‘He’s a purging politician’: Michael Crick on Nigel Farage’s fatal flaws

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1:10Nigel Farage has revolutionised British politics, but was the Clacton by-election a barricade too far? His biographer, Michael Crick, talks to us about the rows, the money, and the character flaws that will either make or break him.

1:22Michael Crick: Everybody expects Farage to win handsomely, unless he does. it's going to be an embarrassment. It's like a Premier League team playing a non-league side that nobody's ever heard of and everybody expects them to win 8-0. And if they only win 1-0 or 2-0, it's almost a humiliation for them. And it's even worse if they draw or actually do lose. So I think this has been a complete misjudgment by Farage. And he should have realised that the other parties wouldn't play ball.

2:01We are delighted on the Daily Tea now to be joined by Michael Crick, the author and broadcaster and author of a biography of Nigel Farage called One Party After Another, The Disruptive Life of Nigel Farage. Now, Michael, we're talking to you today because in four days' time, Clacton will vote. And everyone suspects that Nigel Farage is going to win, that he's going to beat Count Binface. Nonetheless, the fact that none of the other parties would run against him, and a couple of polls indicating that the count might do fairly well, raises the question of how does Nigel Farage avoid embarrassment and claim a triumph?

2:49Michael Crick: Well, I think it's very, very difficult for him. I mean, if he got 90%, I suppose that would look good. But, I mean, the poll I saw was what he was on about 70 % or something and Binface on about 20%. Well, you know, everybody expects Farage to win handsomely unless he does. It's going to be an embarrassment. It's like a Premier League team playing a non-league side that nobody's ever heard of. And everybody expects them to win 8-0. And if they only win 1-0 or 2-0, it's almost a humiliation for them. And it's even worse if they draw or actually do lose. So I think this has been a complete misjudgment by Farage.

3:28Michael Crick: And he should have realized that the other parties wouldn't play ball because there was a similar sort of by-election, you'll recall, way back in 2008, when David Davis got very upset about the Labour government's plans for detention for terrorist suspects, extending it. And he resigned his seat and stood down as Shadow Home Secretary and fought a by-election in Holton, Price and Howden. And that attracted, I think, 26 candidates. But they didn't include Lib Dem. They didn't include Labour. Davis was standing for the Conservatives. And they didn't include, interestingly enough, UKIP, which at that stage, of course, was led by Nigel Farage, because all of these parties then realised Davis was trying to pull off a stunt.

4:15Michael Crick: And Farage should have realised that people would treat it as a stunt and not be willing to go along with it. Very foolish on his part. And presumably... Well, I mean, I suppose it's been a helpful distraction in a way in that he's been able to go down to Placton and campaign a bit and get away from us pesky journalists, asking questions about his financial affairs and his party's financial affairs. Well, he's still coming up with policy. He had Operation Fortress the other day and journalists have been going to Clacton like us and we have asked him questions. And I guess the big issue is, does Clacton put the donation scandal to bed?

4:51Because what Nigel wants to do with Clacton was put it to his voters. The journalists and the parliamentary establishment, they're saying I've done something wrong. well let's test it with the people who really matter that's the people of Clacton and if he does win 70-80 % which will still be a very good result does that not happen? Can he not now go back to Parliament and say I return here with the full support of my constituents and that's all that matters?

5:18Michael Crick: Yes, but he could do if he was hoping to just be a backbench MP that would be fine but he's not he's hoping to be he is leader of a political party and he's hoping to become Prime Minister And Clacton is in no way representative of the country as a whole. I mean, Clacton has always been one of the most Brexity, shall we say, parliamentary constituencies, even way back in 1997. It was one of those seats where UKIP did the best. And it's always been like that. It was the first seat that UKIP won in the famous Douglas Carswell by-election 12 years ago. So it's not typical at all of what the public think about Farage and what the public think about these allegations about his expenses.

6:02Michael Crick: And in any case, the public in Clacton, nor anywhere else, have actually been given details of the parliamentary commissioner's inquiry because he hasn't finished that inquiry yet. And until he does, until he lays out all the detail in his report, then the people of Clacton can't judge and nor can the people of the country. And normally what would happen in these cases is that the commissioner would report to the Standards Committee. The committee would then perhaps recommend to suspend Farage. And if the suspension is more than 14 days, then he has to stand down and fight a by-election. And that would have been a proper by-election.

