Has Farage blown it?

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0:40Hello and welcome to Coffee House. I'm Tim Shipman. And I'm James Hill. And there's a lot to talk about today. A lot of manoeuvring going on in Andy Burnham world. But first, James Hill. All is getting a bit sticky for Nigel Farage.

0:54Tim Shipman: Well, your old protégé, Gabriel Pogrand, has done another very good piece of reading and work, which is that George Cottrell is at the centre of a storm involving Nigel. This is Posh George. This is so-called Posh George, who functions sort of very much as a key player in reform world. The paper reports claims that he was very much responsible for the funding of personnel and security prior to the 2024 election. This was not declared in Major Farage's register of members' interests. And it's a similar story in some ways to the five million gift that the Thai billionaire Christopher Harbourn gave him, which was that it was not declared in the aftermath of the election.

1:34So the rule is that in the year before you become an MP, you're supposed to declare things that could be perceived to have a kind of political connection, essentially.

1:45Tim Shipman: Yes. And I think it's anything more than£300 of benefit in kind. And clearly, if you're sponsoring staff for many months or security, that would, according to many people, classify it as something that needs to be registered. Farage stayed in Cottrell's house as well, I'd say. Yes. Now, the important thing to say is, reform and not disputing the facts here, I think everything Poggan's reported has not been contested in terms of what actually happened. But their interpretation is that this is not political, this is personal, essentially. It's a difficult argument in some ways, because on the one hand, And, you know, clearly Nigel Farage was preparing a comeback for, I think, several weeks or months before the general election.

2:21Tim Shipman: He was clearly the honorary president of reform. But, of course, he wasn't actually standing until the 3rd of June. And, you know, who knows what was going on in Nigel Farage's mind in terms of that. He initially suggested he was going to be standing, but then he pulled out and put that statement on X. And then subsequently changed his mind amid many different representations made to him by the public and in reform as well. So it's all going to come down to timing. I think we're clearly going to have to wait to see the£5 million outcome from the Parliamentary Commission for Standards, Daniel Greenberg, first.

2:49Which people are expecting, I mean, the mood, we talked to a lot of people at our party last week, that the expectation was that could come quite soon. I mean, perhaps even as early as this week. Maybe this complicates matters further in terms of the timing.

3:02Tim Shipman: Yes, because of course that what we're expecting is the outcome of a suspension from Parliament if it's 10 days or more. That opens the way for a potential recall process whereby the constituents can request a by-election. and then we'd be in a whole Clacton 2026 race again. Now you speak to people in reform, what would that outcome look like? Some of them suggest, obviously, it's a great sort of rally around the leader moment, a way of showing Farage versus the establishment, putting these questions to bed. But of course, it means that you then have questions about his probity, about his conduct.

3:29Tim Shipman: And at a time when they're trying to take the fight to Andy Burnham and define him, does that distract from what many of them think is going to happen, which is a snap election and preparations for that? Yeah, I mean, and bluntly, if you look at the broadcast schedules today, there aren't many reform people out and about. We've seen some responses from Robert Jenrick was out and about, but this is not a subject they're sort of racing to comment on. And it just, you know, it does seem like it's a bit of a distraction. And the other thing that happened was that the Sunday Times, or via the Times, then put out a second story, effectively showing that Cottrell was using business cards with a reform logo on.

4:05Now, reform again say that that was, this was just so people could contact Farage. He's never had a position in the party. And that's correct, isn't it? But he's clearly part of Farage's gang of mates, his inner circle of friends. And as you say, Farage, you know, quite fairly, I think it's fair to say, did chop and change over whether he's going to return. He's always agonising over it. So if you go back through his career, he's constantly saying, I want to get out of this. Oh, I'm coming back. I want to get out of this. He's like a market trader.

4:32Tim Shipman: He knows when to buy and when to sell. He's an old city boy. He is a city boy, but also he's also still fundamentally a politician as well as a broadcaster and all these other things. Now, if you wanted to be whiter than white, you would have declared these things. They're obviously now going to have an argument about it. But it does seem to me that there's lots of issues here. There's did he technically break the rules? There's how have they responded? And then there's what happens next. And I'm inclined to agree with your reform sources. I think if we do have a recall vote and a by-election, I think it could be the best thing that's happened to Nigel Farage for six months, to be honest, because it will...

5:07It's a campaign. It's a campaign, which is where he's best. He likes being out on the stump. He likes saying the establishment, the union party's out to stitch him up. And if the commissioner and the House of Commons say, do one for 10 days, that could well play into his hands.

