Can Nigel Farage be PM?

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0:41Camilla: Tim, it's a question that the country seems to be repeatedly asking itself. Will Nigel Farage ever be Prime Minister? We're going to talk to Fraser Nelson about that. We're going to discuss what does Nigel want to do? Do his sums add up? who is supporting him and what are the chances of him entering number 10. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

1:14Camilla: Fraser Nelson joins us in The Daily Tea studio again. Welcome, Fraser. You've done a Dispatches on Benefits and now you've moved on to a different subject, Nigel Farage. I have. They're actually kind of related, actually, because if you look at the sort of places, parts of the country where reform is most popular, they're the places where government is working worst for them. So in these welfare hotspots, like take Blackpool, for example, really majored on that in my welfare documentary. There's now a reform pub in Blackpool. And when you walk around that place, you can kind of see why there is such depth of despair with all political parties.

1:49For example, the Metropole Hotel, which is the sort of Buckingham Palace of Blackpool as well, as the only big hotel on the seafront, is now a migrant hostel. And you can see if you're living there and you're basically struggling to put food on the table for your family and you see people in that hotel getting, you know, two hot meals a day, you can feel the unfairness. You can feel the government. You can feel the government wasn't really working. And you can see in Keir Starmer somebody is not making your community much better. That's before you look into the worklessness and everything else.

2:16But that's a sort of cliche of reform support in a way, the kind of decaying seaside town. What we're now seeing, I think, and what you wanted to explore in the film, were the way the positive reasons of voting reform. People see them as a solution. We're seeing now immigrants voting for reform. We're seeing young professionals who start to see reform as a disrupting force. So there's now this kind of swashbuckling aspect of reform. So I wanted to sort of almost pick up where I left off with a welfare documentary, which is the epitome of what's going wrong in Britain right now. But saying it's gone a lot beyond a cry of pain.

2:50Support for reform is now, what, a third of the country? Easily the most popular political party. And that is because people start to see Nigel Farage as a solution as well as being a way of protesting against the problems.

3:02Camilla: That's the point, isn't it? Because to what extent is Nigel Farage's success built on the fact that he is good or that his opponents are really, really bad? Well, it strikes me that your subject matter has gone from rags to riches. You've gone from dealing to the poor to a man who is really very rich. And one question that immediately jumped out at me when you're talking about Blackpool is why would Blackpool not just vote for a left-wing party? Why is he not leaning towards a progressive party? Why are people who are poor leaning towards a man who, let's be honest, is wealthy, used to be a stockbroker, and was a Thatcherite until five minutes ago.

3:41Well, you're certainly right. I mean, we've got a prefect at Dulwich Academy. It's funny, I spoke to the Tory leader of Kent Council, who was just completely transparent for him. He's now out of a job. He was at Dulwich with Nigel Farage, both of them were prefects together. But this isn't really a paradox. I mean, look at Donald Trump. He's not exactly a proletariat. And so to understand this, I think we have to get to, first of all, voters don't really judge in this country, people by whether they were rich or the poor, they don't really care. I mean, that's sort of if you're a left wing attack man, you might think, OK, let's portray David Cameron as being rude.

4:14People didn't care which Richie Sunak was. They don't care about Nigel Farage. They care about whether he talks their language, whether he is concerned about what they're concerned about, whether he embodies their anger, which he certainly does. And whether he is able to also communicate some kind of way out of this. So that's one thing we need to forget, whether somebody is rich or whether he's poor, it doesn't matter. The other thing we have to forget are our notions of left and right. They just do not help us anymore. So the likes of United might sit and think, ah, okay, look at his policy and welfare.

4:45So therefore he's moving to the left here, but there's a contradiction here because he's moving to the right in immigration. You know, your average voter doesn't think about that. The problems they're facing now are huge and interlinked. So we don't really think, okay, I place myself here in the spectrum and Farage is on the right. If you look at places that are going from big numbers, They are the former staunch labor places, which have become effectively rotten butters because they've been ignored for so long, treated as safe seats for so long. And now they are rebelling. So what we're seeing now is, in many ways, the coming together of the Brexit vote.

5:19That's the biggest single correlation of reform vote now, the places that voted most for Brexit. And the other aspect of this is the Boris 2019 coalition, because there was an aspect of hope that Boris represented there, that he'd be able to take Brexit and turn it into a kind of agenda for economic renewal, kind of a more cohesive social model, an economy where low pay paid better, where people's prospects were better, where employers didn't just bus in immigrants to fill vacancies. But to the eternal shame of the Conservative Party, they completely blew that. They had immigration going treble what it was before.

5:53When Boris was standing up saying, we're not going to go back to the old model of immigration and low wages, he had sent immigration through the roof. Now he hadn't realised this, this was more cock-up than conspiracy, but the effect was the same. So you've got people who basically believed in a radical vision that they were sold in 2019, a radical vision they were sold in Brexit, but this is also a country that almost voted for Jeremy Corbyn as well in 2017. It came very close.

