What does Lowe actually want from Farage?

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0:24Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse, the spectators, politics TV show. I am Tim Shipman.

0:29Noa Hoffman: And I'm Noah Hoffman. And I'm just back from Italy. You're just back from other sunny climes. I love going to Italy. I go to Italy every year, Noah. And for years, you would say we love the food, we love the weather, we love the view. But thank God we don't live in this chaotic political mess that is Italy, changing governments every five minutes. And of course, in the last five years I've been going, we've had one Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney, since October of 2022. and in that time we've had four prime ministers. So even that doesn't work anymore. They've got better food, they've got better weather, they've got better views and now they've got a better political system.

1:08Where were you?

1:09Noa Hoffman: Well, I can one-up you in terms of political chaos there. I was in sunny Mallorca, obviously Spain. Their very left-wing leader oversaw the invasion of 60 ,000 migrants into Suheta. A lot of them have been returned But of course, Pedro Sanchez is famous, infamous, I should say, for his mass amnesty for illegal migrants, which no doubt played a part in this huge invasion that we saw in the past few weeks. But as I said, great food, great sea, terrible political leadership. Interesting to see these debates about migration and illegals beginning to dominate European politics as well. And welcome back.

1:52It's the summer in Britain. So what are we talking about? Small boat arrivals, 260 on a single boat yesterday?

1:58Noa Hoffman: Yeah, absolutely astonishing. So this is now a record for the most migrants packed onto one dinghy. We can no longer call them small boats. They're mega dinghies during one crossing ever. So I think the numbers overall, the government is arguing, are down and lower this summer than they were at equivalent points in previous years. Yes, but the public are not responding to that well, saying the numbers are down when you are still seeing these mega dinghies, these masses of numbers coming over. Even if they are down, they are still coming full stop. And until you see a big fat zero on the number of crossings, unfortunately for Andy Burnham, you know, he's not comfortable talking about this topic.

2:41Noa Hoffman: We saw him in Dover try and address the issue of small boats. And he was sort of queasing as he spoke about it because it seemed so counterintuitive to a lot of his left wing ideals and principles. And we saw this in Makerfield. He was kind of forced to talk about it and he was forced to say, we're going to accept the same, broadly the same rules that Shabana Mahmood was putting in place under Keir Starmer. We suspect there are some tweaks coming to that when Parliament returns. But, you know, Labour wants to talk a numbers game. But the argument Nigel Farage was making this morning, it's the summer.

3:18We're going to talk about small boats. It's the summer. Reform are going to hold a load of press conferences and try and grab the agenda. And the interesting thing I think we'll be to see over the next few weeks. Burnham is back from his holiday this week. We're told there's going to be a load of cost of living sort of announcements. And then he's going off on his Hillary Clinton style listening tour. I always associate listening tours with Hillary Clinton because she seemed to have to go off in her yellow pantsuit and discover after years of living in ivory towers what the real people of America thought.

3:46And it did seem to sort of shape some of what she came up with at the end of it. But Burnham is desperately, he claims, I already know what the people think. I am in touch with the people. but this is a sort of performative effort to show that he's going off to listen to what people say but if he goes off and listens to what the British public says on this subject he's not going to like what he hears is he?

4:05Noa Hoffman: No and look you cannot tell the public that things are getting better when we still see these images on our screens when we still have sways of mostly men coming into the country who are going to be a drain on the benefits system who we are struggling to deport most of which are economic migrants the public will feel like mugs if they are being told things are getting better while at the same time these numbers these figures are still coming still coming still coming regardless of whether they're less than the year before and I think look Burnham's strategy so far has been let's drown out the immigration debate with cost of living announcements that worked in his first week maybe a bit into the second but the Tories and reform are not going to let this slide.

4:51Noa Hoffman: You know, news outlets are still going to broadcast and write about what is happening. This is news. The public are going to see it. And you can talk about all the ways you're going to tackle subscriptions, unfairly charging consumers and, you know, making it difficult to cancel subscription as today's cost of living announcement was, which, by the way, was a policy from two years ago. But the boats are still coming and people are not going to stop talking about them. And it's his base. This is his base. This was the point Farage was making this morning. I had to go to a boring meeting this morning.

5:24You had the great honour, the joy of attending Nigel Farage's press conference with Zia Eustace. Tell us what that's all about. So in the last few days, we've seen them say that they want to deport all foreign national criminals, that they're going to use the Navy in the Channel to try and interdict these boats. And Farage's argument seemed to be I don't care about the numbers. Any numbers are a problem. Undocumented males chucking their passports in the water at the 12 mile limit, that's a problem. So how persuasive were they with what they were proposing and how well did they cope with the questioning afterwards?

