Photo by Chris Floyd When Harold Wilson resigned as prime minister in 1976, the Sunday Telegraph’s Peregrine Worsthorne dismissed the announcement as “another characteristic confidence trick… a final brilliant act of legerdemain”. In other words, he didn’t believe it. Wilson was too wily, too tricksy, too cunning to take his word at face value. I feel something similar towards Nigel Farage this week. His announcement on 7 July that he is quitting parliament, sparking a by-election in Clacton in which he intends to stand in a battle to the death against “the establishment”, was a characteristic manoeuvre from this most capricious of political figures. Farage today stands closer to power than at any time in his life – closer to the glory he now appears to think is his destiny. And yet, as pr