6:16Camilla: We do gravitate towards these political personalities, even though deep down we might have grave reservations about their actual ability to govern. Okay, so the Johnson appeal is he reaches the parts that others can't, because he's plain speaking, he's relatable, the whole adage of you would have a pint with him, you would go for a pint with Boris Johnson. You would probably actually arguably go for a pint with Jeremy Corbyn. At least you knew what he stood for. I mean, he might be banging on about CND and the benefits bill, but whatever, there's a clarity of vision there. The same with Farage.

6:51Camilla: At least you know what Farage believes in and he's able to articulate it. The trouble is that I do still think deep down, and this comes back to the, is he actually good or is it just because everyone else is bad? Yes. We do have to ask the fundamental question of, it's all very well that you perform well on I'm a Celebrity and GB News and at the pub and at rallies and in speeches. Are you actually capable of being prime minister? In the past, there were plenty of politicians who you'd have had a drink with, but you wouldn't necessarily have voted for them because there was a competent alternative.

7:25It's not just, to go back to this point about, is it about Nigel or is it about politics being so bad? It's not just that Nigel is amicable, it's that there is also not a compelling alternative to his amicability. I'm not going to say, OK, well, Keir's a bit of a square, but I still believe he can run things better.

7:41Camilla: No, people don't think he can run things better. So I might as well go for a giggle because everyone's rubbish at this job. Fraser, sorry, you're the guest. No, you're quite right. One of the things we did for the documentary was we got together a focus group of 10 floating voters in Solly Hall. So this isn't Brexit Heartlands. This is the Midlands, the kind of places that Nigel Farage would need to take if he's going to become prime minister. And we just listened to them talk. And I was on the other side of the screen. And it was very interesting. First of all, they all spoke about Farage in terms of whether he's going to govern or not.

8:12Not a single one of them thought it was an absurd notion in the way that some people still do in Westminster. Very interesting. So every single one was, is he going to govern? Would that be a good or a bad thing? Nobody was saying that it wasn't plausible. Now, the other thing was the depth of just exasperation. Some of them voted Tory, some of them voted Labour. Now, one of them said that they weren't quite sure what Keir Starmer stood for at the time. But a year on, what do we find out? He's taking away your winter fuel payments and he's basically going to cut your benefits. So as far as they can work out, they had an open mind as to Labour, because Starmer only half sold himself to the country.

8:46He got 34%, a smaller vote share than any post-war prime minister. So he hasn't sealed the deal. But in office, he's disappointed so much that they've already given up. And I think the whiplash of all these various prime ministers means people do give up a little bit quicker now. So the bedrock of Najaf Raj's support is absolutely not just an exasperation with the other two, but a feeling that they are basically the uni party, that Labour has not managed to come up with any significant correction to the many problems that they diagnosed in the Conservatives. So you've got the idea of failed consensus, which Farage promises to smash.

9:23And there is appetite for that. Not that they necessarily think he will build, but they think that he is a necessary corrective to a failed consensus. Yes. He is somebody who will take apart the old, which they badly think needs to be taken apart. Now, I was reminded of when I was on the campaign trail for the Scottish referendum in 2014. And, you know, you'd say the usual, ah, independence, it might not work. The economics wouldn't stack up. there'd be large deficits. But then I found out to my shock as a unionist, that you could almost tell approaching somebody if they were for or anti the union, if they were basically well dressed, if it looked as if life was going well for them, they're more likely to be unionist.

10:01But if it looked as if life wasn't going particularly well for them, they would be a separatist. So people had basically, for ones who wanted to overturn the apple cart, believed that that cart was full of rotten apples. Now that same sentiment is behind the reform vote. They want to overturn the apple cart. They now pretty much accept the analysis of being status quo parties. And it doesn't really matter who's in charge of it. It's the same kind of confines, the same problems. Nobody's really getting to grips with them. And in Farage, you have got a radical alternative. But interestingly, not just in Farage, in the Reform Party, which itself is beginning to convey real meaning, real hope.

10:36We commissioned an opinion poll saying, would you still vote reform if it wasn't for Farage? and interestingly, it was only about three, four points down.

10:44Camilla: Really? That surprises me. Me too. Because we've all discussed, I'm sure, does reform exist if something happens to Nigel Farage? And one assumes not. I thought not. Because they weren't doing well in the last general election until Nigel re-entered. They were nothing before he came along and with his insurgent power, which took the Brexit party to number one in the space of weeks in the European elections, he did exactly the same. And as to whether Farage is good or not, But as a politician, he's one of the best we've ever seen. I completely agree with that. Sorry, do not get me wrong. Of all of the politicians operating in the UK today, he is by far, by far the best communicator.

11:21Camilla: He's the best at managing the media. He is the best in terms of, I think, relatability. People can come up to him, stop him on the street, and he will speak human to them in a way that others can't. but and I do think by the way I've called it before it there is an effort factor Farage and the other F that people are looking at their ballot papers like they did with the referendum and literally just thinking effort how much worse can it get I've had enough of this we've had successive Tory and Labour governments break their promises break the country this guy's offering to fix it. But of course, he, like Boris Johnson, has to unite this extraordinary complex caucus of people.