5:21Tim Shipman: I also think it's different slightly from, say, for instance, Partygate, which was, hang on a sec, I'm suffering while supposedly people in number 10 are having a jolly good time. This is one step less than that in terms of kind of where it would rank on a kind of political scandal, scandal-meter, you know, because basically it's, hang on a sec, well, he didn't declare it properly in line with the procedural, it's rigmarole. How does that affect my life? I still like for my still voting for Nigel. No, exactly. It doesn't affect that. I think there's two things that raise my 25 years of antennae and things start to buzz.

5:51Firstly, he seems very angry about it. They haven't had their story straight throughout this process. and it feels like this is something Farage really hates. He thinks it's an imposition. He thinks people don't really actually have a right to know this stuff. Well, I'm afraid if you're a frontline politician, they do have a right to know it. So that, I'd be interested in your thoughts on that. And secondly, the question is, and that has an implication not just for who he is and is he an upstanding chap, but how would he handle government when things get sticky? How would he deal under pressure?

6:21And there's some sort of signs that when he is the one getting pounded, they find it quite difficult to sort of respond because a he might not be telling all his aides the full picture or wanting to respond and if Nigel says we're not responding then they don't respond no amount of comms expertise or wise old out saying actually i think you should deal with this more seriously Nigel is going to change Farage's approach and that is very you know it is it's not a one-man ban that's an unfair criticism it does feel like you know what Nigel says goes and the reason they defend him is partly because they've got a lot of people who have been with him, you know, the Farad long marchers for a decade or more, but also because they know if he wasn't there, what is left standing in reform?

7:07Tim Shipman: It's the founder-led party. And I think you can say everyone who's joined reform has joined because of Nigel Farage. They want to be associated with him. And that was the kind of striking thread that linked all those Tory defection press conferences, which was we all want to be with Nigel Farage. We know he's the Manitou prime minister. He's the animating spirit of their campaigns. He's the person who can knock heads together behind closed doors. And what he says effectively goes in reform. As time goes on, that can change. We can talk about potentially a post-Farage party one day further down the line.

7:34Tim Shipman: But I mean, for now, he is still very much the animating spirit of it. I think in terms of finances, you're right. He is quite private about this. He was very offended a few years ago when it was the Coupes scandal, thinking why are they giving up our private information? Quite rightly in that case. In this one, I think it is, go back to the frustration with... Bit less moral high ground. with rules. And I think just generally, if you look at how reform has functioned in parliament, you know, they're an insurgent force. They find a lot of this stuff frustrating. And I do think it's one of the arguments which is stronger when the Conservatives make it, which is that, hang on a sec, we took down Mandelson, we took down McSweeney with the kind of parliamentary procedural rules.

8:06Tim Shipman: This stuff does matter. And one can see a world, right, if reform does pull off an election victory, where they soon become kind of bogged down in the same issues of the so-called deep state about actually the stuff that, my advice might regard as a bit procedural and fussy, but is important. And, you know, you've got a very loyal team around him, but coming up against the so-called blob, I mean, how are they going to fare about that? He's been very open about saying that there's a reason why he took some of these Tory defectors against the wishes of people like Zia Yusuf, because he knows that there's not a lot of expertise around that's been known and done it before.

8:39Now, with establishment expertise comes the sort of whiff that you might still be part of the old gang. But it's interesting to see Jenrick out circling the wagons and supporting him. And that will be kind of important, I think, for the coherence of, you know, generally probably the most significant of the defectors on with Danny Kruger. And Nigel will want to see them personally defending him. And if there's going to be a coherent kind of government in waiting, they can't afford to have splits between those sort of top three or four people, can they?

9:08Tim Shipman: And I think what's quite striking is how united the reform has been. I mean, there's been lots of articles about what if, you know, Nigel Forrest quits. I mean, I have been slightly struck that it doesn't seem people are privately briefing. There was one to the Observer about Zia Yusuf for Makerfield, which I found quite implausible in one sense, in that I don't see what he was involved with that. But there were some articles over the weekend, and everyone keeps going back to the one tweet that Zia Yusuf did about Robert Jenrick a few weeks ago. That was clearly, I think, very off message and a bit stupid.

9:35Tim Shipman: Oh, that's the only evidence to go on. And right now, everyone's hunkering down, being very quiet. And I think what they're doing is waiting to try and ride out the storm, and then they'll choose their next moves. because I mean Kirsten's now gone regardless of these sort of personal issues he needs a new political song I think Farage is kind of waiting to choose his lyrics for his next sort of debut on the political stage Well one of the things I expect he'll be doing is phoning up his old mate Donald Trump and saying can you get our red card lifted as well old son that would be one of the things and secondly reports on the Guido Forks website citing multiple sources that Andy Burnham is quite keen on the Chagos Islands deal again which seems on the face of it completely bananas having Labour sort of got out of that mess, you know, kind of by accident.

