When 'socially liberal' David Bull, chairman of Reform UK, sat down with The Telegraph, he chose to rehearse one of the most dangerous delusions in modern politics. "Politics is won and lost in the centre-ground. It always has been."

This lazy Westminster cliché has been parroted for decades, usually by politicians who cannot face the fact that their own ideas have failed. The evidence is clear. In the last half-century, the only Conservatives to win big parliamentary majorities were those who positioned themselves to the right of their party. Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and Boris Johnson in 2019.

• Thatcher: 144-seat majority in 1983, 102 in 1987. She did not triumph by mimicking Labour. She won by offering an unapologetic alternative. Strength, conviction, and the promise to roll back socialist advancement.

• Boris Johnson: 80-seat majority in 2019, achieved not by pandering to centrism but by pledging to "Get Brexit Done," cutting through years of establishment dithering and pitching himself to the right of his predecessors.

By contrast, those who tried to hug the mythical middle ground fared miserably:

• John Major scraped a 21-seat majority in 1992 and then presided over Tory collapse.

• David Cameron in 2010 fell 20 short of a majority, only limping into office via coalition. Even when he did secure a bare 12-seat majority in 2015, it was gone within two years.

• Theresa May, who treated Brexit as an inconvenience rather than a mission, lost her majority outright in 2017.

This is not coincidence. It is a pattern. The centre ground is political quicksand that swallows leaders who step onto it.

Reform UK was created precisely because voters are sick of Tory centrism and Labour managerialism. Millions have abandoned the two big parties not because they crave moderation, but because they crave conviction. They want a party unafraid to speak plainly about immigration, law and order, sovereignty, and economic sanity.

If Reform UK listens to the Davids of this world, the Bull-style strategists who think electoral victory is about sounding as blandly inoffensive as possible, then Reform will go the same way as the Tories: compromise, collapse, and irrelevance.

The electoral lessons of Thatcher and Johnson is not complicated. Voters respect clarity. They punish cowardice.

Reform UK has an opportunity to offer a real alternative. But only if it resists the siren call of the centrists. The centre ground is not where elections are won; it is where parties go to die.