12:05Camilla: Yes, he needs to appeal to the good people of Blackpool. He also needs to probably appeal to the good people of Beaconsfield. And I think the good people of Beaconsfield are thinking, can this bloke actually run anything? He talks a good game. Richard Tice as Chancellor. I don't know. I own a one and a half million pound home and I run a business and I've got employees and I just don't know about this gang because they are a motley crew, Tim. And I wonder, are they overwhelmed by this too? Which is the question I really want to ask because you've, in the course of this documentary, sat down with Nigel and spoken to him to go within a year from insurgency party placing fourth to party now on about 34%.

12:49With Simon Case, former head of the civil service, saying that Farage and his people should be briefed on how to run government, which is what you would do with an opposition party, which looks like you could enter power. From your conversations with him, is he ready for that? Well, the most interesting question you can ask Nigel Farage if you get the chance is, do you want the job? Do you wish it was you at number 10? Do you want to sort out the health service? And all of these other tasks, which are so big and complicated that everybody else has failed, he'll never give a straight answer. Because I think he's actually not quite good at persuading himself yet, that he would like to spend four or five years in number 10, fighting with the civil service, pulling a lever, then finding out it's not attached to anything.

13:28I mean, that's the usual problem. Politicians make promises because they overstate how effective the state is. When you get in there, the buttons don't work. And so you've promised you're going to do X, Y, and Z. And you told her, sorry, minister, we can do that. But you don't actually admit, sorry, guys, the state doesn't work. You've got to go and pretend otherwise. So he realizes that the dysfunctionality of government will afflict no matter who goes in there. You get the four best prime ministers we ever had, bring them back, put them there, and they will struggle to turn around the NHS. And they will come up against the same laws that stop you sorting out the border control, etc.

14:00So I think that right now he's a bit of a bluffer at the auction. I think that he's winning and he's scared that he might. I was saying to him, look, MZ used to have been on the radio saying you're going to track down and expel every single legal immigrant 1.2 million. No country in the world has ever come close to doing that. So how can you make that pledge? And then he said, oh, well, I'm not quite sure. I would say it was a promise. It's more of an aspiration. A bit like the no pay no tax and the 20 grand. That's an aspiration. And I was saying to him, hang on a minute. There's a big difference between a promise and an aspiration.

14:33And voters are sick, surely, of being given a promise by a politician only to be told it was only an aspiration. You're sounding like all the rest of them. So he says, oh, Fraser, in politics, all promises are aspirations because you never know what could happen. Now, all of a sudden, he's starting to sound like everybody else. I would like to have done A, B and C, but well, the circumstances were just against me. So this is what he hasn't worked out. But he has got one very good answer to the question, can you govern? And I will give him full credit for this. He was saying that we are now a party of government in 10 local authorities.

15:04So you can now judge us by what we do, not in four years, but in one year. So this time next year, you can look at Kent, almost bankrupt. Have we managed, has Zia Youssef's team managed to come and find all these savings in Kent? And if it has, then you can take it seriously because our external, our outsider methods will have worked. But if it hasn't, then you'll know we're all full of hot air. So I think he might come to regret making that pledge, but I will give him credit because it's a gutsy thing to do.

15:30Camilla: It's a good thing to do. And we interviewed Lyndon Kemkaren, who is the new leader of Kent County Council for reform. She's got a job on her hands. She was almost seeing herself as the sort of test case for weather reform. can run the country. Shop window, she calls it. She is the shop window. And I agree with you. But then, again, they haven't quantified what success means in Kent. I said, does success mean bringing council tax bills down then? How are we measuring the success? Is it, oh, we've managed to fill a thousand more potholes than the people that ran the place in the old days? When kind of reform meets reality, that's something that is explored by this documentary.

16:07Camilla: The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimating that reform's promises, and that includes scrapping net zero, ending the DEI agenda, lifting the two-child benefit cap, re-industrialising South Wales, as you said, Fraser, raising that threshold for paying income tax to£20 ,000, could cost up to£80 billion per year. Let's also take non-DOMs. We're going to attract non-DOMs back to the UK by making them pay a one-off sum of£250 ,000, which I think is based on Maloney's policy in Italy, although that's a lower lump sum. And to be fair, loads of millionaires are leaving the UK and going to Florence and Venice.

16:43Camilla: But again, the number crunchers look at all this stuff and say it's completely unaffordable. Did you put this to him? Yeah, we basically put all these things to him. And he was, oh, we'll find a way, we'll find a way. And I said to him, look, if you're a foreign voter, you deserve to be told this. If you're saying I'm more credible than the other guys, then you've got to face a higher burden of proof. So if you say that I will be the one who keeps promises, you need to show how. You can't just go spraying promises around like confetti and saying, I want to abolish net zero, etc. And I think that he accepts this because it was only after the May election, but he designed to position himself as the prime minister in waiting.

