I was on Keir Starmer's plane – but everyone was talking about Nigel Farage

I was 35,000ft up, somewhere over the Black Sea, when the news first broke. Nigel Farage’s dramatic post on X – that he would be making a statement about his political future at 2pm – first sent shocked gasps up and down the cabin. The gasps quickly turned into fevered speculation over what the most influential politician of his generation was about to announce.

This isn’t normal behaviour on a plane, I hear you ask. Except the aircraft I was on just happened to be flying Sir Keir Starmer to the NATO summit in Ankara, and it was packed with political journalists, including me. Being on the Prime Minister’s plane, you would think that the Wi-Fi onboard would be of a decent standard. Alas, no.

So speculation continued to mount. Was Farage quitting politics altogether? Was he ill? He’s definitely having an operation. He’s going to call a by-election.

I messaged him myself – I suspect it’s still floating around the sky above Istanbul – and several other contacts.

What’s going on? I asked.

None of the travelling pack – including journalists from every national newspaper, the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason, Katherine Forster of GB News, and Sky’s Beth Rigby – knew what the reason was.

It was the 60million Turkish Lira question on everyone’s lips.

By the time we landed in Ankara, it was almost time for Farage to do his bit. So, after watching not one, but two Air Force Ones take off, I fired up Reform UK’s YouTube channel on my phone.

As our minibus hurtled towards the Radisson Blu, half a dozen reporters and I listened intently as Farage began to speak.

By the time he reached his crescendo, announcing that he was resigning as an MP to trigger a by-election in Clacton, we were now outside the hotel in baking 35C heat, ears still trained on his every word.

As a journalist, you always want to be where the story is, and it was blatantly obvious that I was in the wrong place.

Two thousand miles away in the wrong place.