Is Nigel Farage's career unravelling before our eyes?

0:00Summer is here, which means we all want to look and feel our best. A GLP-1 may be right for you. Visit orderlymeds.com to learn more about which GLP-1 you could be eligible for. Getting started is fast, easy, and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals. Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds.com slash podcast. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Taking care of yourself feels great. Compounded medications are not FDA approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

0:33This is a global production. Farage has said today he didn't anticipate that the other parties would just choose not to contest the by-election, thereby leaving your main and only opponent as a bin.

0:44Jon Sopel:I'm fascinated by how Nigel Farage is going to fight this by-election in Clacton. And I just think it seems so absurd now when you are trying to say, Count Binface, he is the very epitome of the British establishment. But I think there is something greater at stake now. It seems that the media and political classes want to paint me out to be like a war criminal, as if everything I've ever done is wrong, is bent, is corrupt. I don't get a chance to properly answer it. I don't see why I should be judged by them. We'll ask the people here what they think. Rodrigo Duterte, Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic, Nigel Farage.

1:29Jon Sopel:That is how he is seeking to paint himself in the latest stage of his Poor Poor Me campaign. As it becomes clear that the only candidate that Farage will face is made of iron, Are we watching in real time the unravelling, not just of reform, but of Nigel Farage's political career? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:57Jon Sopel:The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. It has been extraordinary watching Nigel Farage, who is normally so sure-footed as a politician, so adroit, good communicator, able to see round corners and predict what will happen, get this one totally bloody wrong over the by-election call in Clacton, where he was expecting a full contest and the other parties have said, nah, nothing, I don't want to do it, we're not, sorry, this is your circus, you can have it. And so all he's up against is Camp Binford face. And yet, as time has gone on, it hasn't got any easier for reform. You're feeling it's getting worse and worse and new developments come out.

2:35Jon Sopel:And so today it's Robert Jenrick's finances that are in the crosshairs and whether he took money from an overseas donor when he was running for the Conservative Party leadership. And so it goes on and you just feel that all that sure-footedness is kind of just fumbling as they go from crashing to one wall to the next, to the next, to the next, tripping over bits of furniture as they go and clearly not getting their way and feeling more and more aggravated by it yeah look i think that um as this story has developed uh you know day by day a couple of days ago that we found out about this you know what seemed at the time at least like a bold move i think at this point we can describe it as a courageous move very courageous nigel from yes minister that's very that's very courageous courageous because farage started it um by clearly it was a ploy to do two things one to keep the attention on him as we've been saying for the last couple of episodes just at the moment when the attention was moving to andy burnham where he seemed to be sort of losing his his touch where the reforms uh ratings were starting to come down but also to try and diffuse once and for all the question around the questions around his finances the argument went and you've heard him try to prosecute this argument in the last, you know, 72 hours.

3:59If the voters of Clacton aren't bothered by it, then that neutralizes the issue. It nullifies the issue. It absolves me of any potential problem. I can avoid the process, the actual sort of technical processes, which will adjudicate whether I've done anything wrong by simply skipping that entirely and going to my own voters and asking for their absolution. Now, for reasons we've already discussed on the show, I think that was always a bit of a long shot and a by-election was a tricky mechanism to try and achieve that because it seemed a bit sort of abstruse in a way. Like, would the voters of Klaxon quite understand why they were going to the VOLs?

4:37I don't mean that they wouldn't be able to understand the question, but also that they would be able to sort of say, well, this isn't really a matter for us at the moment. You know, this is a parliamentary process at the moment. And anyway, even if they did re-elect him, so what? If he's broken the rules, he's broken the rules. So I think quickly after day one or two, that was lost. But I think there is something greater at stake now, which is Farage's political credibility. It's not just a question now about whether he can use this to sidestep the questions about his finances. I don't think he can.

5:04I think if I were sat in Reform HQ now, I would be worried that we would have started the year by being treated as a government in waiting, an incoming prime minister in waiting. And we might finish the year by being a laughingstock, a laughingstock because and they should have anticipated this. Farage has said today he didn't anticipate that the other parties would just choose not to contest the by-election, thereby leaving your main and only opponent as a bin. but by that and with those pictures whether he wins or loses whatever percentage of the vote count bin face gets 10 percent 20 percent the non-tory reform vote at the last lecture is 25 if a bin if you lose 25 of the vote or 30 or 40 to a bin you are not just you haven't it's not only that you don't have absolution it's that you've been humiliated and that you have lost your political credibility and that frankly look john he's being asked to be treated as an incoming prime minister and being treated as an incoming prime minister.