17:21That was the big press conference where I was at, where he was surrounded by the various council leaders, intending to say we are now a party of government. But he'll say nobody's promises add up. Well, he's right there. But if he aspires to be different to them and his promises need to. So I think that right now, four years from an election, your average voter isn't really going to get hung up in it. Certainly the voters I spoke to, they weren't hung up in it. They liked the sound of the policies. They thought they weren't quite deliverable without the cuts. But then they backed them anyway. I mean, by the way, who doesn't like the sound of having tax-free income up to 20 grand, right?

17:55This is not difficult.

17:56Camilla: It does sound like a good idea. Yeah, of course. People like net zero migration as well, by the way. Yeah, but he was saying, oh, this will spur extra growth and the figures didn't fit that in. Well, in which case he can model it. You know, he can make these figures stack up. He hasn't because he hasn't begun to think yet in terms of how government would work. But right now, that is only part. So that might disqualify him in a sort of Westminster wonk way, but it doesn't disqualify him to the voters who think the main thing they want him to do is to smash the old system. And if something else is built, then great.

18:25Camilla: Where is he really on immigration? You made a really interesting observation, I think it was yesterday or the day before, when we were talking about him wanting to get rid of the two-child benefit cap. And you said, even though he knows it polls badly, I think six in ten British adults are against it, he wants to do it. This is something he wants to do. So he's quite ideological because some might look at him and just think he's a political opportunist. How much does he believe what he believes? I just want to step in and say on that, because the question often comes up, come on, this guy's a Thatcherite.

18:56Why is he saying these things? I am actually not sure he is anymore. I think he has evolved. He doesn't say that. If you ask him now, he won't say that he was. He previously has described himself as one. But mind you, he's looking for votes on Wales now. So he's not going to say that. He is, and I get it. But I don't think it's just that. I think he has changed. And I think it's partly a consequence of speaking to the Brexit constituency that will change a politician. Not just because they're sort of thinking, I don't want to alienate this voting bloc, but because they do meet people from different life experiences who will say things like, well, you know what?

19:24When those coal pits shut down, it wasn't good for us. And when you're a stockbroker in the 80s in London, you might not realise what it's like to go through de-industrialisation. So Fraser, sorry, come in. The two-child benefit cap is quite an interesting thing because that policy was invented in 2014 by Nigel Farage. Really? It was his idea in opposition. Yeah. It was his proposal. This is an example of what a good politician he was. Oh, it's not fair that people who are working can't have bigger families and those benefits. Can there should be two-fuck? And then that started to pull up and all of a sudden the Conservatives then bring it in.

19:55It turned out to be very popular, one of the most popular policies. We did polling for the documentary showing that just 30 % or 37 % of reformed voters back for scrapping of that pledge. People do think there is an unfairness to families on welfare, being able to have large, more kids than you can afford to do if you're working, because ultimately, who's paying for that? But the fact that he now defines himself against a policy which he basically created inadvertently 10 years ago does show a kind of evolution, shall we say? And Farage, the kind of small states, let's marketise the NHS, to Farage, the left on economics and rights and culture.

20:33You know, if you ask who he's going to make the savings, he'll point to things like DEI, net zero. Now, sure, there's a lot you can shake out of that tree. But the hardest message might have to come from the Conservatives saying, if we want affordable taxes, we're going to have to cut the government and it's going to be significant and you're not going to like it very much.

20:49Camilla: Yes, they have been talking a lot about cutting government waste. Again, it's unquantifiable. on immigration he's also moved himself away from a more strident Rupert Lowe position I interviewed Rupert he was like I've never called for mass deportations but he's flirted with the idea Faraj has backed away from that why Fraser because I would imagine working class voters as well as those in the Tory shires are quite happy with robust language on immigration He's also promoted and stood by, as long as he could, a Muslim chairman of his party, who he then lost. He's quite fatherly towards him, though.

21:29Camilla: That's an interesting relationship which we'll explore. He doesn't dislike Islam. No, he doesn't. And whenever he's interviewed about it, he will insist Muslims can be and are good British citizens. But the Brexit party was so multicultural. It was, yes. I remember going up to a working man's club in Pontefract and there were Sikhs there. There were people from all walks of life. If there were black people, there were white people, there were women, there were men, they were old, they were young. It was very Trumpian in that regard. And he's aspiring to do that again, by the way, with the candidates for the next election.

21:57They want to find the kind of the clear foxes, the unexpected people, the kind of the great variety of candidates. He wants to present the Reform Party as a kind of party of all the talents. Because you're right, Camille. I mean, that was actually a standout feature. I think when the Brexit Party left the European Parliament, it's sort of the diversity went down quite a lot. Yes, I totally agree. Something like 80 % of their non-white faces. Absolutely. Ironically. On immigration, though. He is an expert of patrolling the territory between the unacceptable face of the right wing. So if you look at his career from UKIP onwards, he's been there to track down and expel racists or bigots or those who cross his line.

22:36He's very strict on the vetting of candidates. And when you look at the Elon Musk route earlier on this year, when Elon Musk started flirting with Tommy Robinson, It was Farage, not the Tories, who was saying, no, Tommy Robinson is not hard done by. He's not some great hero. So he does this time and time again. Now, there's a big split, of course, in Reform Party activists for those who basically think that Tommy Robinson is wrongly imprisoned, etc. But there's also been a mutation on the right wing as well with the digital rights where you're getting this ethno-nationalism, which is now going.

