Does Nigel Farage want to join the Conservatives? Who was the Führer in this bloody metaphor? Mr Bloom left little room for doubt that he had Mr Farage in mind. And as if evoking the Nazis was not bad enough, he went on to name an organisation that strikes almost as much fear and loathing into the hearts of Ukip members - namely, the Conservative Party. Mr Farage, he said, has always really been a Tory and is "desperate to be a Conservative again." He is "looking for a deal with the Tories." Indeed, "the deal has already now been done." Ukip will allegedly stand down candidates in key seats, and its leader will be rewarded with a title and a seat in the Lords. To be fair to Mr Farage, Mr Bloom is scarcely a disinterested observer. The former withdrew the whip from the latter, during the Ukip conference earlier this year, with an ease that demonstrates the dominance he has achieved within the party. Mr Bloom's chief crime was to have hit a journalist on the head with a Ukip brochure. Mr Farage will surely have been tempted in his time to hit the odd journalist over the head with a Ukip brochure himself, but clearly felt that the timing and the manner were unhelpful. Of course, Mr Bloom's suggestion of a clandestine deal between Mr Farage and David Cameron - with the Ukip leader perhaps merging his party with the Conservatives, and certainly going to the Upper House - is preposterous. The Ukip leader has no time whatsoever for the Prime Minister, whom he sees as a conviction-free member of an interchangeable political class. But Mr Bloom undoubtedly touched a nerve. Mr Farage has helped to build Ukip up from almost nothing. In 1997, it won just over 100,000 votes. By 2010, that had grown to just under a million. In between, it won some 15 per cent of the vote in two sets of European elections - beating both Labour and the Liberal Democrats last time round. It has come second in several by-elections, including a major contest in Eastleigh earlier this year, and now holds about 150 council seats. It would be surprising, at the next election, if Ukip were to reach the 10 per cent or so of the vote that it currently boasts in opinion polls. But it is hard to see it being squeezed back down to the 3 per cent it took last time round. Because Ukip tends to take more votes from the Tories than from any other party, its showing could make the difference in 2015 between Mr Cameron remaining Prime Minister or Ed Miliband taking office. So far, so good for Mr Farage - or at least, so powerful. But his strength is a wholly negative one. He may be able to turn Mr Cameron out, but he cannot put himself in. Ukip cannot possibly hope to match the third of the vote that remains the Tories" electoral base. Indeed, first-past-the-post leaves it unlikely to win a single seat in the Commons. For all the distance the party has travelled, it remains as far from office as ever. This leaves Mr Farage with precisely the choice suggested by Mr Bloom. Does he want to settle down in his snug in the European Parliament - making speeches, writing books, cracking jokes, provoking headlines and ending up as a "national treasure" (heaven help him), secure in his salary and pension? Or does he want to do something rather than just be something - that's to say, become a man of government rather than a man of opposition? Mr Farage is clever enough not to answer such questions directly, but also smart enough to show a sense of direction. Though scornful of the Prime Minister, he has been guardedly respectful of other senior Tories, such as Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. He has said that he could "have a conversation" with the London Mayor - who, more sweepingly, has described Mr Farage as "a rather engaging geezer" and, in a Bloom-type moment, as "someone who is fundamentally indistinguishable from us." Like the Ukip leader's earlier attack on the vans advising illegal immigrants to go home or face arrest (which caused just 11 of them to leave the UK), the intervention over Syria was a reminder of Mr Farage's desire to keep his party respectable - one with which a future Tory leadership could deal. It was also a sign of his growing electoral influence. Fear of what Ukip would say will undoubtedly have been a factor in the Government's decision not to admit Syrian refugees. Mr Farage is able to have it both ways: first frightening ministers off admitting the Syrians, then attacking them for being hard-hearted. The headlines he won for the move (and the discomfort he has caused Downing Street) may not be worth the anger it sparked among many of Ukip's members and supporters - in narrow political terms, at least. Mr Farage seems to agree, since he backed down yesterday, stating that only Syrian Christians should be admitted. But the Ukip leader seems to have his eyes on a bigger prize. Perhaps, at some point in the future, there will indeed be a Tory-Ukip rapprochement: not the unworkable electoral pact that some are proposing at the moment, but the assimilation of part of the smaller party by the bigger one - in much the same way that the Conservatives swallowed up the National Party and the Anti-Waste League during the early Twenties. And maybe the Ukip leader will be part of such a realignment. But in the meantime, he has other fish to fry - winning headlines, tilting at David Cameron, striving all the while to push his party just a little nearer the mainstream of British politics. So was he speaking his mind on the Syrian refugees, or repeating his party's position, or proving some of Mr Bloom's fears correct? The answer turns out to be: all three at once. Paul Goodman is editor of ConservativeHome