grayling

Chris Grayling and Nigel Farage shake hands on stage at Grassroots Out rally in Stoke. (Getty Images)

It was, arguably, the biggest night in the history of the Victoria Hall in Hanley, at least until the Black Dyke Band — ‘The Very Best in Brass’ — pitch up next week.

A member of the cabinet, sharing a platform with Nigel Farage, at a music hall in Stoke. These are the things that count as history in an EU referendum regularly rendering bedfellows more unusual than anything that has yet been known to have entered the £1,014 taxypayer-funded four-poster in John Whittingdale’s London flat.

It’s true in theory, that a member of the cabinet was there, at a Grassroots Out rally at which, were it not for the perma-sneering presence of Tom Pursglove, who was elected in 2015 as MP for the three-yard radius around Peter Bone, the average age may not have dropped into double digits. But it was only Chris Grayling. And Chris Grayling is a member of the cabinet in much the same way that a percussionist called Alan White was a member of Oasis, an analogy that admittedly is not perfect, given Alan White is capable of holding a drumstick and using it to strike a drum.

One of the more curious truths that will be borne out by this referendum campaign is that the more neglected the place, the more it has been left to rot by government after government, the more unshakeably patriotic it is bound to be. A woman in the front row wearing a giant Union Jack jumper could barely sit still all night. She and the rest joined in with Farage’s call-and-response, pseudo-self help chanting with the same fervour as any other deluded audience seduced by some snake oil TV evangelist. They booed the name of Peter Mandelson. They booed Tony Blair. They booed David Cameron. The boo for Nick Clegg wasn’t loud enough so Farage made them do it again. “We want our country back!” “We want our country back!” they chanted, absolutely certain of the truth that a new dawn might finally break tomorrow if only Grayling, Farage, Bone and Pursglove could be put in charge.

Pursglove, 27 years old, a backbench MP for a Northamptonshire mining town, bravely took the fight to Barack Obama. “I don’t know what Obama thinks he’s doing, coming over here, sticking his nose in our referendum,” he wailed (they clapped like mad). “You wouldn’t find any politician in this country, going to America and saying ‘Your laws are going to be made in Toronto, by politicians from Mexico and Guatemala. I think they’d find that quite objectionable.”

Just the mention of the word Guatemala felt like it might be sufficient to cause a fit of collective vomiting. That the U and the S in USA stand for United and States, the great shining example of what can be achieved through the pooling of sovereignty and a single currency is almost too tiresome to point out. Pursglove’s brave peroration is bound to form part of Obama’s morning briefing from the intelligence services. Whether he will see fit to cancel his visit we will find out soon enough.

It’s unfortunate that Grayling, being the Cabinet Minister, had to speak last. “It’s always an immense challenge to follow Nigel Farage,” he said. It’s true. It is. But it would also be an immense challenge for Grayling to follow a recipe for beans on toast.

The Out Campaign, he explained, has two things going for it. The first is a series of specious arguments. That Germany will “definitely” carry on selling cars to Britain, as will the French with their cheeses. But in the meantime, “we must take control of its borders". That there is no one alive who doesn’t think free movement of people will be the price that must be paid for access to the single market was a problem for another day.

The second, apparently, is their grassroots movement. “There’s no hall down the road in Stoke or anywhere else, full of people saying “we want to stay in the European Union!” he professed. And that much at least is true. While the polls are not definitely to be trusted, the indications are that many people have sussed out that they don’t need a rally — however history making. A cross in a box will do. Save your energy for the Black Dyke Band.