6:43Michael Crick: And we would have had all the evidence about Farage's donations and whether he was a politician at the time or not and all of that. that that could have been laid out and the people of Clacton could judge, and indeed the people of the country could. So it's a bogus by-election. It's a farce. And I hope that Camp in Face does really, really well. Well, part of me does. And I think part of all the other parties does. But on the other hand, it is a bit demeaning to our politics. But then, you know, I remember way back in 2019, we all laughed when the people of Ukraine elected a comedian. Well, we're not laughing now.

7:22Of course, there's no guarantee that even if Nigel Farage does win against Count Bin Faze, which I think is pretty likely, I'm willing to make that bet, that there won't be another by-election. Because as you have pointed out, it's not that everyone has agreed that this is the one official by-election. I think the argument that the Standards Committee can then make about having to run it a second time is, well, no legitimate political party actually engaged in this collective stunt, I think as some people have been describing it as. But what I'm really interested in is why did he decide to go down the route of calling a by-election in the first place voluntarily?

7:57Because the one thing that Nigel Farage doesn't seem to be particularly good at, and this really comes out in your biography, is running by-elections. He is notorious for running in several by-elections and losing in quite embarrassing ways. Why would he go down that particular route when it seems to be his political weakness?

8:16Michael Crick: Yes, and indeed it would have been a real risk for him if the other parties had played ball. Because what you've seen in recent by-elections, and indeed this has happened really throughout Farage's career, but with increasing intensity as the years go by, is that the other parties gang up on him. And voters for the other parties sort of somehow agree which party is best placed to beat him. And that's what's happened in the recent by-elections that we've seen in Makerfield or in Gorton and Denton and in Cofilly for the Welsh Parliament. And indeed, Farage himself has suffered in the past in Thanet and so on.

8:59Michael Crick: So it would have been a bit of a risk. And we almost certainly are going to get a second by-election, it seems to me, because I find it very difficult to see how Farage wriggles out of this charge that he should have declared the money that he got from Christopher Harbourn. Although, frankly, that is not the most serious financial charge right now against reform and their leaders. There's more serious stuff being considered by the which seems to be being considered by the Electoral Commission and the National Crime Agency. But on this one, it seems to me that the commissioner is almost certainly going to find him guilty.

9:39Michael Crick: And as the days go by, we get more and more evidence that Farage was heavily involved in politics before his decision on the 3rd or his announcement on the 3rd of June 2024 that he was coming back. And therefore, he can't wriggle out of it on the grounds that it was only a gift from Christopher Harbourn and I wasn't involved in politics. I mean, he was president of his party. He was the controlling shareholder. He had a majority of the shares in Reform UK. Reform is a very peculiar party in that he's actually a limited company. And now we know that he was, from the Sunday Times the other day, that he had reached an agreement with Richard Tice, a financial agreement for Farage to come back.

10:25Michael Crick: Previously, we learned that the previous candidate for Klaxon had been told that he might have to step down. So I can't see how the parliamentary commissioner reaches any other decision. But one should, I suppose, assume that all people are proved innocent until proved guilty. Just on this question of by-elections again, because I'm thinking reformers had a pretty miserable time of the last couple of by-elections, not this particular Clacton one, which I'm sure they will win. But as you say, this is not a representative by-election for the mood of the nation. It's Clacton. Clacton is not representative.

10:58They do seem to have this problem of tactical voting, don't they? I think you described it as being ganged up on. lots of the other parties do seem to be colluding in some way to try and block reform. Up until very recently, they were leading the polls. They had a very, very long poll lead. Now Andy Burnham has come in as prime minister. There's been the burn and bounce. So Labour has gone back to the top of the polls, but still with a pretty narrow majority. I'm wondering if this actually is weirdly helping Nigel's argument, because if he can present to people, look at all of these establishment parties.

11:30They are working together to stop me and only me, a reformed government, the really transformative thing that they fear, from actually getting into power. Is that not a pretty powerful rhetorical weapon for him? And just to say, there were people we spoke to in Clacton who did say that, that they were appalled that other parties weren't running, and they did see it as a uni-party stitch-up against Nigel.