10:16And he now seems to want to reinsert them into it. And this is part of the fact that Jonathan Powell, the national security advisor, seems to be staying on for a bit at least. And he, along with Lord Hermes, the attorney general, seems to be every bit as keen on pushing ahead with it now as they ever were. I can't imagine the reaction that that will get us at the NATO summit coming up later this week.

10:36Tim Shipman: There's lots of good people on the team, Burnham, who he's assembling now, but there is a sort of dearth of foreign affairs expertise. And I was really struck to see on Friday, the Foreign Office put out a statement just now plowing ahead with demining exercises and the straight-up form moves with the French. Now, we've got the 30-day ceasefire, which is going on until the 17th of July. Of course, that's the fag end of Keir Starmer's premiership. And we could see a world where it's unlikely, but the Iranians start bombing again and maybe taking out some of those efforts we've had in demining. Andy Burnham could very easily in his first week or so have to deal with a major foreign policy crisis at a time, of course, when he's on the back foot over defence.

11:11Tim Shipman: He might want to say the defence investment plan is settled, but that's very much not how the Americans see it. And we've got NATO coming up this week. And that's going to obviously reignite all those tensions, because I think there are too many foreigners in countries in America and so Europe think the Brits are trading too much on our past rather than investing in our future. Yeah. I mean, there's three things going on here. There's a lot of talk in Washington that the Americans are going to say, allies who are not pulling their weight, here are some sanctions. So it's not impossible that Trump will effectively be threatening Burnham with tariffs or something unless he pulls his weight on defence spending.

11:44Secondly, we've seen Dan Jarvis out and about, the new defence secretary, saying the next spending review will have to have a path to the 3.5 % that Starmer pledged. And that is the bottom line. We've pledged to hit 5%, 1.5 % of which is sort of incidental security spending. We've apparently already reached that, but we've got to hit 3.5 % and we're at 2.6 something, even after the recent uptick in spending. And Dan Jarvis is now openly saying, A, I want the job and B, I need the money. The third thing, and most deliciously, there's a Keir Starmer sort of legacy interview around, most of which you can dismiss as sort of desperately trying to sort of give himself a legacy that is barely worth the tissue paper it's written on.

12:29But there's a good bit of trolling in there where he says, I think the next Prime Minister will have to spend as much time on foreign affairs as I have. And Andy Burnham, we know, does not want to spend time on foreign affairs. He wants to spend time on devolution, sorting out, you know, his version of levelling up and nationalising various utilities and, you know, spending more on things that he likes. But Starmer's there saying, sorry, mate, that's not going to happen. And I remember very clearly a conversation I had with a very, it may even have been with Rishi Sunak, actually. It certainly was one.

13:00I think it was actually with the man himself. And I said, what surprised you? And he said, basically, 40 % of my week is taken up with foreign affairs, security, signing warrants on terrorism, making decisions about military action or secretive activities that the prime minister has to be involved in when it's, you know. And he basically said, my week is blocked out. There's all these things I want to do. There's all these things that other ministers want me to do and the civil service wants me to do. But just overriding all of that, 40 % of the week disappears. Now, Andy Burnham gives every impression of not wanting to spend more than 10 % of his week on foreign affairs.

13:38Now, if anything, the world is more turbulent under Starmer than it was under Sunak. And if Sunak was losing 40 % of its week, It's entirely possible. I've heard things from within Team Starmer that it's sort of near a 60 % or 70 % in some weeks. Burnham is, you know, he can't just appoint David Miliband and keep Jonathan Powell and hope that it all goes away, can he?

13:59Tim Shipman: Well, quite. And also, it's not just that comes along in nice little slots. My understanding is, you know, I spoke to a member of the Sunnet government who said, you know, it would literally be like, one day he'd be meeting the girl guides for a reception, number 10, and then suddenly he would have to get taken outside and, you know, order something on a drone. Are you happy to kill this terrorist? and then you go back and say, oh, that's a very nice crafting thing. Oh, lovely, yeah. It's a very stop-start and it's very different. And in one sense, it's unfair to say, oh, Andy Burnham's been insulated from the change in Westminster in the past 10 years because obviously he's seen what's happened in terms of regional funding as a mayor, et cetera.

