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Tory 2.0. That's the accusation that will soon be thrown at Nigel Farage if Reform UK continues to welcome Conservative Party defectors. It's already started building. With the defection of Robert Jenrick, left-leaning hacks are happily asking Nasty Nige if Racist Reform will have even a facade of Far-Right credibility left if they pack the party with tired Tories.

This could wreck Reform, they gleefully think. It'll stop those Brexit bores and migrant-maligning bigots from drunkenly scrawling an X in their box. Unless of course you're someone like me. And I'm guessing most voters planning to back Reform think like me on this point too.

Allow me to explain. Like too many stories focused upon by Westminster insider journalists, my gut tells me that non-political obsessives just don't care about this one.

It's the sort of tragic made-up maelstrom that increases the heart rate of hacks who spend so much time focusing on the ins and outs of SW1 that they develop the kind of myopia that stops them seeing things as clearly as those leading more ordinary lives.

But let's assume that this story does catch on and poses a threat to Reform UK. Here's why that threat should disintegrate upon minimal inquiry (and I can't be the only one out there to have come to this conclusion).

We have been beaten about the bonce with the fact that the Tory Party is a church so broad as to include the most sycophantic of Europhiles alongside the most unabashed Brexiteer.

Do you know what that means?

It means that certain elements of the Tory Party (its right wing) are more in tune with the voters that Conservatives, Labour and Reform will be fighting over.

Now, if that entire flank of the flailing Tories defects to Reform then all that tells me is that there's absolutely zero reason to vote Tory.

Because the Conservative Party will be dominated by the very political tendencies that have failed the United Kingdom so comprehensively.

Given that I almost certainly won't be voting Labour and that my favourite political party, the SDP, are beyond unlikely to be part of the next government, such a slew of defections would clarify a decision that I'm already almost certain I'll make.

I'll be voting Reform UK.

And unless the party for some reason unveils the insufferable Anna Soubry as a candidate I won't be fearing that it's condemned to make the mistakes that bothered me during the Tories' 14 years in power.

So enjoy the Tory 2.0 zinger while it lasts, colleagues. Fire it out at press conferences while it still has the appearance of a powerful put-down.

Because my guess is that like so many of your other formulations it'll fall apart and you'll once again be left wondering how you got it so wrong.