Farage vs Binface: How Nigel humiliated himself

0:02Joe Powell:This is a global production. Nigel Farage called this by-election yesterday on the basis of it being a people versus the establishment by-election. That line is becoming harder and harder to prosecute. Why? Because it appears that his principal opponent, at least for now, is going to be a bin. I was actually quite stunned by that. I was stunned by the speed at which it all happened. And you've been hearing little murmurings going, well, maybe Nigel is a bit of a problem. The whole thing is now a sham. Britain is broken and the public know it. And we need change. Why should I be judged today or in history in the future by Sky News and their ilk?

0:47The issue with my daughter was the final straw. Enough is enough. Why should they be the people that decide my fate when, as I repeat, I've done nothing wrong? No, I've decided that the people of Clapton should be the judges of my actions. This will be a people versus the establishment by-election. That's Nigel's first campaign video for a contest no one is entering. Reform says he's facing a deep state conspiracy. But as the by-election backfires, has Farage been left looking ridiculous? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:36It's Maitlis.

1:37Joe Powell:And it's Lewis. And yesterday, when we were breaking down and digesting exactly why Nigel Farage had chosen to resign his own seat, resigned his own seat before even the outcome of the respective inquiries into his financial conduct had concluded, we said that by-elections sometimes have a habit, particularly self-imposed ones, a habit of running away from you and becoming unpredictable. And I think it's fair to say that not even 24 hours at the time of recording on, that is definitely the case, because Nigel Farage called this by-election yesterday on the basis of it being a people versus the establishment by-election, i.e.

2:18Joe Powell:if you voted for him it would be a poke between the eyes for the establishment and if you voted for someone else then that would be a loss for you, the people. And yet less than 24 hours on as I say that line is becoming harder and harder to prosecute. Why? Because it appears that his principal opponent, at least for now, is going to be a bin. And when your principal opponent is a bin, it is quite hard to prosecute the idea that you were taking on the establishment, although I suppose we should say, in fairness, that that particular bin is a count. So count bin face at the moment is the only principal opponent in this by-election because every other party, Labour, the Conservatives, the Greens, the Lib Dems, they are all refusing to put up a candidate against Farage because they are saying that this is a stunt, this is a gimmick, and they're not going to play Farage's game.

3:13Joe Powell:And so the reform are now in a position where all they're able to do is say, these people are cowards, they're refusing to take us on. But in terms of actually realising, exactly as we were saying, Emily, yesterday, actually realising something, a political product, something that this is going to do for Farage, already you are seeing the downsides of it, because the first 24 hours of this by-election campaign against a bin have been dogged by questions about financial conduct and the financial affairs that Nigel Farage wanted to get away from. And just listen, the tone of this to me has been absolutely extraordinary from reform spokespeople who have clearly made a conscious decision to go out on the offensive.

3:56Joe Powell:And the danger is instead, they are sounding very, very rattled. Just listen to Robert Jenrick in an interview yesterday. People look at this and say, well, this is just Nigel Farage trying to dodge an inquiry which he can feel was going the wrong way for him. Look, Nigel was very clear that he has broken no rules. He's an absolute... He's not the arbiter of that. That's not how it works. He's done absolutely nothing wrong. But he doesn't sit in judgment. The people sit in judgment. Well, actually, there are rules about how an MP behaves. No, actually, we're a democracy, or at least we in reform believe it.

4:26You might not think that if you look at the other parties. Well, it sounds very Trumpian because Donald Trump would say, the fact that voters vote for me, that trumps everything else. Look what the Labour Party is doing. They've announced they're going to change the law so that British citizens cannot give donations to reform. You've changed subjects there. I was asking about the rules that govern behaviour and MP. This comes on the back of the Labour Party, illegally cancelling the election of 5 million people. You've got the leader of the Conservative Party likening Nigel Farage to Jeremy Thorpe, a man who stood trial for incitement for murder.

4:57You've got parts of the media banging on the door of Nigel's own daughter's house. Somebody's got nothing to do with public life. You're jumping lots of subjects there. Does Nigel Farage... Well, it's all the same story. Is it? We ultimately trust... Sky News knocking on someone's door is the same as whether an MP should accept the rules of Parliament. That's quite a jumble. The establishment are trying to play judge and jury and executioner. Well, enough of that. So that's Robert Jenner there.