23:09There's lots of accounts dedicated to showing non-white people engaged in criminal activities. where there's lots of things saying London's a dump because it's so multicultural. That is big now. And Farage has come to regard X or Twitter as a bit of a sewer. He will say that when you look at the forces, in fact, that's behind the use of his resignation as chairman, there were racist abuse, but only on Twitter, only on X, not on Facebook, not on Instagram. So I think he is not being sucked down this kind of rabbit hole in a way that some other people are.

23:42Camilla: But then he's been on a journey in that then as well. I mean, as you say, this link to Zia Youssef, they're clearly very, very close. That's opened his eyes to something completely new, I guess. Yeah, I think so. He sometimes says in interviews, a version of I am the leopard, after me will come the jackals, right? That he is the last line of defence against the far right. He said exactly that to me. He says, you should see what will come after me. Right. And I thought, by the way, I sort of said, what do you mean what came after me? And basically he says, and he's completely right here, that it was Nigel Farage, nobody else, who killed off the BNP.

24:16When Nick Griffin was getting a million votes from the European Parliament and getting on question time. And Griffin says that. Nick Griffin thinks there was a deep state conspiracy to use UKIP to destroy his party. Basically, he gave the country a non-racist alternative to express their concerns about immigration. And nobody else was doing that right now. So he did that. And right now, I think there's a lot of, one of the things we find in the opinion poll is the number of people who regard reform as racist. 42 % do and 42 % don't. Now, this was quite a dilemma of how to use it in the film because I don't think he's at all racist.

24:49So is it even fair to use the label? But I think it matters because if you look around Europe and in America, racist is a word which is used to attack these parties, a challenger party. You talk of immigration, that's because you're racist. You want to send back legals just because you're racist. Donald Trump, you're a racist. Now, this is important because when people hear this word and they see it misapplied, it gets a backup. And they think to themselves, hang on a minute, you're calling him racist because he wants to control immigration. Well, I want to control immigration. So you think I'm a racist as well.

25:19So using this word actually rallies support the target party. We speak to Margaret Hodge for the documentary. She was fighting the BNP and she was saying she never called them racist. because the moment you do that is as if you're attacking people for supporting them. You're attacking your voters. But the thing is that if you're the establishment party, you want to rally your base. You want to say, behold the racist. You do that quite a lot. And she was saying, effectively, Margaret Hodge, that Keir Starmer is making a big mistake, making speeches about Nigel Farage, giving press conferences about it, because you shouldn't be thinking of a virus that you need to attack.

25:53You should be asking, why are so many people backing him? Do they have legitimate grievances? And should I, as a party, better address these voters? That's how you fight a challenger. You don't call them names. You don't call them racist, even though it was a big temptation. But sometimes they just can't help themselves because this attempt to reach for name calling becomes so great. Now, the other thing is, if you're a challenger party, whether it's Le Pen or Maloney or Trump or Farage, you realize that if you troll the other guys into calling you racist and attacking you, especially for policies that most people agree with you on, then that helps you.

26:28So this actually gives you an incentive to try to do little provocations that will make the other guys overreact because they tend to rise to the bait every time. So this is a tactic which Trump uses quite a lot. He was, you know, if you look at how much he spent in the campaign, very little, but everybody spoke about him because he knew how to wind up the opposition. And he knew how to get them attacking him for positions where most Americans agreed with him. The war of Mexico is a popular policy. Banning immigration from the countries he was concerned about is a popular policy. Nigel Farage wants to send all the channel guys back to France.

26:59That's backed by two thirds of the public. So if you get attacked for policies that most people see as common sense, this helps you. So I don't think for us, I think he is an expert in the racial politics here. He knows when to use it and when not to. It doesn't hurt him when he's attacked. It probably helps him as long as it's helped for the right thing. I think he made a mistake in the Hamilton by-election where he tried to claim that Anas Sarwar was invoking sectarian politics. He wasn't. and I think people knew that and I think that probably cost them a few votes. I think he will learn from that but I think he didn't want to do it.

27:32I think those around him are looking at Twitter feeds saying look Nigel there's a new force here so let's talk about Birkabans. A bit of a funny thing to do if you're a party of personal freedom but let's just press this button and see how far it gets. So I think he's working out what balance the reform should do when it comes to expressing legitimate cultural concerns about integration issues. By the way concerns that are shared very much by ethnic minorities, even by Muslims, because you can verse all sorts of strands of Muslim, let alone ethnic minority in this country. And to talk about it as a white versus BME is to completely ignore the reality as faced by most voters.

28:08Faraj realises that a lot more, I think, than his opponents.

28:11Camilla: Right, well, we've discussed the man. Coming up next, we're going to do the math, as his bestie Donald would say in the White House, because we're going to drill into some of the polling data and find out how he could actually make it to number 10.

28:33I'm Dominic Nichols.