11:50Michael Crick: Yeah, I mean, I think he could make something of that case in this particular Clacton by-election. But really, in the other by-elections, it's not as if Labour Party are putting out, you know, the parties are all putting out leaflets saying, we've agreed amongst ourselves that such and such is the best place to beat Barrage, so please will everybody vote for him, for them, and, you know, despite your loyalties. It's actually the voters who are reaching this conclusion. They're looking at opinion polls and deciding that their own party, much though they love their own party, hasn't got a hope. And you're seeing Labour people willing to vote Conservative and people in Wales willing to vote for Plaid, who never would have done in the past, and Conservatives willing to vote Labour and all sorts going on on a scale we've never seen before in tactical voting.

12:41Michael Crick: And at the next election, there will be loads more of it, much more than before, partly because this time, the elections in 28 or 29, it'll be the same boundaries as 2024, whereas 2024 was new boundaries and it was difficult to work out who was best placed in each seat in that time. Of course, the issue was who was best placed to beat the Conservative. So it'll be much clearer what the local picture is and people are getting much more used to this tactical voting lark and there will be people out there coming up with figures and giving people guidance, as they've done to a small degree in the past.

13:21Michael Crick: And that is why I don't think you will get a reform. There's any chance, really, of a reform majority government. And because we've already seen it, and it's going to happen on a big scale. But Michael, even in Runcorn, the one by-election they did win, that was only six votes when everybody was talking about a majority, perhaps of 2 ,000 or 3 ,000. So, okay, they might not form a government, but they may well become the official opposition. And for a party to come from nowhere to that level of support, even if there is a cap of around 25 to 30 percent, you've been writing about politics since the 1980s.

14:03We've never seen anything like this. And I do sometimes worry that political analysis, which focuses on the flaws of Farage or the limits to reform, sort of forgets that it's having to react because they're doing so shockingly well.

14:16Michael Crick: I think you're absolutely right, Tim. And I should have put more emphasis on, but I've just written an article saying some of this. I mean, the fact that a political party whose views are, you know, to the right of the Conservatives are still getting around 25%. There seems to be a hard core of a quarter of the electorate that will vote for reform and Farage come what may. And that, I mean, remarkably, they have been ahead of the Conservatives who were the governing party until two and a half years ago. They have been ahead of the Conservatives in every opinion poll since April of last year. And even with Labour, it's pretty neck and neck.

15:00Michael Crick: I mean, I would have expected, frankly, a bigger burn and bounce than there's been. And I would have expected reform to have suffered more from the last two or three months of all these financial allegations than they appear to have suffered. So yes, they do have strong points. And then, of course, you've got the fascinating picture to the right of reform now of Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain, who got, I mean, they too have started having amazing results. I mean, in Makerfield, they got very nearly 7 % of the vote did Restore Britain in their very first parliamentary election. I don't think anybody's got that kind of figure in their first parliamentary election.

15:48Michael Crick: You know, Restore Britain are the kind of figures that it took UKIP 20 years to achieve, and they got nearly 9 % in the Greater Manchester Mayoral by-election. So what then happens with the Restore Britain bloc? Who knows? Because Lowe has put out, you know, apparent conciliatory feelers towards Farage, but lots of very tough conditions. Farage has sort of brushed him off. And, you know, but if they could unite together, you've got the prospect of a block, a radical right block of around 30 percent. Now, not everybody from Restore Britain would vote for a Farage-led reform because a lot of people in Restore Britain vote for them because they don't like Farage.

16:31Michael Crick: But nonetheless, if they were to combine forces, you would have a huge lump on the edge of British politics that frankly never existed 20 or 30 years ago. Just pulling up again on this burn and bounce, not being quite as big as we thought. You've write so many times in this biography of Nigel Farage that he is a fantastic communicator. That is his unique selling point as a politician. He is just when you put him on stage compared to the other establishment politicians, and he will usually just blow them out of the water. He's totally different from them. Now, I've heard that people are describing Andy Burnham in this way, particularly in comparison to Keir Starmer.

17:06So they've spoken a lot about his fantastic communication strategy. Look what he's doing with influencers. Look what he's doing with social media. Look how he's playing up as kind of like chummy, you know, like I'm just a normal northern guy. I'm relatable. Do you think that Burnham and his communication strategy is speaking to where Britain is now? Or do you think that Nigel Farage and his style of communication, which is harsher, more blunt, more right wing, obviously, is actually the thing is cutting through. Because I feel that these are two diametrically opposed politicians in the way that they're trying to connect with the electorate.

17:40Which kind of version of these people is actually going to be successful?

