Is Farage turning Reform into a Trump tribute act?

0:00Most dog food brands don't really want you seeing how their food is made. Just Food for Dogs is the opposite. They actually invite you in. You can walk into any of their kitchens and see real human-grade ingredients like chicken, beef, carrots, and peas being prepared right in front of you. It's real food made in real kitchens. Nothing is hidden behind labels. And that kind of transparency says a lot. Nothing to hide. Everything to love. Go to JustFoodForDogs.com and get 50 % off your first order.

0:33This is a Global Player original podcast. I wouldn't follow what Mr Kennedy's department does. I'd listen to what they have to say, but I wouldn't follow it. And frankly, nor would I follow the World Health Organization. When Donald Trump talks about links between paracetamol or Tylenol and autism, is he right? I have no idea. You think he might be right? I have no idea. You know, we were told thalidomide was a very safe drug and it wasn't. Who knows? Nick, I don't know. You don't know. He has a particular thing about autism, I think because there's been some in his family, and it fills it very personally.

1:04I have no idea. You wouldn't side with the medical experts who say it's dangerous nonsense? I wouldn't. When it comes to science, I don't side with anybody. Nigel Farage can't answer a simple question. Can you dismiss the Trump conspiracy theory that links Tylenol, paracetamol, with autism? He can't because Donald Trump has declared it's true. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said, we do not want Trump's America to become Farage's Britain. Nigel Farage's inability to answer that question makes it seem that Ed Davey might have a point. Welcome to the News Agents.

1:52The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. and Nigel Farage was on Nick Ferrari this morning when he said that no science is settled. Well, I think that we know that, you know, if an apple falls from the tree, it hits the ground because of gravity. There are things that are settled in science and over decades, we have seen that paracetamol has been seen as a drug that is used safely. Yes, occasionally, minor side effects, but that applies to any drug at all. But he won't distance himself or can't distance himself or doesn't dare distance himself from something that Donald Trump has said, even though the health professionals in this country are unanimous, that there is no link between the use of paracetamol by pregnant women and the likelihood of autism in the babies they give birth to.

2:43He does start by saying he wouldn't bring that policy here. He calls him Mr Kennedy, RFK Jr's policy. He says he wouldn't bring it here. He said he'd listen to him though. Yes, and that's the curious thing, isn't it? That for a man who always says he's sort of straight talking, he seems to just slime between the two positions. West Streeting yesterday came out and said, do not listen to Donald Trump. There is no proven link between Tylenol and autism. Farage could have done that. He could have got the British public on his side by showing that actually just because Trump says something, just because he magics up something in the Oval Office doesn't automatically make it true.

3:23And yet Farage seems, frankly, very slippery on that question. He says he listens to RFK. He doesn't want to go with it. He doesn't want to go against it. And he doesn't really know anything about science, which goes to this whole question that all you have to do is make people feel uncomfortable, make people feel unsure, make people feel that there might be something that they don't quite understand or know about, which then redirects the whole pattern of behaviour. in a way that can be deeply damaging. Well, I think actually the last 24 hours, this paracetamol stuff, but also we've seen it more widely, it is extraordinary the extent to which Trump has just become a complete poll and dividing line of and within British politics on a daily basis.

4:11I mean, it's always been the case ever since he was elected the first time, but compared to the first term, he is so ubiquitous in daily British politics now. Think about the three events, just three things in the last sort of 24 hours. One, we're talking about Farage now on the back foot, having basically sort of suggested that he partly backs or at least wouldn't demur from Trump's line on paracetamol. I think that's a huge, huge mistake for him in reform. We can talk about that. Then you add in what you've just said, Emily, which is West Streeting coming out unequivocally against Trump. Why is West Streeting doing that?

4:40Well, one of the reasons is he's the health secretary. I've no doubt that he believes it, but it has not been unnoticed within Labour circles that West Streeting in all sorts of ways at the moment is on some manoeuvres. and I don't think he thinks it's any bad thing to be seen to be burnishing his credentials by slamming Trump in this way. And what did we see in Bournemouth at the Lib Dem party conference yesterday, as John was alluding to, but Ed Davey coming out in the most unequivocal and visceral terms comparing Trump's America and Farage's Britain. Imagine living in the Trump-inspired country Farage wants us to become, where there's no NHS.

