How exactly? By giving him everything he wants? If you try and position yourself as an ersatz populist you will always lose out to the genuine article.

No, of course not, but by giving Farage as few credible/valid controversies to exploit as possible. If he has to rely on making shit up, he's on much weaker ground.

Quite apart from the fact that Farage has never once given a shit whether something is valid/credible, the "controversies" you're talking about here are innocent vulnerable families who will be torn apart just for the sake of political theatre. It's ghoulish to see that and go "Hmm, yes, sensible".

No he's not. Farage runs a post-truth MAGA clone, which only depends on core issue validation which is entirely what this Government seems hell bent on providing. His base is low information & emotion driven, so they only way you undermine that is by destroying it's basic principles

By way of example, Farages last big project was Brexit. EU membership never polled above 8% on issues ranking before the Tories gave it salience. Farage was never officially involved in the Leave campaign and most of his talking points were utter bull. And yet here we are.