5:21Joe Powell:I think it's fair to say playing every song from the MAGA chorus, deflection, dissembling, refusing to engage with the question. And Gary Gibbon, who you were hearing there from Channel 4, asking exactly the right question, which is that even if you accept, even if you think and you're Nigel Farage that you've done nothing wrong, and I've no doubt whatsoever that he believes that, ultimately it is not for him simply by declaring it to say that he hasn't and what he's done it would be one thing i think if he were going to the people of clacton after that report and if the report would come come through with the full facts and he says well i'm going to let the people of clacton be judge jury and executioner on this one but of course he is seeking to preempt all of that process and when his constituents vote in this by-election either for him or for a bin they actually won't be in full command or full possession of the facts because that report won't conclude until he's back in Parliament, as you were saying yesterday.

6:22Yeah. I mean, look, the jokes at this point are writing them stage. In the Clacton by-election, you've got a complete gimmick of a character and then you've got Count Binface. But I think if you break down what is actually happening here, you have got a man standing in a by-election on a ticket of what? Not telling people about his finances? Is it a pro sleaze ticket? Is it an anti-transparency ticket? You know, what does the chant go? You know, what do we want? More sleaze. When do we want it? We're not telling you. This is not a position on which you can actually legitimately fight a political argument.

7:01Just go to the people of Clacton and say, do you mind that I was given five million pounds that I'm not declaring? Oh, no, I thought you wouldn't mind. That's fine. Let's move on. I mean, clearly, whether they vote or they don't even bother turning out, the whole thing is now a sham because you have, as you say, seen this completely concerted effort by the main parties. And I have to say, I was actually quite stunned by that. I was stunned by the speed at which it all happened. We had talked about David Davis in 2008, sort of trying the same thing or trying a similar thing two decades earlier.

7:36But as soon as Kemi Badenoch was sort of out of the trap, she saw exactly where that was going. She called it, I think she called it, what was it, a hissy fit. That was her phrase. You had Keir Starmer in Ankara at the NATO summit saying the same thing. Andy Burnham had already basically sort of waved it away. And then last night at about 11 o 'clock on Newsnight, one of the Green candidates who was there, the MP for Gordon and Denton, the Green MP, said we decided not to put anyone up. And I don't think we have seen that kind of consolidation amongst the main parties for a long time. And I think it has spooked not just Farage, but the people around Farage.

8:22And you're so right, Lewis, that the prickliness of Jenrick in that clip was repeated throughout the day. And he is, I think it's fair to say, one of Reform's more pitiful media performers because he tries to create a sense of exactly what you would say at the beginning, the people versus the establishment. So he kept telling journalists that they weren't part of the establishment that he was not part of the establishment, that reform were anti-establishment. And you just look at poor little Robert Jenrick, who has literally been a Conservative MP for 10 years, who was literally giving those interviews in Westminster, who was the housing minister, who was the immigration minister, who was the health minister, who had a job in the Treasury.

9:14He was locked into three of the great offices of state. And he's sort of swinging his baseball bat around trying to sound anti-establishment because he knows that's what Farage would want in a very similar sort of tone, I think, to a J.D. Vance character in the Trump orbit. And he wasn't the only one. We heard Leila Cunningham on with our colleague Tom Swarbrick trying to say that Farage wasn't even a political player when he was the chairman chief executive of his own party. That was that was quite a one to tackle. Why has the money that he received when he was politically active as the chairman of reform but not elected, why was that not declared?

9:59Well, because he wasn't an MP and he didn't need to declare it. But he was politically active at the time? No, I mean, being the chairman of a political party is like an honorary role. He was not politically active. As the chairman of a political party? Yeah, he was a social media influence and he was a GB News presenter. Whilst also the chief executive of a political party? Yeah, but he was not politically active. You know, you could have, there are loads of people that are staffed at reform. I wouldn't call them all politically active. Even though they work for a political party? Hang on, Tom, we have people working here in the back office who work for a political party, but there is no way anyone would deem them to be politically active.

10:39You know, they're doing accounts. It's just, there's a separation of roles. They're not knocking on doors. They're not handing out leaflets. They're not giving speeches. They're not giving their name out there and asking people to vote for them. But Nigel Farage, as leader of that organisation before he was an MP, was doing that. He was asking all of those things. He was saying vote reform.