28:34Camilla: I'm Francis Dernley. We're hosts on Ukraine The Latest from The Telegraph, the world's most listened to podcast on the war in Ukraine, with more than 120 million downloads. Every weekday since the full-scale invasion began, we've brought you on-the-ground reporting, expert analysis, and the biggest interviews. From weaponry and military strategy to the reality of life in Russia and Ukraine, we follow the conflict from every angle. Listen daily, wherever you get your podcasts.

29:11Welcome back. Fraser Nelson is still with us. We have been talking about Nigel Farage, the man, and what he wants to do, but let's discuss whether or not he's actually going to get a chance to do it. Just today, we've seen a new poll from YouGov which projects that reform would win the most seats in a general election if it were held today, but would fall short of a majority. It gives Nigel Farage's party 271 seats, Labour in second place with 178 seats, and it's worth mentioning that the Tories would come in fourth with just 46 seats. Fraser, does this reflect what you're seeing in the data? Absolutely.

29:44We need to remember that we are now in the territory of four-party politics, and that changes everything. Until now, if you wanted to govern Britain, you needed a fair old chunk of the vote. We're talking 40%, 45%. But if there are four parties, then that bar drops a lot. Now, we've had a taste of four-party politics over the last election, thanks to Mr Farage and reform. That's what allowed Hugh Starmer to get one of the biggest majorities in post-war history on the smallest vote share in post-war history. So Starmer, right now, is the beneficiary of this system. But next time around, it will be Nigel Farage, or it could be.

30:18So on these figures, he could actually get the majority with just 30 % of the vote. So if you actually look at the consensus of the polls right now, that's where it points to. Now, you'd think, hang on, well, fewer than one in three Brits vote for this guy and he gets a majority. This is the Westminster system. It's firm but unfair. Now, that unfairness counted against Nigel Farage in the last election, but it promises to help him this time around. So when we're talking about the plausibility of reform, people might be inclined to say, Well, there's no way he could ever get enough support for that.

30:48He doesn't need enough support in terms of what we used to need. Right now, he just needs 30%. You can do it. And what everyone says in Westminster is, but I remember the SDP, that shows how old everyone in Westminster is, who were polling similarly within a couple of years into Margaret Thatcher's administration, but then went down and didn't really recover. Is this vote for reform solid? Is it something you think is going to last, or does it look like a flash in the pan? There are so many ways it could fall apart. I mean, when Zia Yusuf resigned as chairman a few weeks ago, part of me thought, OK, that's it.

31:22The show's over. I mean, we do tend to see the reform leadership falling out with each other quite a lot. But it had no effect. But it had no effect at all. And Yusuf was back. In fact, if anything, it went on stronger.

31:33Camilla: Yes, we had that Ipsos poll at the weekend putting reform on 34. Yeah, incredible. So that doesn't seem to have hurt it. So Labour might suddenly acquire a great governing agenda and improve. All sorts of things could happen between now and the next election. But right now, it's difficult to see what they will do. My film shows, I think, that the support for reform is real. It's deep-rooted. This isn't flash in the pan. This isn't a moment of anger. It's not just none of the above. It's actually a positive yes to this particular party. It is. But also, there is a belief that these guys will smash the old system, which a lot of people need smashed.

32:09So I tell you the wild card. It will be the abstainers. We had a lot of abstainers in the last election. And they are like a coiled spring.

32:16Camilla: Was it like two and a half million people that just refused to turn out? Absolutely. One of the highest we've ever seen. And that wasn't apathy. That was anger that kept them away. They were just so seething at the idea of the force to choose between what they regarded as tweedledum and twiddledee. And now they've got a radical alternative. We saw this in Brexit. Why did the pollsters get Brexit wrong? Because a whole bunch of guys who opinion pollsters never bothered to call because they never bothered to vote before they came out. The same thing happened in 2019. we had a big turnout. So when the abstainers tend to come, they tend to come for the more radical parties, because they think there's actually a chance of change this time.

32:52I think the word apathy is absolutely fatal to use in terms of those who don't vote. And the focus group we did for the film, the quietest woman there, who was saying that she didn't vote at all the last election, disillusioned, but now she thinks she might vote for reform, because reform looked at that might change things. So I think that's something the pollsters even now struggle to work out. I mean, it's their job to work out, okay, how likely are you to vote on a scale of one to 10? That's usually what they ask. Now, they will always be blindsided by a bank of voters who decide to turn up in a way that people thought they wouldn't.

33:24So that wild card was in favor of the SNP, because 45 % was a lot more than I expected them to get. Jeremy Corbyn did a lot better in 2017. So they tend to go for the radical options. So I am not for a second saying that it There's a probability that Nigel Farage will win the next election. I'm saying that it is incredibly plausible. Support for him is deep-rooted. And we make a great mistake if we think this is a common-sense country that will go for the common-sense option. This is a country crying out for radical change. And they will vote for Nigel Farage unless somebody else gives them a good reason not to.