17:44Michael Crick: Well, I mean, they've both got their own constituencies. It's more important to be a great communicator if you are an opposition politician, because really you've got a lot less going for you. And if you can chime with the electorate, although actually in Farage's case, some of those skills seem to have deserted him in recent weeks, he'll no doubt get them back. Whereas in Burnham's case, he can be a great communicator, but what the electorate is really looking for is significant change, improvements in their standards of living, reduction in illegal migration, all sorts of things. And Burnham has to deliver those things in a way that Farage doesn't.

18:29Michael Crick: So it's difficult to compare the two. But certainly I'd say they are the best to communicate easily the best to communicate. They are the two big beasts of British politics right now. And really, the make a field by-election was Farage against Burnham, even though Farage wasn't a candidate. I've forgotten that the candidate's name was now. But politics will, I think, carry on being like that until the next general election. I mean, they're two people who actually love talking to people. I mean, famously, Burnham, his aides can never get him away from talking to people on the street and stop him being late for the next meeting.

19:09Michael Crick: And Farage is like that, too. He loves engaging with people, particularly if they're people who don't agree with him. Whereas most politicians, I think, or certainly a lot of politicians, don't really like engaging with people. You know, they'll happily shake their hands and have a selfie, but they don't want to start talking politics with people on the street. And a lot of politicians are quite shy, in my experience. It's extraordinary that they ever went into politics in the first place.

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22:27Michael Crick: With me, Mick Brown. And me, Robert Mendick. Out now.

22:38One thing that always strikes me about Nigel Farage when I meet his team is they are like a family. Loyalty is very important to him. Does this perhaps help to explain some of the drama that has gone on in reform? Because there's a popular assumption that Nigel Farage bashes heads together and tells people it's my way or the highway. A lot of other people with an insider perspective say the opposite is true, that actually Nigel often lets people row, doesn't pick a side, and is sometimes too loyal to people who are clearly not good for him which sort of perspective do you come down on well i think it's i think

23:19Michael Crick: there's a difference between people who are aids people whose names we never hear or the public never hears and the people who are uh you know the his shadow cabinet as it were uh his front bench team although it's a bit uh you know incomplete at the moment and i think uh that that his aides, there is a camaraderie and a closeness and a loyalty that you described there. Whereas with his front benches, there are tensions, and there always are, and he ends up purging people. And that has been a feature of his whole career, purging people. And he has an inability, I think, with the other members of the front bench team to get the best out of people.

24:07Michael Crick: and a good leader does that. He picks the best people around him. And I mean, I think this is a failing that Burnham has as well, the way in which he purged all the Starmites, which I think was dreadful. And so that is the difference that I would say, point out in the case of Farage. And what do the money stories tell us about him personally? I mean, I've made the argument that the thing with reform is precisely because it's come from nowhere. It's had to rely upon big donations. It doesn't have the history, the infrastructure, and therefore the normal money behind it. So there is a sense of a campaign was being cobbled together and therefore a greater reliance upon outside donors.

24:52Is that fair? Or do you think, no, this is actually just about greed and vanity?

24:58Michael Crick: Well, I mean, reform, there's a sort of myth in British politics that you need huge amounts of money to run a successful campaign. Well, the Liberal Democrats have been running campaigns, very respectable campaigns, for decades on four or five million. And you can put four or five million together from your own party supporters. And reform these days have a lot of party members, some of them rich, many of them not rich at all. But I think what's happened here, what seems to have happened here, is that there are question marks over whether people are legitimate donors to reform. That seems to be what's happened and why, in some cases, the money has reached reform through several different stages, as if to distance itself from the origins of that money.

25:55Michael Crick: I mean, on a personal level, I think also that Farage, in the last few years, really since the referendum, has, and since his associations with Trump and MAGA and so on, and regular trips to America to see them, has become much more money-oriented than he was. and much more resentful of the fact that, you know, he spent all this time in politics and didn't make the millions that many of his colleagues made from the City of London in their parallel careers. And I think that the people around Trump and around MAGA have opened his eyes as to the possibilities of money-making as a politician or as a political figure.

26:39Michael Crick: and um and that i think is as complicated matters as well and so hence the hardborn five millions uh he was happy to take that money uh and risk it coming out and you know and risk the fact that to most people who vote reform five million pounds is just an inconceivable amount of money uh you know most people who vote reform probably won't earn five million pounds in in their lives But to people who donate to reform, it's just spare change. And I think that's a really interesting observation that if you start having dinner at Mar-a-Lago, you're going to look at the people around you and think, why is it that they're doing so well while being politicians, whereas I have to go home to Kent and I'm still doing the rubber chicken circuit.