11:01No, he was a social media influencer. He was a GB News supporter. He was not publicly agitating for people to vote for reform whilst the chairman of that organisation. I haven't seen all his social media posts. Nigel's convinced and he's sought legal advice. He has done nothing. Yes. But you would agree if he had been advocating for reform in that role, he would be being politically active in the way in which you're absolutely right. The person who's the accountant would not. I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't know the exact term of what politically active and it seems to be quite subjective depending on who you're talking to.

11:35Joe Powell:The thing I can't get my head around with this, Emily, is a piece of political strategy. And Farage is normally a pretty acute, smart strategist. But I think that something is going on where I don't know whether it's the emotion of all of this. He's clearly genuinely, I think ridiculously, but genuinely aggrieved that people have been asking him these questions. Genuinely aggrieved that he feels that people are questioning the fact that he should be allowed to be a kind of de facto leader of the opposition, which is how he styled himself, but also be allowed to sell gold bullion and have side hustles and be a brand ambassador.

12:10Joe Powell:You know, he genuinely, if you listen to his speech yesterday, he genuinely seemed pissed off and irritated and incredulous, actually, that these two things could not cohabit and could not coexist. Despite the fact, of course, that, you know, one only needs to extend the logic by, you know, an iota to see how ridiculous it is. I mean, imagine if Andy Burnham had had, say, a month or two in between being mayor of Greater Manchester and coming in as an MP and potential prime minister. And then it emerged that someone had just given him this lottery win, as Nigel Farage described, of five million or ten million, and he hadn't told anybody about it.

12:44Joe Powell:I mean, it would genuinely be a resignation matter for an incoming prime minister. It doesn't require any leap of imagination or logic or interrogation or real thought. It is just so self-evident. And yet Farage, for whatever reason, isn't willing or isn't able to see it. And so what he then does, and this is very Trumpy and you're right, and it's very what Trump does to Rubio and to Vance. What he does is then go and gets his minions to peddle nonsense. They know it's nonsense. They know it's ridiculous. And they know if the shoe was on the other foot, they would be excoriating. They would be absolutely rightly lambasting of a political opponent.

13:19Joe Powell:But they're forced to sort of claim that two plus two, all of them, equals five. Because much like MAGA, reform is basically a one-man band and it is something of a cult of personality. And also much like MAGA, there is in the back of their mind these people right now, the Jenrics, the Taises, the Yusufs, the possibility of an imminent succession battle. Because when I said yesterday that, you know, this was what Faraj has done was partly born of weakness. It was certainly born to some extent of external weakness. i.e. he was losing his sure-footedness in the polls, with the politics, the bandwagon appeared to be moving on a bit, he was losing momentum, he was trying to regain momentum and regain attention.

13:57Joe Powell:There's an internal part of that story as well, which is that over the last few weeks, for the first time, you've been hearing internal murmurings from reform, which is usually kind of phalanx-like in their approach to party loyalty, and you've been hearing little murmurings going, well, maybe Nigel is a bit of a problem, or maybe Nigel isn't the right man to take us into the election. And I'm sure they have no doubt that Farage is going to win this by-election. But if he emerges, as I think he will, and he's damaged himself here, if he emerges a diminished figure, a more eccentric looking figure, a less prime ministerial looking figure, but just a bit like he always used to look sometime, which is a bit more of a fringe figure on British politics.

14:34Joe Powell:And I think there's a huge danger of that for him, because I think, you know, he's setting himself up as a future prime minister. And there's a real danger that a lot of the public turns around and go, this is not the sort of thing that prime ministers do. You know, it seems hot-headed and eccentric and weird and fringe, as I say. Then maybe there will be, who knows, before the end of the parliament, a succession battle. And of course, therefore, you're going to have all of the prize and the premium for the Yousafs and the Taises and the Generics is to look as swivel-eyed as possible and as loyal as possible for the king, for the master, even if it means that they have to say that black is white and white is black, which we'll be hearing a lot of in the coming days and weeks.

15:11Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you think he was genuinely aggrieved. Because we have also learned overnight of a certain bit of timing, which could have played a part in why he suddenly jumped in front of that lectern yesterday. The Guardian has reported that actually the five million pound gift to Farage from Christopher Harbourn was reported to the National Crime Agency, reported by bankers who were concerned that it may have been laundered money. Now, Farage was given, we understand, a deadline of 1pm yesterday to respond to reporting about this article. And we should just explain that, you know, if bankers raise suspicious activity, it's not proof of wrongdoing.