5:16So patients are hit with crippling insurance bills or denied health care altogether. That is Trump's America. Don't let it become Farage's Britain.

5:36And there were lots of commentary yesterday about how many times Davey invoked Farage and Trump. And I don't think mentioned Keir Starmer once. And he was sort of quizzed about that by several people and criticised for it, you know, basically on the basis that why isn't the opposition party or an opposition party critiquing the government? But I think that is really, really misplaced or misjudged because I think Lib Dems are actually doing something really smart strategically. And I think Ed Davey kind of gets the direction that politics, at least for the moment, looks like it's going in. Right.

6:06Which is a it's a bit weird to attack Ed Davey for being obsessed with Farage when, you know, most of the media is obsessed with Farage on a daily basis. He's shaping the kind of contours of politics. But more than that as well, if the next election is anything like the polling looks like now, which is a big if. But if it is like that, then we know it's not going to be a typical election where the opposition parties, all the opposition parties in one form or another are just trying to knock the government. and knock the government out of contention. It's going to basically be two blocks. You're basically going to have a Farage block.

6:36Do you want Farage to be prime minister or don't you? And in that context, the Lib Dems are doing something smart, which is basically setting themselves up as one of the primary forces of opposition to Farage and to Trump. That is the direction that politics is going in. I think it's actually strategically really smart. Yeah, I mean, there was a very good piece by Stephen Bush in the FT yesterday, which pointed to exactly this, that Davy needs to keep Starmer in place. It's his path to power. It is his path to power. I mean, very possibly. We know how unhappy the Lib Dems were with the direction of travel that the party took under Nick Clegg going into a conservative coalition.

7:14Whatever your thoughts about whether that did work or didn't work, there were many in the Lib Dems' own party who felt that a deal should have been done with the left. And I guess there is part of Ed Davy that's looking ahead and saying, well, if Labour stays in power or if Labour becomes the biggest party, then we get to help them. But I think it's actually even simpler than that. I mean, that sort of is looking many years ahead. And it's taking space that, frankly, the government, the party of government has vacated because they're not pushing back on Trump. They're not pushing back on much of the stuff that comes out of America.

7:52They're not pushing back in any sort of robust, muscular way on the appalling kind of crackdowns to institutions, to norms, to democracy, to freedom of speech that's coming out from, you know, our special relationship, closest ally. And so actually that ground has been ceded to the Lib Dems. Now, I think they went down a slight rabbit hole yesterday. they picked out stuff that Farage has said in the past about gun licences and said, oh, you know, are we going to end up with college shootings and school shootings all over Britain? I don't think they needed to go that far, actually, because Farage's own words are so clearly a replica of the kind of conspiratorial nonsense that Trump has been peddling.

8:40I just want to play you this clip where, I mean, you tell me if you are not thinking about the Springfield, Ohio, cats and dogs by the time we get to the end of it. Swans were being eaten in rural parks in this country. The carp were being taken out of ponds and eaten in this country by people who come from cultures that have a different... Would you agree it is happening here? Neither risk and prove or disprove. Who are taking the carp and the swans? People who come from countries where that's quite acceptable to do so. They're reading your cats. They're reading your dogs. They're eating your pets.

9:12It is literally you've swapped out the animal and you've retained the sense, which is that immigrants are coming for your pets. The Royal Parks have been forced to deny that this has taken place today. But I think it was a nice touch. The Royal Parks have rejected Nigel Farage claims that migrants are killing and eating swans from their grounds. a Royal Park spokesperson has said, we've not had any incidents reported to us of people killing or eating swans in London's eight Royal Parks. OK, there is a video, which I will leave you to find on your own, which shows a purported RSPCA officer, we don't know if she exists or if it's real or if it's AI, going round to an immigrant's home and taking the lid off a stew and saying you're not allowed to eat swan.