33:59Camilla: Also, I think some of the polling revealed the loyalty to reform. So they have a 92 % retention rate in their vote. So if you voted for them in the locals, that's how likely you are to vote for them in a general. What's interesting here is the breakdown of where reform's strength comes from. 21 % of 2024 Conservative voters now intending to vote for reform, 14 % of 2024 Labour voters. I say that's interesting because obviously he's massively parking his tanks on Labour's lawns. also I am increasingly beginning to question the criticism and sort of almost antipathy that reformers now have for Tories and I'm thinking you've got to be really careful there because there's this whole divide building up on the right about oh well you're just a Tory and do we even want you because they're a failed party and it's like no you really do need people who shop at Waitrose in order to cross this Rubicon into actual governance of this country.

35:03Camilla: Being righties, all of us, do you understand what I'm saying? A degree of... Yeah. There's some sneering. There's a lot of sneering. There is, definitely. There's lots of personal antipathy. I mean, one of the things that really bugs Nigel Farage is that in 2019, he stood down as candidates for Boris Johnson and significantly contributed, therefore, to the size of a Tory majority. And he didn't even get a thank you. He might have got a peerage and other things. If he had been given one, then who knows? probably wouldn't or not have been a reform party. So he basically feels that he was played false by the Conservatives.

35:33And also, you know, Richard Tice as well feels rejected by them. I think he applied to be a Conservative politician and it kicked him back. So there is previous, but there is also a dilemma for reform. Do you play a tribal card? In other words, our opponents are just basically malign and confused. Or do you try to be outreach, thinking, OK, Conservatives, maybe we can work with you. If you want to get 30 % in the polls, you can actually do a tribal Donald Trump style strategy. Like you are my people and we think everybody else are bad and wrong. So you can be divisive. Divisive won't get you much more than 30%, but it could probably get you 30.

36:06And that 30 would probably be quite polarised and behind you. So I don't know. Right now you can tell that Nigel Farage is trying more outreach than he's used to. Well, I feel he's outreaching.

36:16Camilla: I think he's outreaching a lot to the working classes who one might assume would be Labour, but might have switched to Boris Johnson. I don't know if there's that much outreach going out to dissatisfied, disaffected, more moderate conservatives who didn't go with reform last time but may consider it if enticed to do so. I feel like he's inherited that tension from the Brexit vote anyway. It's not just about him. It's just that Toryism itself did split in two over Brexit and it's never quite healed. I mean, the part of the world that I live in now it did vote for Brexit but it now feels very Romaino and it's very divided along those lines and I'm not sure reform could win my seat.

36:59Where are you, Tunbridge Wells? Sevenoaks, because it's so middle class. Yes. It's commuters, people who work in the city, who holiday abroad.

37:06Camilla: He wants to be so middle class. I have told this anecdote. He is so. I've told this anecdote before though, when he came out of the jungle and we went to an awards ceremony with GB News and he hadn't drunk in a while so he's quite well oiled And he said to me, I said, how's it been since you came out of the jungle? And he said, well, I used to get mobbed in Aldi. Now I'm getting mobbed in Waitrose. And I thought, that's what you want, really. But you know, that jungle transformed his image, though, because it got him an audience that no other political speech ever could have done. And I think this played a big role in the kind of softening of his image and the widening of his appeal.

37:38So that jungle transferred him from being seen as a Brexit partisan to somebody who had a far more broader base.

37:45Camilla: Well, youngsters, let's talk about the youth of today. chaps because my children's generation so i've got two gen z's and a gen alpha bringing up the rear so annabelle's 16 harry's 14 their generation is very interested in nigel farage i'm not saying that they are necessarily supporting him but if people ask about my work they're often interested in whether i and they have met nigel farage they're not asking questions about kia starmer or Kemi Baddock, with respect to them. And then you see this extraordinary social media following. You know, he's got more TikTok followers than I think most of Westminster combined.

38:23All of Westminster combined.

38:24Camilla: All of Westminster combined. Thank you, Fraser. He's got enormous reach. We know that the youth of America switched from being almost entirely devoted to the Democrats to considering the Republicans for the first time under Donald Trump 2.0. These children will be voting for the first time at the next general election. Do we think there could be a youth quake in favour of Farage? You'll notice that Keir Starmer used to be all in favour of lowering the vote to 16. He's sort of going a bit soft on that. Yeah, funny, he's not really into proportional representation either anymore. No, is he so funny?

38:58I think that we've seen this, of course, in Germany. AFD had done particularly well in the youth. And also, when you look at the socials, the new parties knock it out of the park, usually because they're natives on this. I mean, Farage may not be able to switch on a laptop, but he is a complete natural. He kind of is, he almost lives in this Truman Show world where he's been speaking in soundbites for like 20 years. So he's a natural in this. It lends itself to strong personalities who can speak in short clips. And that's basically what he does. So it is staggering actually watching the reform advantage in social media.

39:34And these short videos tends to be how the young generation just sees the world now. When you actually look at the whole population, not just the young, More people get their news from TikTok or from Instagram than from any newspaper.

39:46Camilla: Also, it's fame. I mean, we live in this quite narcissistic world where everyone's sort of obsessed with fame and celebrity. The other great advantage he has, Tim, he is so famous. Yes. You've followed him around. You know, you've gone around Clacton with him with an ice cream in your hand. I mean, he's getting mobbed every turn. In Scunthorpe, he was mobbed by schoolchildren. They actually knew who he was. They didn't have to be told who he was. I mean, that's quite potent recognisability, generation voting for the first time and just thinking, well, I know about this lot. I've heard about reform.