16:01It is just an invitation for the agency to examine the transaction. But the fact that the Guardian was sniffing around this, that they knew that bankers had raised it, it's just interesting that they were expecting to get a response from Farage at 1pm. And actually, a couple of hours earlier, he put out his own social media post saying, I will tell you everything at 2. And at 2pm, he is not answering those questions. He's not talking about the SAR. He's not talking about the Guardian's reporting. He's just saying, leave me alone. Leave my family alone. I'm furious because he still believes that defensiveness is the best form of the fight.

16:41And actually, what has been so interesting is just seeing how other people have treated him rather phlegmatically. And we're going to play you a clip of our own colleague, Nick Ferrari, this morning, who was explaining why he hadn't managed to get Farage or, in fact, anyone from reform on the show this morning and where he thinks that relationship went wrong. I should tell you this, by the way, Reform UK refusing to speak to me today. So take from that what you will. I apologise to all my listeners, but Reform UK, I'm afraid, war has broken out between the two of us. They will not speak to me.

17:15I think it might be down, as the Times newspaper points out, that question I asked when he said it was none of my business and he could buy a fleet of Ferraris if he so chooses, as the Times writes today. With all due respect, what's it going to do with you? If you tell me what happened with the£5 million, then we're solved. It's an unconditional gift. I can spend it on Ferraris if I want. I don't think that helped relations between us. And I do think that whilst Farage is unable to answer the questions, his whole USP kind of crumbles a bit because his whole shtick has been putting it to the big guys, putting it to big money, putting it to big industry, putting it to the guys in control, putting it to, you know, the politicians and the establishment and the EU and all the rest of it.

17:57And here he is. And here they all are having to defend exactly the stuff that makes them look utterly out of touch and elite, whether it's big money, whether it's cryptocurrency, whether it's obfuscation. Farage, educated at Dulwich College, you know, learned his skills as a city trader. he will come into a pension from the European Parliament, the EU, within a year or two years time of£73 ,000 a year. So the fact that he has kind of lost the ability, as it were, to go after people who he thinks are the establishment, because he's not telling us anything about his own finances, is what might ultimately scupper this.

18:42Joe Powell:It is, again, it goes back to that question of calling the by-election in the first place, right? Which is that if you do not have a good answer to the questions of your finances, then the best thing or perhaps the worst thing that you could possibly do is call a by-election where you will be required to repeatedly answer questions about your finances. And whether you think he's got, you know, and it's clear that Farage had not got good, you heard it in that clip that Nick Ferrari played there. He didn't have a good answer whenever that was, a week or 10 days ago. And what has become clear in the last 24 hours since the by-election was called is they still don't have good answers.

19:23Joe Powell:And as a result of that, they're doing, and we all know this from our personal lives, it happens in politics as well. When you're in a corner, very often you will try and fight your way out of it. you'll start to try and use your claws. You'll try and go on the offensive to try and distract. And the problem is, is that even if you buy the idea that maybe, you know, Farage likes to feel like he's in control of events, there is no doubt that what he has managed to do in the last 24 hours is once again, make the entire news cycle and the Westminster, the entire sort of world of Westminster, the news media focus on him.

19:59Joe Powell:And he has a unique ability to do that. He is the pied Piper of British politics. And yet he has elected to do that and to play that trick, which he singularly, with the exception of perhaps a few people like Boris Johnson, can compete with. He's chosen to play that card at precisely the moment he didn't wish attention to be on him. So there is this weird paradox and conundrum at the heart of this political move. And as I say, I note some interesting polling done by YouGov, I think, in the last 24 hours saying two thirds of people think that this by-election move is a mistake. And if I was sat in Reform HQ, I can see the logic maybe of going on the offensive.

20:38Joe Powell:That is something where he feels at his most comfortable. He likes the feeling of taking people on the media, on the establishment, and so on. But the danger is, is that if you're trying to go to make the transition as he has been, from a 20 % politician, 25 politician maybe to a 30 politician or 35 politician or even a 40 politician which is what reform were briefing 12 months ago was their objective and their aim then you need to bring a load of people on board who are skeptical of you who think maybe you're a bit unreliable who think you're a bit unpredictable who don't think your traditional prime ministerial material and then to watch you in i think can be bad not in totally totally off the money here in what could at least be credibly described as a hissy fit, resigning your seat before some inquiry is due, and an endless noise which people won't pay the attention to, the details of, but all they'll hear is five million and inquiry and donation and crypto and that kind of background noise of politics, it attaches to you.

