During the course of Wednesday night, torrential thunderstorms hit London and the South East. Huge quantities of rain fell in the early hours before the polls opened on Thursday morning, flooding railway stations and closing roads.

The downpour woke Nigel Farage at 2am and he could not go back to sleep. As lightning lit up the sky, his mind raced with thoughts of the referendum, a vote that marked the culmination of his 25-year crusade.

“I could not get to sleep to save my life,” he says. “I just lay there for three or four hours, going back through it all and thinking about when I first stood for Ukip.”

In the Eastleigh by-election in 1994, Mr Farage “just crept past Lord Such” of the Monster Raving Loony Party by 164 votes, he recalls.

Now, after being derided as a loony and a racist (by David Cameron, among others), Mr Farage and his party have triumphed. His war with the political establishment has delivered an era-defining result that will see the UK pull out of the European Union.