I am not sure that giving up alcohol works for everyone. Sure, some people feel a lot better, find it easier to get up in the morning and point out that their skin is glowing. But look at Nigel Farage. What did a dry January do for him? Now often pictured without the obligatory pint and fag in hand, he has become a somewhat diminished presence in the media. Lacking his naughty props, he looks like every other politician, only with a strangely retro wardrobe.

Looking like every other politician is the worst thing that can happen for Farage, who trades on his “difference” and his “telling it like it is” outsider status. Yet the nearer we get to this listless election, the more he is playing the game that he said he wouldn’t play. To speak of him and his party as insurgents is like calling Prince Harry a republican. Ukip peaked a while back, though the pretence that it hasn’t lingers. Farage has knocked back rumours of ill health by saying that, as he has survived cancer, a car accident and a plane crash, his health might indeed not always be 100%. Even his enemies must concede his physical courage and stamina.

But something else is going on that feels rather desperate. His book, The Purple Revolution, has been shunted out, and, amazingly, is nothing to do with Prince. It is being serialised in the Telegraph, a newspaper that is read largely by elderly Tories who may be to the right of the party and tempted by Ukip, but are not in the seats that Ukip needs to win.

When the book came out, invites to the launch do said: “All conversations are to be considered off the record.” This is exactly the strange kind of political control-freakery that Farage has always rallied against. He has gone on about free speech and being straightforward. Yet now he has entered the world of journalists favoured with briefings, the cliques, and the nooks and crannies of the Westminster elite that are responsible for so much of the political disengagement that he is said to champion.

Much of his appeal has been based on his presentation as an outsider, despite his public school and City trader background. This manifested itself in gaffes, contradictions and regurgitated rants about political correctness gone mad. And smoking. His supporters lap this up, but the nearer he gets to power, the slicker he gets.

What worked a year ago does not quite work now. His trip to America just before he addressed his troops at Ukip’s spring conference in Margate could have been him sussing out some new career opportunities, for it is in no way guaranteed that he will a get a seat. If Farage does not win South Thanet, and that’s a real possibility, then Ukip as we know it is finished. He will stand down as party leader. A politician such as Douglas Carswell will take over, a man who has interesting ideas on democracy but just doesn’t cut it in the populist stakes.

There has been a complete disjuncture between the huge focus on Farage and the number of seats Ukip will end up with – three, possibly four: Clacton; Boston and Skegness; Thurrock and maybe South Thanet. It would have to do very well to win any others, such as Great Grimsby, Great Yarmouth and Rochester and Strood. This may seem unfair if the party’s share of the vote hovers around 14%, but even that is down from a year ago. Ukip’s supporters may feel aggrieved that we don’t have proportional representation, but that’s one thing they can’t blame on immigration.

Once in power, its MPs will ally with the Tories. Nothing it has promised its constituents, from banning immigrants’ children from state schools to an exit from Europe, is likely to happen. A handful of its MPs will not stop globalisation.

What Ukip has done is push the Tories to the right and given a voice to many disaffected voters, but a political force grounded in disenfranchised resentment can only fizzle out when faced with the realities of governance. Business leaders don’t want to leave Europe. Blaming immigration for every ill cannot produce workable policies. The real issues of the day – housing, low wages, widening inequality – are not answered in any way by Ukip’s overtly weird and racist “senior moment” attitude.

Where Ukip has won, though, is with the media, because it is now considered one of the four main parties. Farage is a creature of an age when personality trumps policy. This is why, if he loses in Thanet, it is all over. His message in the constituency that “only Ukip can win” has seen the Tories pouring more resources into their campaign as part of a decapitation strategy.

Farage may get a second wind, but watching him now, I sense him moving towards the exit. I grant that this may be wishful thinking, but something makes me believe he is looking at a future elsewhere. We may well end up with a coalition between the party of entitlement and the party of disgruntlement that leaves Farage lurking around, no longer calling the shots. Perhaps then he can claim for the first time to be genuinely “outside”.