9:58You know, I paraphrase. But the implication is that the RSPCA have now got their people on the ground checking out swan eating again the rspca has denied this so the question is is this working for nigel farage or not i mean given the state of the polls the question the question first is like what the fuck is he doing sorry but you know let's not skip over that too quickly of course but okay what the fuck is those two things are related i mean yeah but what the fuck he's doing is borrowing from trump's tactics when everyone snorted derisively when Trump talked about what was happening in Springfield, Ohio.

10:33But he had the conversation then on what were illegal Haitians doing in your cities and the threat that they posed. And that worked actually quite effectively for him. And although a lot of people thought this was going to be an absolute catastrophe for Trump to kind of invoke this whole idea that people were eating the cats and the dogs, which they weren't, it focused the conversation on immigrants. and so much of the tactics and the methods of Nigel Farage are straight out of the Trump playbook. You know, when Trump was asked a difficult question about, say, QAnon, well, I don't really know.

11:08I don't really know anything about QAnon. I mean, I think they care about families, and I think that's a good thing. You know, Farage on paracetamol, I don't really know on paracetamol. I don't know. I don't think science is settled. Epstein-Barr as well, I don't know. Invite me back and talk about that next time. And all that, you allow the idea to just percolate that it might be true, that he might believe he doesn't actually take himself out to the far edges of it, but he just nudges the conversation in that direction without any kind of accountability or evidence base to suggest it. And you just throw these things out there and you see, oh yeah, well I've heard Nigel Farage he didn't deny it, it must be, I bet there's something to it.

11:46I bet there's something to the meeting those swans. So is, so that's, the point is, you asked before, I rudely interrupted, does this work for the British public. I think, and you know, who knows, maybe this is a misjudgment. I think that Farage is making a profound series of mistakes. I don't think this is in isolation. We saw his conference, which was sort of gushingly reported by some, but actually contained a series of cranks and weirdos and odd, very odd things said, including other sort of conspiracy theories about medicine and so on. We also saw, we talked about it yesterday, this extreme policy on indefinite leave to remain.

12:26It is curious because at the start of the year, all the briefing that was coming out of reform was saying that this is a brand and party which is seeking to expand its appeal and which is seeking to soften some of its rougher edges. They knew and know that if they're serious about maintaining or going much above 30 % in the polls, they've already got much of, if not all, of the more extreme elements of public opinion on the right. What they need to do is try and assuage people of more middling opinion who are interested in some of the things that Farage are saying, but are suspicious of and concerned about Farage and some of those in his party and their past.

13:05And what have they chosen to do at the start of the year? At the start of the year, they actually chose, particularly with the fight that we saw with Rupert Lowe and others, to actually have that fight and say that we are the more moderate force. What we've seen, and I think this is dangerous, if Farage's opponents are wily enough and have some balls and have some guts to actually go for him on this stuff, then actually associating him with Trump indelibly is a big problem. We know Trump is deeply unpopular in this country, even among right leaning conservative voters. And also being seen to represent some of the more extreme opinions and elements of the online rights is exactly the opposite way of expanding your appeal.

13:45So I think this is a dangerous moment for Farage, but it appears to be one, I think, because he's concerned, actually. I think that what we're seeing on X and the sort of radicalisation of opinion on X is driving opinion within his party. And Farage is attuned to that and alive to it, as well as, I think, at some point, probably wanting to maintain his position with the Trump court, MAGA court and the Trump dollar to come. And so he's leaning into this stuff. Yeah, I think that what we saw at the beginning of the year was something much more sure-footed from reform. And it seems ironic, actually, that as the Labour government has found itself in deeper water, you know, resignations and all the rest of it and uncertainty, that reform has also diminished in its standing.

14:27Now, you know, of course, I'm sure reform will put me to the polls and say, what are you talking about? You know, we're still way ahead of Labour and we are the putative next party of government and all the rest of it. I mean, they have actually slipped, I think, three points in recent polls. We've seen gains from both the Tories and the Conservatives kind of curiously. But I wonder whether it is partly, I mean, you'll talk about the online right. There are also parties to Farage's right now. The Tommy Robinsons, the Ben Habibs, the Advanced Britain, the Britain First, whatever it is. He should lean into that.