27:26Michael Crick: And they will have talked to him about this and they will have advised him and say, well, you know, you can make money by doing this or the other. You can make money out of your name now. You don't have to wait until you retire from politics, which has been the tradition in British politics, that people like Blair and Cameron and Theresa May only start bringing in the millions with their speeches and so on once they've stepped down. Farage has learned from Trump, who does it on an appalling scale, a corrupt scale in my view. He makes money from being President of the United States, being head of the MAGA movement and has greatly enriched himself as a result.

28:07Michael Crick: So I think that does rub off on Farage. And I think that partly, maybe even largely, explains some of the difficulties into which they've got right now. Also, Farage has shown huge misjudgment in his friendship with George Cottrell. Now, the benign, you could say, look, he's a poor old Cottrell, got into terrible trouble in America, went to jail for wire fraud when he was caught by FBI agents in a sting with them pretending to be drug pink in dealers and so on. And Farage thought, you know, he would believe in forgiveness and that he liked Cottrell and would employ his skills and so on. But I always think that in politics, there are certain people who are accidents waiting to happen.

28:57Michael Crick: And I think that George Cottrell, given his background, has been an accident waiting to happen. And Farah should never have got anything like as close to him as he has. But Michael, he is also a reformed man. And I come back to the point about loyalty. Well, is he a reformed man? I mean, that's the question. I mean, what was this? Now, as Nigel said at a press conference recently, if you're going to do this about George Cottrell, you've got to constantly refer to Louise Haig as a convicted fraudster. You've got to point out that Angela Rayner did not pay her taxes. And for him, it comes back to one rule for them and one rule for us.

29:35Michael Crick: I think you have. I think you have got to say that about Louise Haig from time to time. But, I mean, and Cottrell, you know, is so brazen. I mean, he even wrote this book, How to Launder Money. And what, and this, this, this, perhaps you can explain. To be fair, that was to explain how to catch people who are doing it. It wasn't actually to encourage people to do it. It was, but he was also teasing us. He was basically saying, I was convicted once, and you never know. He likes this world of being on the fringe of the shadows. And when Trump won in 2016, there was that famous photograph of him with the golden doors and Donald Trump.

30:13And I wrote at the time, it looked like a bank heist. They pulled something off. And I put it to you that, OK, Nigel Farage has broken many of the rules of British politics. But those rules...

30:23Michael Crick: He's done more than that, actually. He's broken the rules of the European Parliament. Hang on, hang on. Let's say, before we get into those specific charges, let's say he's broken some of the conventions of British politics. But those conventions gave us bad politicians who ran open borders, run up enormous deficits, and despite their appearance of being very sane and sensible and of the centre, actually just haven't done a very good job. and people are taking a punt on something that's so different because the uni party, as they see it, hasn't worked. Well, I don't think you can disagree with that analysis.

31:02Michael Crick: Undoubtedly, politicians of all parties have governed badly. There may be reasons why it's very, very difficult these days to govern. Media scrutiny, judicial review, the amount of laws that there are surrounding everything that goes on in society and so on, planning regulations, there are all sorts of reasons why it's perhaps more difficult to govern now than it was 50 years ago. Nonetheless, the other parties have not performed well, but I haven't seen anything about the way that Farage has operated as a party leader over the years to suggest that all will be hunky-dory in a reform administration on the country.

31:42Michael Crick: I think it will be even worse. And one only has to look at how reform has governed or failed to govern very well local councils as an example of that. And all the scandals, you know, there's more scandals per head in reform than any party. More people go to jail in reform per head in any party. And some of these people are quite certainly Nathan Gill was, for example, the guy who got 10 years last December for essentially treachery. He was very close to Nigel Farage, although Farage is trying to suggest otherwise. So I think you've got to, you know, there are huge failings in the Conservative and Labour parties.

32:27Michael Crick: I would be the first to say that. And there are a few, there are large numbers of what I would call accidents to happen, waiting to happen in those parties. But any idea that reform is going to be clean and pure and everything will be fine and there won't be any problems in a reformed government is just, well, you know, it's just rubbish. I mean, what is interesting, though, is that it hasn't moved the polls. It really hasn't moved the polls. Perhaps you could say that there was movement upwards that has been, you know, delayed by these scandals, but it hasn't seemed to affect the base. But one potential mistake...