40:19Camilla: I've been bombarded with their videos for the last six months. But is this partly because to me, Nigel, is the politics of embodiment? So many politicians look like androids. You don't know who they're trying to be because they're trying to be all things to all people and not to cause any offence. Nigel Farage puts on the blazer, lights up a fag. And I know who he is. He is England. I'm looking at Britannia. I'm looking at Henry VIII. You're looking at the white cliffs of Dover. Yes, I'm looking at the embodiment of England. And isn't that one of the things that makes him stand above everyone else?

40:50The funny thing is that works in Scotland as well. When I was in the Hamilton by-election campaign, even the Scottish 17 years ago, oh, there's Nigel, he's my man, you know. It was funny. I would agree with you, the embodiment of England. I mean, he was barricaded into an Edinburgh pub when he came to campaign there 12 years ago. But now that is working across the country partly because he's been doing it for so long, not just the jungle, but because he takes, you know, you build social media followers over the years. So he has now got 1.3 million, which, you know, is off the charts in politics.

41:21And in the era where personality is politics, he has got no shortage of that. And that isn't something which you can really replicate or try to, you know, if you're Kemi Baden, I mean, she is a woman who's got lots of personality, but isn't really ramping it up at the moment. and I'm not sure Keir Starmer is going to be getting that many TikTok followers at any time. So the new world of new media does give an advantage to people who've got the personality to pull it off. You either have got it or you don't.

41:50Camilla: I don't know if you were minded to vote for him before, but after making this documentary, would you be more inclined to vote for Nigel Farage come 2029 or whenever this next election is being held? Personally, I'm not sure that I would. And I'll tell you why. Right now, I think he's doing God's work in dangling Keir Starmer over a cliff by his ankles and asking him if he enjoys the view. What a vision. I pay to see that, by the way. Do you think Kami Baden-eek is scaring Keir Starmer? No. But Nigel Farage is pushing the fear of God into all of these guys, thinking, look, if we're going to fail, and all the indications are that we're not going to make this country much better in three or four years' time, then this psychopath's going to come here with like 100 or perhaps 200, 300 of his friends and kick us out.

42:37That is a real threat. And the democratic process needs these guys to feel a real threat, to feel a real penalty for failure, to fear the consequences of failure. And I think Nigel Farage is bringing that fear into Westminster right now. And I regard that as a very good, positive, healthy democratic thing. But here's the thing. He is the kind of break glass in case of emergency candidate. it. And if the public do break that glass and press that button and he comes in, and if he messes it up, we've got absolutely no grounds to think that he'd do any better. He's got any kind of agenda for government.

43:09Then where does the country go after him?

43:11Camilla: They go back to the Conservatives. No, no. Hang on a minute. Perhaps something worse. I think they elect Tommy Robinson. I think Tommy Robinson becomes prime minister. Oh, my goodness me. But it is a point, isn't it? Because this whole talk about an existential crisis and that may well happen. And by the way, looking at this polling, I mean, it is so dire for the Tories. It's unbelievable. If Farage crashes in Burns, yes, it could herald an even more right wing candidate. And that's disturbing. But it could make righties think we tried it. It didn't work. Maybe we should go back to this party that's been around for centuries.

43:47I just think the Conservative Party is so dead. I mean, part of the whole thing with this conversation is we are three small c conservatives however one might vote we're temperamental conservatives and part of the problem with farage is he's saying a lot of things i agree with but there's also the temperamental conservative bit of me that doesn't want to support a radical and an outsider this is revolutionary part this is this is revolutionary politics so how can conservatives support revolutionary politics and i suspect that if he did win i don't think the conservatives bounce back i don't think people say well now i'll give mel stride a go i think he just smashes everything up to the point where there's nothing well they might give boris johnson

44:21Camilla: another guy. Or they might lose faith in democracy. I mean, that's the other thing that we need to work out now. Just think how many prime ministers this country has been subjected to without seeing much change. I was talking yesterday to somebody who's been basically working in the field of kind of social community relations for 20, 30 years. She's never known the country as febrile now as it is now. And the desire for radical change, the willingness to listen to some pretty dark voices, the rise of ethno-nationalism. If you poll the young people about do they like democracy? It's not doing that well as a format.

44:55So I think that Jonathan Sumption recently told me that he thinks that democracy hasn't been around for so long there's nothing saying it will stay. So I think we have got no right to think our democracy will continue. And if after all these options, even the radical one doesn't work, that is when the anti-democrats start to get a look in.

45:12Camilla: Okay, so I'm going to conclude this Daily Tea with the statement that the future of British democracy depends on Nigel Farage not cocking this up. Fraser Nelson, Channel 4's Dispatches programme, Will Nigel Farage Be Prime Minister, is aired tonight. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Great pleasure. And Camilla, you will be back tomorrow with Jeremy Hunt at 5pm.

45:47Thank you.