15:01I'm not crazy like those guys. He's sounding like those guys. Why wouldn't you do that? That's what I don't understand. Because there was a time when Farage was appealing to people who just didn't like the level of taxation in Britain or didn't like how much their money was going into what they felt was the wrong things or didn't like the state of broken Britain, whatever that meant. Once you're going down the dead ends of swans, of vaccines, of letting people at your own conference talking about whether the king's cancer was caused by a vaccine, you have basically relinquished that centre ground.

15:37Yeah, completely. Any centre right or, you know, any of that centre ground. And people can just put you in the crankbox, too. Yes. I mean, it's not about what is centre right or far right. It's about what is a bit nuts. Yeah. And the paracetamol thing and the swans and all of that stuff. And I think the important point here is to remember that to circle back to the question we sort of raised at the start of this is, is Trump's America the new dividing line in British politics? We're not America. we have not got the same public opinion divisions as they have in america the country is not as polarized as america i still think there is a broadly sane base of people the quiet majority of british people are not on this page and won't be on this page and that's why i think this is dangerous for farage you know i said is it working well look you'd say look at the polls now look at where we were a year ago, we're doing brilliantly.

16:34But is it sustainable when you're talking about crackpot and crap like this? That's exactly the point, John, which is that their problem is, is it's exactly because Trump and MAGA politics, we saw this in the reaction to Charlie Kirk's assassination, you know, its politics and the politics of MAGA have become so central to our politics. There's almost now a complete fusion on a daily basis with the US kind of UK news cycle, at least at kind of an elite political level. And the people most exposed to that are Farage and the people around Farage, because they've had a lot of contact with each other, sort of MAGA world, sort of Farage world.

17:09There's long been a fusion there. And so my take of it is, is that, frankly, they are becoming so sort of terminally online with this stuff. They're so exposed to the kind of mores of MAGA and the daily developments of MAGA that they're making precise to the point that you identify, John, which is that they are transposing a political environment and a set of public opinions from the United States to the United Kingdom, which does not exist. And there lies peril for them. I mean, it does make our lives much easier, because if you take, for example, the speech that Trump made last night to the UN, where he had a go at escalators, he had a go at the teleprompter, he had a go at windmills, he accused Britain of being a Sharia law state.

17:49I mean, it was so laughable. This crackpot buffoon standing there because his words hadn't been scripted for him and the teleprompter had gone down. He just went off on the most ridiculous ramble. And what do people do at the end of that? they suddenly sort of latched onto the one line he'd said about Russia and Ukraine and tried to ask whether he changed his mind on Ukraine, as if somehow that there was going to be this one bit of truth that emerged from an absolute ramble of insanity. And all you have to do is put any of that back to Farage. You know, sorry, do you believe we're heading towards Shereel?

18:29Or do you believe that the person who stopped the escalator, reportedly from the White House own team, should face the full penalty of the law, which is what the press secretary said? Do you believe that windmills are a cause of massive danger to the world? All you have to do is run through anything Trump said in the last 12 hours and put that to Farage for him to be absolutely dumbstruck if he can't say no. Farage would be better off shutting up for a bit. You know, he's in the perfect position in British politics right now, which is that he's got a very well-established brand. Everybody knows who he is.

19:04and he is the perfect anti-system candidate at a moment when every other British political party in one way or another is seen to be discredited or had a go at governing and been useless at it. And although it's a party that's based on momentum and vibes, he's too addicted, I think, and has been recently, to these Monday morning press conferences and all these sort of things which get him attention. He would be actually better off right now withdrawing and shutting up for a little while. But Lewis, this is again where we're not America. In the American model, the attention economy is everything and you have to be giving content the whole time.

19:36Donald Trump never shuts up. He's always got something to say on any subject under the sun. And it maybe doesn't work here in Britain. Not the same way. Not if you're ahead anyway. No, but that's the mistake of transposing American political model onto the UK, assuming it's the same thing when it just isn't. I think what's interesting as well is that what is definitely shifting, and we've seen it from Ed Davey, you've seen it from Sadiq Khan in the last 24 hours, responding to the attacks on him personally again from Trump. Something that is definitely becoming more American is definitely the kind of way politicians are responding, particularly on social media, to attacks.