33:00Michael Crick: No, I think you're right. I mean, there's that solid lump of about 25%, which will probably not be eroded much. But if we look at one mistake that Nigel potentially has made that will affect his standing at the polls, I'm thinking about the fallout between him and Rupert Lowe. Now, it's no secret that Nigel Farage has had personal disputes with people who have worked with him politically going back decades, right back to the very, very, very beginning of his political career with Alan Sked. But this one is the first one that really seems to actually be having the capability to hurt him. I mean, Rupert Lowe's party, when he first announced that he was actually going to run a political party at the beginning, it seemed like it was some kind of pressure group.

33:37And then he was going to do the grooming gangs inquiry. Everyone kind of thought there's no way they're going to poll properly. I mean, it'll be like the BNP at very best. They'll get BNP numbers of the mid-2010s. But they haven't. They've been doing relatively well, particularly the Manchester mayoral election, where they got 8%. They've got John Cleese. Which is a pretty extraordinary. And they've got Elon Musk, perhaps even more important. They've got the richest man in the world who owns an incredibly important social media site, who does seem to be, I mean, I have no proof, but does seem to be at least juicing them a little bit.

34:11I mean, every single time you log in, you will see a Rupert Lowe post coming up on your 4U feed. Is that Nigel Farage's fatal flaw here? Has he essentially kneecapped himself to the right in the same way he did the same to the Conservative Party? Is Rupert Lowe going to continue to haunt him until a general election?

34:29Michael Crick: I think that's very likely, unless they can reach some kind of deal. And Rupert Lowe is... I mean, if you take all the previous people that he's fallen out with, and it's a very long list, and we haven't got the time to go through it, but if you take people like Godfrey Bloom, they just went away and gave in and did the occasional disobliging interview, or Alan Sked or Suzanne Evans or Neil Hamilton or Robert Kilroy still. We didn't really hear much from them afterwards. They just accepted they'd lost. Farage had got the better of them, and that was that. Whereas Rupert Lowe acquired a certain following in his time in UKIP and then in reform.

35:11Michael Crick: Actually, I don't think he was in UKIP. Actually, he was in the referendum party many years ago. But certainly he was briefly a member of the European Parliament for the Brexit Party, which then became reformed. He had quite a certain following. He's got money. He's got and he's got the guts to stand up to Farage. And I mean, I've learned in life that the way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them and bully them back in a way. And that's certainly Lo has done that and has attracted and, you know, those are extraordinary figures. And it was, you know, it was more than you just said. It was almost 9 % in Manchester.

35:47On an incredibly radical platform. I mean, we can see from the five points that Rupert Lowe gave, if he was going to have some kind of pact with Nigel Farage. I mean, I think the first one was re-migration. So this is a hardening of reform's position. Reform is a mainstream party. They are pursuing what historically would seem to be a very radical position on immigration. but now, which does seem to be the popular accepted view on migration in this country, Rupert Lowe is going even further and still attracting a great deal of support, which may have even influenced reform's right turn, which we have been witnessing over recent months.

36:21Michael Crick: Because we saw at the beginning of this parliament how reform were dragging the other parties to the right on immigration and other things, and now restore, dragging reform to the right on immigration to having the same effect. It is quite astonishing the effect that Restore are having. And in the elections we've just mentioned, they got more votes than the Conservatives. And you wonder, where does this leave the Conservatives? And if somehow reform and Restore could be brought together and there could be a reconciliation, you'd be talking about somewhere around a block of 30%, because a lot of the restore people, as I think I said, don't like Farage, and that's why they vote for restore.

37:08Michael Crick: So they might not join in. But nonetheless, there is a bigger prize there for the radical right, if they can agree. But some of those terms Farage would find very hard to go along with, particularly the idea that anybody who'd served in a concerted government could not be part of this alliance. And so there'd be no place for people like Jenrick and Braverman and so on. But if they could agree something, I mean, these are obviously only negotiating offers anyway. So maybe they could come together. But that personal animosity, I mean, the police, armed police actually turned up at Rupert Lowe's farmhouse on the basis of allegations that were made from within reform.

37:56Michael Crick: So it's difficult to see a great reconciliation there. that it does occasionally happen with Farage that people come together again, but not often. Michael Crick, thank you very much.

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