Nigel Farage is barely visible in the middle of a scrum of bodyguards, protesters, TV cameras and boom mics barrelling up Merthyr Tydfil high street. “There’s definitely more cameras than shoppers,” jokes the leader of the newly formed Brexit party. His entourage ushers him into a vape shop, then a nail parlour, but is unable to shield him from the barrage of questions.

Why doesn’t he have a manifesto? Or any policies? Does he know this town centre was regenerated with EU money? Is he being bankrolled by the former Ukip donor Arron Banks, who rented him a Land Rover, personal driver and a £4.4m house in Chelsea?

Farage is unruffled. “I’m fighting a European election campaign,” he says. “You can bore on with what whatever you want to bore on with.”

Timeline Nigel Farage after the EU referendum Show Hide Farage tells supporters the leave campaign has won a victory for 'real people', and says 23 June should go down as 'independence day' Announces his resignation as leader of Ukip for the second time Becomes the party’s interim leader following Diane James’s resignation after only 18 days in the role. Paul Nuttall succeeds Farage as leader in November He meets the then US president-elect, Donald Trump – the first UK politician to do so – telling press afterwards that critics of Trump should 'stop whingeing' and 'just get on with it' Hired as a commentator for Fox News, providing political analysis for its programmes Tells the Daily Telegraph he will not be standing in the general election on 8 June, because he has decided to 'fight for Brexit in Europe' instead Joins Leave Means Leave to campaign against Theresa May’s Chequers agreement. Is appointed the group’s vice-chairman shortly afterwards Announces resignation from Ukip over the appointment of Tommy Robinson as an adviser to party leader, Gerard Batten, and the decision of the national executive to keep Batten as leader of the party Confirms he will sit as a member of the Brexit party in the European parliament Officially announced as the new leader of the Brexit party Channel 4 News alleges Farage received £450,000 from Arron Banks in the year after the EU referendum

The Guardian asks if his party has a single non-Brexit policy. “Massive political reform,” he replies. “Wholesale. A feeling that politics is broken. A feeling, not just here in Wales, but everywhere, that there is a detachment between Westminster and ordinary folk.” What kind of a policy is that? “It will be very specific.” When? “We’ll have to wait and see.”

In the lead-up to Thursday’s elections, Farage has the breezy confidence of a politician who believes in his own infallibility. Having abandoned his former party, Ukip, after its lurch to the far right, Farage is using his nascent outfit – modelled on the populist, Eurosceptic Five Star Movement in Italy – to rebrand himself as a new kind of politician who transcends the left-right political spectrum.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Farage campaigning in Dudley, West Midlands. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

In less than two months, more than 100,000 people have paid £25 to register as supporters of the party, which appears on course for a thumping electoral victory. The latest YouGov poll predicts Farage’s party will get 34% of the vote – twice the Lib Dems’ 17% share. The Lib Dems are two points ahead of Labour in the poll, while the Conservative party is behind the Greens and in fifth place, with just 9%.

The question no longer seems to be whether Farage will win the European elections. It is whether he can convert this political moment into a more enduring political force in Westminster, creating enough momentum to overcome a first-past-the-post electoral system that has long stifled insurgent politics in Britain.

Farage has been relentlessly touring leave-voting Labour constituencies in recent weeks, in places such as Huddersfield, Newport, Nottingham, Lincoln, and Durham. The focus on Labour voters is partly born of the fact Farage can already count on the disaffected Tory vote. But it also speaks to the ambitions of a former commodity trader who once said Ukip would never have been necessary if Margaret Thatcher had remained at the helm of the Tories.

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The conventional wisdom among Westminster pollsters is that Labour does not need to fear a Farage assault. While the party is haemorrhaging votes, they are largely fleeing from the pro-remain wing of its support to the Greens and Lib Dems.

But the rapturous applause Farage and the former Tory MP – and now Brexit party candidate – Ann Widdecombe receive in a working men’s club in the former coal mining town of Pontefract in West Yorkshire tells a different story. So too does his reception in Merthyr Tydfil, the Welsh town that first elected a trade unionist as a Labour MP in 1900.

In the car park of a shopping centre on the edge of town, there are many lifelong Labour voters mingling amiably among the Tories and Ukippers. The crowd is mostly white, and overwhelmingly male. The one thing many have in common is a belief that mainstream politics has failed, along with a vague feeling that Farage will shake things up.

“Nigel, he’s talking our language, so he’s got our vote,” says John Paine, a 64-year-old former labourer, whose daughter, wife and 84-year-old mother-in-law are all poised to abandon Labour for the first time in their lives.

Nadia, a middle-aged former Ukip supporter, says the country is divided but “it has got nothing to do with leave and remain. It is social class. The elitists. The us and the them.” Her husband, Chris, adds that his wife is talking about “Eton and Harrow types”. “They’re not the same as us,” he says. “The everyman on the street.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Farage supporters at the rally in Merthyr Tydfil. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Farage was educated at Dulwich College, a private school, but that does not seem to bother people such as Steve Bayliss, a 47-year-old support staff worker at South Wales fire service. “They always used to say Labour was for the working class,” he says. “Now I seem to think that Labour is just getting in bed with the Conservatives, and they are the upper middle class. I honestly think Brexit is the new working-class party for poverty-stricken towns.”