20:12The fight back. The fight back is certainly gathering some pace. So in that sense, I mean, there's no doubt there is a creeping Americanisation in the content that we're seeing, in the news that we see, in our style of politics. The thing that is more, but that's all at a relatively elite level, the thing, as we're saying, that is more glacial, it is changing, and our politics is becoming a bit more sort of paranoid and conspiratorial and polarised, but it is much slower at a public opinion level than it is at an elite level. And that, it seems to me, is the mistake the reformer making, is to mistake the two for the other.

20:40In a moment, we're going to be hearing from the author, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Ian McEwan. His new book is called What We Can Know. It's about memory, it's about the future, and it's about what we're doing to ourselves right now.

20:58Stay across the latest news, breaking stories and respected opinions by listening to LBC. From award-winning internationally respected journalists. Good morning, I'm Nick Ferrari. James O 'Brien on LBC. Good afternoon, I'm Sheila Fogarty. Very good afternoon to you, Tom Swarbrick with you here. Hello, this is Andrew Marr. Hello, you're listening to Sunday with me, Lewis Goodall. Find out what the story means for you. Listen on our free Global Player app or the new LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation. Most dog food brands don't really want you seeing how their food is made. Just food for dogs is the opposite.

21:34They actually invite you in. You can walk into any of their kitchens and see real human-grade ingredients like chicken, beef, carrots, and peas being prepared right in front of you. It's real food made in real kitchens. Nothing is hidden behind labels. And that kind of transparency says a lot. Nothing to hide, everything to love. Go to justfoodfordogs.com and get 50 % off your first order.

22:02The News Agents. Well, we're joined now by Ian McKeown, author of the latest novel, What We Can Know. it's an extraordinary thing Ian to set a novel in the future to talk about the present it made me feel that you were addressing the sort of temporal equivalent of an alien who comes to land on the planet and says what's going on this is about us right now isn't it yes indeed uh I guess I mean I don't think there's really science fiction or it's science fiction without the science but the The question is, if you're going to describe ourselves, you know, where to stand? I mean, and it's a question that faces all novelists at the beginning, first person, third person, and so on.

22:48But I thought that being 100 years hence, not too far away in time, I mean, you know, if we think of 1925, lots of modernity was in place. And if we could draw a straight line from the first quarter of the 21st century and try and extrapolate the rest, My guess is we're going to go through a series of crises, maybe even a catastrophe or two, because we're already on that trajectory. So being 100 years ahead gave me an ability to sustain the same language, more or less, and to have someone, a young scholar at a university, looking back not only with some horror, but with some envy too, and to remind ourselves that actually we still hold a lot that is precious in our civilization and in our various societies, particularly in the first world, and that we stand before us as a forking path.

23:45If I can borrow that term from Borges, the garden of the forking paths, we could still rescue things. We are still rescuing things and we are making efforts around the world. We mustn't give up on it entirely. But it's also, we are full, I think, of premonitions of disaster. so we live in interesting times and having someone looking back when everyone now is long dead seemed like a privileged position rhetorically. Your narrator has a sort of nostalgia and an envy as you say but his students, he's an academic and his students just think we're ghastly that we've screwed everything up. Yeah well I grew up in the shadow of the second world war and my back was somewhere between 80 and 90 million deaths.

24:34But as I turned into a teenager, I didn't want to hear about any of that. We had rock and roll, we had cheap paperback books, you know, the world had all through the 50s and 60s had been getting better. So I, with something of a blush, remember my lack of interest in what my parents had gone through, Great Depression, Second World War. and so I wanted to maybe something of an act of atonement to satirise these students who are at their backs have tens scores even billions of deaths behind their great great grandparents well explain that to us where do the billions of deaths come from because on one level it is about catastrophic climate change isn't it well this is not really a novel about climate change the The only way to write about climate change is to not write about climate change.