21:39Joe Powell:And suddenly, I think getting to 30 % or 35 % politician gets way harder because you look like, as I say, something that you could always say about Faraj Ali's worst was that he was a politician for a small, devoted group of people, but not a wider, more pluralistic politician for a wider group of people for whom you could govern and assemble a governing majority. So I think in a way, Nigel Farage has had many shades to his career. Whether you like him or not, he's had some very, very impressive ones politically. I don't think this will be falling into that category. I guess the question is still, you know, what happens to that by-election when he does have a way of surprising us always, Lewis.

22:20He does have a way of pulling rabbits out of the hat sort of time and time again. I mean, yeah, it feels premature to write this off too quickly, but we will be looking into some of the background to the questions that have surrounded his finances with Joe Powell in just a moment.

22:55Well, joining us now in the studio is Joe Powell. He's the Labour MP for Kensington and Bayswater and also a campaigner against dirty money in politics with a parliamentary group. Joe, we've talked a lot already about the politics of the by-election and the sort of circus that may surround that. But it might be worth just taking people back a step to the actual allegations. We know that there are questions that haven't been answered. We know there are questions about where Farage is or isn't being transparent with the money and the donations. What are the actual lines of inquiry that people in your position are looking at now?

23:35Well, I agree. It's hard to keep up because there's so many layers to this. But the parliamentary standards commissioner we know has had at least four letters from MPs or others asking him to investigate. So the first one was should Nigel Farage have declared or not the five million pounds from Christopher Harbourn, the cryptocurrency trader based in Thailand who had also donated 25 million pounds to the Brexit party reform and iterations of that party. So that first one was on transparency the second one is whether he should have declared his five homes and the rules there are clear if they're for personal use and family use you don't have to declare them but we know in the past for example Jeremy Hunt did declare properties that he owned so there's another transparency question the third one is now about the Cottrell money and whether again that should have been declared because it was essentially money for political activities This is the convicted criminal who seemed to be working alongside Farage and giving him stuff.

24:39Exactly. And we now know today that his mother had also donated a large amount of money directly to Richard Tice. And then the fourth line of inquiry, which is the one I've personally been most concerned about, is conflict of interest. Because if you go back to, you know, remember cash for questions and all those scandals about whether politicians were acting in the interests of people paying them. you know we know that nigel farage has spent a huge amount of time on cryptocurrency policy in general and we know that he had this meeting with the governor of the bank of england where he raised concerns about the bank of england's policies that if implemented would certainly have hurt christopher harbourn so all of these things are connected so just how do we know about the bank of England meeting was that public well it was reported by um the Guardian last week um you know it feels like that was sort of many scandals ago now um uh and and that is because they they they uncovered um that he had brought it up in this meeting um and so what we wanted to do is find out more information so a Liberal Democrat MP actually is the one who wrote to the Standards Commissioner but I wrote to the Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and he actually replied to me last night and he said I'm happy to confirm that no policy changes have taken place as a result of the interventions by Mr Farage and as a general point by the nature of the bank's role we are regularly subject to lobbying and I can assure you we are able to spot it and appropriately discount it so what I read from that is is that clearly Nigel Farage did come in and attempt to lobby for this very specific cryptocurrency policy changes and I have a serious question about the interests involved in the motivation for doing that.

26:22So just to step back, is there a legitimate reason why a politician, an MP, would go and see the Bank of England governor and say, I am genuinely worried about the direction of this policy? Yeah, of course. And he's not any politician. You know, he wants to be prime minister. His party is leading in the polls. So it's fine by me if he goes to meet with the governor of the Bank of England to talk about reforms policy priorities. But what are the policy priorities of reform that would affect the general public? You know, you think he might want to go in and talk about managing inflation or debt costs or our relationship with, you know, trading partners in Europe or whatever it is.

27:03but he chose to use the meeting to focus on this very specific policy area on cryptocurrency regulation and we have to remember like cryptocurrency is you know it's a relatively new innovation in finances and there are billions of pounds at stake over how you regulate it and he wants a very liberal model of regulation that would allow his friends like Christopher Harbourn to continue to make billions of pounds and of course while there have been lots of people that have made a lot of money through cryptocurrency. There are also lots of people that have bankrupted themselves because it is such an unregulated space.