14:30Tim Shipman: I completely buy that and he's obviously very plugged into Labour arguments. But on the other, I do think that the pace of Westminster and the nature of politics has got a little bit harsher. And I constantly read these reports, Tim, of Burnham being shocked that people want jobs or shocked that people want answers on the Chancellor. I mean, at one point you think, gentlemen, you can't fight in here. This is the war room. But on the other, it does speak to a certain perhaps naivety in some quarters. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And actually, we don't ultimately know what someone's like until they're in that chair.

14:56Tim Shipman: And, you know, I've said this before, but one of my favourite quotes in politics is Bill Clinton being asked, are you ready to be president? He said, no one's ever ready to be president. You can have all the training background. When you get into that room and all that stuff's coming at you, it's partly preparation. It's partly strategy. it's partly character and personality and bottom and all of that. Now, look, Burnham's been around. He's been a cabinet minister. He's not an idiot. He's worked in the Treasury. He's run a major city. He's probably got better training than a lot of people have had.

15:28He's had more executive experience than Starmer, Blair, Cameron before they became prime minister. The questions are over character. And I guess this is where it reflects back on Farage as well. He looks knackered a lot of the time. He clearly gets wound up about stuff. Does he really want that? And I just wonder whether there's some elements of the way he's responded to this, that he's kind of keeping half a door open to the world that might exist if he doesn't become prime minister and where things go. Anyway, let's not go back to Farage. There's a lot of scuttlebutt around about the Labour cabinet.

16:01I mean, ultimately, we're now in access talks between Antonio Romeo, the cabinet secretary, and Burnham. And he's got James Pennell, who's chief of staff, and Lou Haig, who's his most important ministerial advisor with him. But the striking thing is, access talks are normally for an opposition where there's a load of people in shadow roles. He hasn't appointed Eddie yet. We don't even know who his chancellor's going to be. And according to some reports, nor does he yet. You know, there's two weeks to go. And it's quite difficult for the civil service I'm hearing from some of my people inside. they're like, well, my department's not even had any access talks yet because we don't know who the Secretary of State will be.

16:38We don't know if the department will survive in the form it's currently in. And Burnham will now be getting a sense of quite how much is piling up on him because he's only got two people sitting with him. You know, you would normally have the transport team, the defence team. They'd all be in learning about their own areas and the civil service would be learning what they want to do. But this is very much the vibe of a plane being formed as it stampedes down the runway, you know, with the wings still needing to be fixed, you know.

17:05Tim Shipman: And of course, there's only, what, sort of 21 paid cabinet roles on that plane, to use the passenger analogy. I mean, look, technically under the 1975... Up in business class. Yeah, business class, you know, the nice padding. Ministry of Arts, yeah, he can appoint, I think, scores of cabinet ministers. But in terms of paid, they're limited to 21 roles. And I think the PLP is starting to realise that 403 doesn't go into 21. It's going to be interesting, you know, you talk, for instance, about the Chagos deal, I mentioned earlier, Tim. You know, some areas, Burnham is indicating, people around him, that he has a willingness to move on from areas.

17:34Tim Shipman: He doesn't feel bound. He's willing to ditch David Lammy's jury's reform. That's probably going to be taken by a significant chunk of people. He has a positive sign. But other bits, you know, if you're trying to keep people on or try and move them, is how do you keep their legacy and kind of respect that? And how much of what the Starmer government has done before is he going to keep? And I mean, the big one is still Chancellor. We still don't know. There's some interesting straws in the wind in the last couple of days. we wouldn't normally advertise another podcast, but it is one of the ones I do listen to because I think they both took a lot of sense.

18:03But the Ed Balls George Osborne podcast, very interesting, talked at length about who should be chancellor and what they might do. And there's some talk amongst the Burnham camp that the treasury might be split. Ed Miliband, who is sort of still the front runner for the job, I think wants a strong treasury. And Ed Balls, who knows Ed Miliband, because they were both aged to go brown in the treasury, making a strong case for Ed Miliband to be Chancellor. Now, what on earth did he mean by that, James?

18:32Tim Shipman: Well, I think that that is him being a very good political spouse and suggesting, you know, perhaps subtly that he won't be taking one of the big roles in this new government. Well, if Ed Miliband becomes the Chancellor, exponentially more difficult for David Miliband to be the Foreign Secretary. And who's the current Foreign Secretary, James? Of course, Emette Cooper, who is Mrs Ed Balls. Well, well, I never. What a tangled web. A lot of straws in the wind, and the next election is still wide open as well. Everyone still in the competition due to all these events. Anyway, thank you, James. Thank you very much for tuning in, and we will see you next time.

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