6:01Noa Hoffman: So this press conference was actually about law and order and of course the prison capacity crisis. And Farage repeated his pledge, this is an old pledge from a year ago to send all foreign national prisoners, if not back to their home country, then to third party countries such as El Salvador, where they will serve out their sentence there. He pointed to the fact that Sweden has an arrangement with Kosovo where they send foreign criminals to serve their time there. And he believes this is something the UK can replicate. And I think they've had conversations with Kosovo, haven't they? And I think now what they've said is they've now had some conversations with El Salvador as well, which of course is where the Trump administration has been talking about sending people.

6:39They don't have a great human rights record and some of the prisons are pretty leery. But their argument is what? that they'll essentially spend less money because paying for someone to be in prison in El Salvador costs less than putting them up in the prison estate here.

6:54Noa Hoffman: Yeah, they claimed it's about a third of the cost. Now, in terms of the conditions, as you mentioned, Zia Yusuf today described prisons in El Salvador as not really comparable to a British summer camp, but also not cruel. So that was one of their big policies, as well as Nightingale prisons, blocking local authorities, town halls from rejecting any application to build new prisons and also this promise that killers, rapists and violent thugs will never be released a day early. Right. So it was this big law and order package. And that plays into what Labour are experiencing at the moment. Absolutely.

7:30They've got this basically a space crisis. Burnham has tried to say, well, I don't like this very much and I don't like what Starmore was doing and I've put a pause on it. they now seem to be, the government seems to be sort of edging around on which people who've committed manslaughter might be allowed out or not. Once you get into that argument, you're losing the public, aren't you?

7:49Noa Hoffman: Yeah. And then, of course, you have these big, famous cases such as that of PC Harper and his widow, you know, pleading with Labour not to let his killers out. But of course... And they're due out this week. They're due out this week. Like, if you make an exception for one case, there are going to be hundreds and hundreds of others saying, why can't I have the same treatment? So it's a very, very... They seem to be trying to change the rules to stop those particular killers being released. But then the knock-on effect on the sort of number of places that will then be needed could be quite large.

8:25So what do Farage and Zia Youssef say? have they factored in the costs of what will presumably be a ton of legal action around people being dispatched to El Salvador? You can imagine court cases saying, well, it's not safe there and they're not going to treat them very well and it's a violation of their human rights. I mean, you know, I don't defend that approach, but it seems pretty likely that that's where things are going to go. Do they have an answer for that?

8:49Noa Hoffman: Well, their answer is that they're going to leave the ECHR, which they say would be the catalyst for a lot of these claims. And without that mechanism, a lot of the so-called human rights claims will falter. They also said, just on that note, that NGOs, and this is slightly different on illegal migration, caught facilitating small boat crossings, as we often see captured in footage from the beaches in France, such as Chris Philps when he was there doing some boots on the ground journalism. You did see charity workers in their gilets, you know, helping people onto the boats, watching as they set sail.

9:23Noa Hoffman: Come this way, dear. Indeed. A marvellous vessel for your approval. Yes, so reform said that they would be charged with aiding and abetting illegal entry into the country. So there was a bit of discussion about a clampdown on NGOs who they argue, and many would argue, don't act in the national interest of this country, but rather in a way that is just pandering to a very niche ideology, perhaps trendy in some areas of London, but certainly not with the wider country. And so you've got this plan to send people either to El Salvador or to Kosovo. They also want to be able to return people to their country of origin if possible.

10:02And failing that, some of them are going to get sent back to France by the sound of it. Where are we on the sort of international cooperation with all of this, do you think? Have they got anywhere with the French or with some of these other countries? Are they threatening? we've already seen the government talk about reducing aid or cutting off spending to countries that won't take criminals back. Do we get any further insight into that this morning?

10:26Noa Hoffman: Not quite. In terms of small boat criminals, Farage's plan is to send the Navy to the 12-mile line within the Channel and turn the boats around and send them back to France. Of course, Macron has completely blasted this plan as illegal. But we know that Farage has a very good relationship with Jordan Bardella, who will be appearing at Reform Conference and is a potential future leader. And he is effectively Marine Le Pen's kind of migration guy, essentially. Yes, but you cannot bank an entire policy on a potential outcome of an election in France. But it does feel a little bit like Macron's approach is a similar one to the one that the Spanish government that you were just talking about has taken.

11:14You could see, looking on the bright side from reform's point of view, if Marine Le Pen were to win the French presidency, I doubt, given that she's very nationalistic, that she's going to want to sort of accept huge numbers of people. But I think her argument would be that, well, they're going to strengthen the French border at the extremities of the French border and there'll be fewer people getting to the beaches in the first place. And you can see a world in which Farage, Le Pen and some of the other European leaders who are a bit more sympathetic on this stuff, perhaps Georgia Maloney and some of the others, there might at least be a kind of quarate group that might want to change the rules and might want the EU or the Council of Europe to behave differently here.