When Farage arrives on stage, he gives a tour de force of populist rhetoric.

“I’ve come to realise that with our existing political system we are never going to get the Brexit that we voted for,” he tells the crowd. “These two parties, filled with career politicians, influenced by big money and the politicians, simply won’t ever deliver it to us. They are trying to build a coalition of the politicians against the people.”

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Scholars describe populism as a language that pits the will of ordinary people against conniving elites. It usually comes “attached” to a fully formed political ideology, either of the left or right. The political scientist Paul Taggart calls it “chameleonic”.

But what characterises Farage’s populism in this campaign is its translucent skin and nothing else. Shorn of any ideological hue, this is populism distilled into its purest form: a pared-back rage over an apparently corrupt political establishment’s failure to abide by the democratic will of the people. And Farage, a powerful orator, delivers the message with the engrossing rhythm of pantomime.

In a chat beside his campaign bus, Farage seems unsure about the populist label. “You call it what you want to call it,” he says. “I see the whole of western world politics utterly dominated by a handful of giant multinationals and a career political class. I’ve felt that for a very long time. I was miles ahead of the game with some of this stuff.”

Either way, Farage concedes he has “never had a more straightforward message. And never have the other side made it easier.” Why had he not once used the word immigration in his speech? “Five years ago the burning issue in this country was open-doors immigration. And right now, it is not the burning issue. The burning issue is Brexit. Purely Brexit.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Farage and supporters at the Sugar Hut in Brentwood, Essex. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

The following morning Farage takes a respite from the Labour heartlands for a brief stop in the Tory stronghold of Brentwood. Farage had promised this would be a “celeb event” hosted in the Sugar Hut, a nightclub featured in the reality TV show The Only Way Is Essex.

The only VIP who turns up is the boxer Dereck Chisora, who lingers, largely unnoticed, beside the bar. A more pressing concern is the set-up. Much to their annoyance, the people have been relegated to the back of the room, behind a VIP rope, their view of the stage entirely blocked by a wall of TV cameras and photographers.

There are shouts of: “This is a disgrace!” and: “Why are we even here?”Leading the mutiny is Scott Dawkins, 48, who runs a window cleaning company. “It’s as if they don’t give a toss. You come and show your support, and they ignore you. What’s the point in that?”

Ten minutes later, after Farage comes off the stage and submerges himself in the adoring crowd, Dawkins holds up a selfie on his phone and declares himself thoroughly satisfied.

“I think he’s brilliant,” he says. “I think he’s a breath of fresh air. It’s what we need. The thing is, we’re all like the little people. And all these elites think they can do what they want. But they can’t now because now we’ve got a voice.” Dawkins says he thinks the country is at a turning point. “There’s going to be a massive uprising. Politics has changed. Brexit has opened so much and more people are getting involved.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Farage with Brexit party European election candidates in Brentwood. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Richard Tice, the suave real estate magnate who is chair of Farage’s Brexit party, tells me he believes the whole of government – not least the NHS – could be made more efficient if successful businessmen such as himself were parachuted into the civil service. “I ran a multinational real estate company with a portfolio over a billion pounds – I think I know how to spend money.”

He pulls out his iPhone and flicks to a photo of a billboard in Coventry drawing attention to Farage’s claim that the NHS could be improved with “an insurance-based system of healthcare”. “This is what we are up against,” he says. “The establishment and the mainstream media keep dredging up things Nigel once said. The people don’t give a stuff.”

A few hours later, it is standing room only in the corporate venue Farage’s party has rented in Willenhall, near Wolverhampton. The crowd seems similar to the one in south Wales; many are middle-aged who are politicised by Farage’s mission.

“I have never, ever, ever been into politics,” says Chris Malsbury, a 47-year-old who worked in a furniture factory before his job was outsourced to Turkey. “I never voted, apart from the referendum. The fact the government ignored us really annoys me. They’re completely divided from the working man.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A sticker in Dudley. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Martin Daubney, a former editor of the so-called lads’ magazine Loaded and a Brexit party candidate, comes to the stage to fire up the crowd. He skewers Alastair Campbell, saying he assumes public opinion over Brexit has shifted because of discussions he has had at dinner parties. “I’m from Nottingham and I talk to people in car boot sales and chip shops and pubs,” Daubney says. “I don’t go to dinner parties. I hang out with real people.”

Moments later, Farage delivers an especially passionate rendition of his stump speech; sweat dripping down his neck, he builds to a crescendo using his favoured line about “a coalition of the politicians against the people”. “Well let me tell you,” he yells, amid a frenzy of applause, “we’re the people. The Brexit party are the people. And they are in for the shock of their lives.”

When he comes off the stage I ask Farage who he is referring to when he talks about “the people”. “Everyone defines the people as they choose to do so,” he says. How does he define it? “The majority. And we have a good majority who want us to leave and get on with it.”