12:00It may be that some of that is possible even inside the ECHR. It sounds like, you know, they'll want to leave on day one and it will take them probably a year to pull that off, I think. But there is a sort of interesting shift going on in Europe. And having these friendships at the moment, they don't count for anything. But the chances of Macron still being president by the time Farage becomes prime minister, were he to become prime minister, pretty minimal, actually. He's almost certainly going to be dealing with a new regime over there. so even the new statesman was writing about this the other day from the left saying oh look maybe there's an opportunity here so not just the nasty right wing sectainter with all its anti-immigration views

12:40Noa Hoffman: I think it might be interesting actually to touch on Restore and Rupert Lowe Yes of course, absolutely because Farage did address this idea of talks potentially reuniting with his political foe So just to bring, if the rest of you have been sunning yourself as we have, what's basically happened is that Rupert Lowe has kind of reached out to Nigel Farage and said, it's a bit silly us fighting. Is there a way that we can work together? And Farage's initial response was pretty lukewarm, I think, at best. Reform have been making sort of noises about, well, we can't do a deal while some of the people in Restore are remaining in Restore.

13:20So has that position changed as a result of this press conference today? What did Farage have to tell us?

13:26Noa Hoffman: Yeah, so interestingly, Farage really went into Restore's darker side and some of the nastier characters that surround Rupert Lowe. And he actually, he repeated, he doubled down on his condition, which is that I'm not going to do a deal with Restore while Rupert Lowe surrounds himself with people who, for instance, say that anybody who is not white should not be in this country. Anyone who's Jewish should not be in this country. These are very, very extreme positions. And Farage said, I have spent my life fighting off the likes of the BNP. I've always drawn a line. I've always drawn a moral line, even where potentially he could have gained from indulging in the far right.

14:13Noa Hoffman: He has always said, no, I'm not going to go there. And he compared a lot of the politics of some of the people around Rupert Lowe to, you know, the 1930s and where that led. So Farage very much doubled down on his position. No deal with Restore while these nasty characters remain. Yeah. And this is essentially sort of far right on race, far right on anti-Semitism as well. And yeah, it's quite difficult to see how this great coming together is going to happen. The interesting thing is that Rupert Lowe felt the need to do it because it depends what you want as Rupert Lowe. I mean, a lot of people in reform and even some Tories speaking, whispering quietly would say it's all been, if not a Tory plot, at least something that the Tories have enjoyed watching as Restore have peeled off sort of 4 % or so from reform.

15:04That's helpful for the Conservative Party. There are people in reform who think it's all a Tory plot. I don't think it is a pure Tory plot, but I definitely think there have been some conversations between senior Tories and Rupert Lowe, including some of the sort of classic dark arts merchants who we know and love. And at least on this broadcast, we remain nameless. I put one of them in print previously, but we don't want to antagonize everyone. But what does Rupert Lowe want? Does he want to be readmitted? Is this about him trying to get alongside Farage again, do you think? or is it more they're looking at the numbers and thinking we're going to end up with a left-wing government here if we're not careful?

15:41Noa Hoffman: It's hard to tell. Restore sort of has an 8 % ceiling in terms of support and that is because a lot of the people in the party are extremists and now a lot of Restore supporters who base their fondness for Rupert Lowe on various social media posts, perhaps some videos on TikTok, they don't know about some of the darker forces around him. But as that becomes more public, that ceiling is probably only going to lower and lower because the UK is not a racist country. And we've seen what's happened with reform a little bit. A lot of newspapers have looked at them in some detail. There's been a lot of focus on Farage's money and whether or not he correctly declared things.

16:25There's always focus on their candidates and the people that Farage's parties put up. And he's got rather better at vetting them. And the The machine he's built around him at reform is easily the most professional of all. You know, it's much more professional than UKIP or the Brexit party. And the Brexit party is a lot better than UKIP at weeding these people out. But inevitably, some people get through. But unless there's sort of that relentless publicity, it doesn't tend to hurt them too badly. Farage would say he's had a relentless kind of media kind of proctological examination in recent weeks.

16:57And it hasn't done anything much good to reform's numbers. And I guess he would hope that if restore becomes a thing that is going to be more of a factor in British politics going forward, that the same treatment will be given to them. And it does, everyone criticizes the media, but this is an important role that the media plays is to run the rule over people. And it's often, I remember someone in reform saying to me, why is it so easy for you lot to find these things out when our vetters have failed? but you know in media has a lot of resources and it's got a lot of it gets tip-offs and in a way that perhaps a party wouldn't and you go and look at these people and sometimes they look pretty unpalatable but all this really this split on the right is grist to Andy Burnham's bill and there are a lot of big questions coming up we will be there to answer them this week the big questions will be how big is Nigel Farage's win over the bin and how expensive are Andy Burnham's dad t-shirts And maybe this is Burnham's plan, just try and stimulate the economy by spending hundreds of pounds on designer T-shirts.

18:02So that will create a growth bubble all of its own.

18:05Noa Hoffman: Very reassuring.

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