6:02I think the big danger for him now, both in the media, where he's enjoyed a great deal of support, but also with the wider public, the sort of people who might have been thinking about voting for him, but worried that maybe he seems a bit fringe, is that this reaffirms all of those worries, i.e. prime ministers don't do shit like this.

6:20Jon Sopel:I think that it's so much easier to be the insurgent on the outside, a guerrilla army kind of launching missiles from afar and hoping to destabilise the sort of big army that sits in the middle of the battlefield than it is to be the general who is in command of all of these things. And he is the general in command of the Reform Party. He does want to be seen as the leader of the loyal opposition, even though he's only got a handful of seats. But look at his position in the opinion polls. I am the person who could be the next prime minister. Therefore, I need to be taken very seriously indeed.

6:57Jon Sopel:Fine. That's OK. We're taking you very seriously. We are giving you the same scrutiny that Keir Starmer had when he was gifted a couple of suits and some pairs of glasses and Rachel Reeves was gifted a few dresses to wear at cocktail parties or whatever it happened to be. This is what it is like if you are seeking the highest office and the questions are not illegitimate. He is not a victim as he seeks endlessly to portray himself. He's not being treated as a war criminal, as we heard him say in that clip. He is being treated as a politician who wants the highest office. And don't be surprised if people are a bit askance, an arch, an eyebrow, just a teeny bit over the fact that you've been given five million quid from a crypto billionaire in Thailand and it doesn't seem altogether clear what that money was for.

7:52I've always said you should never underestimate Faraj and you can't underestimate him now. He has had a remarkable political career and generally speaking has had a feeling for the pulse of the country far better than many of his political opponents. But as an insurgent? As an insurgent, 100%. No, no, I think that's right. And I think that being the sort of de facto leader of the opposition in a way hasn't actually been a role that suited him terribly well he hasn't liked the scrutiny that's come with it and he hasn't quite found the vocabulary um for it he's obviously particularly struggled during this period where burnham has been coming in who himself has been acting as as the insurgent i'm sure again this this by-election gambit was partly um a way or in their own minds was a way of distracting from burnham but of course actually what it's done is that burnham was already receiving relatively little little scrutiny anyway and he's definitely not receiving much now.

8:42And it's entirely possible that this becomes such a circus over the course of the next four weeks and five weeks and so on, that it does distract from any particular misstep that Burnham happens to make once he's in number 10 as well. And I just think that this is, look, if all year, at the start of the year, you know, I was talking to reform people who said, look, you know, we are, the aim of this now is to move beyond our core base and move into the sort of people that might never have voted for farage before either as ukip or or brexit party or whatever and to do that we're going to move to the mainstream or we're going to that's part of our job now there's been a bit of collateral damage with that because they've obviously lost some ground to restore on the kind of extreme right and so on but that was the that was the aim and if you're if that is what you have in mind the last thing on earth that you should be doing or that you need to be doing is be doing something that seems so eccentric that you end up in a situation where you are fighting it out day by day with a dustbin and not only that john but but you know you see reform giving into their worst online excesses in a sense what have we seen over the last 24 hours i kid you not and if you're not online and you're not on the i was about to say the the the burning bin of of x but we can't really be quite offensive to count bin face these days use those sort of metaphors.

9:58So if you're not in that kind of, you know, endless kind of din, that is X, you won't have seen this. But, you know, you've literally had senior reform figures like Aaron Banks, longtime reform Farage ally donor, literally saying, who funds this bin? Who funds this guy? You know, like, we need to be, this guy is part of the liberal metropolitan elite. He went to Oxbridge. He's just a comic. It's like, guys, fellas, honestly, like, if you You are, there's an old phrase in politics, right? Is that if you're explaining, you're losing. Let me just update it slightly. If you're explaining that a bin is part of the establishment, you are so losing, like you're so losing, right?

10:35It's absurd. It's comical. It's eccentric. It's fringe. It's ridiculous, which is exactly the thing that all year reform wanted to move away from. But again, the sort of hive online radical right mind, it's eating these people alive. It's boiling their brains to the point where they can actually, with a straight face, sit there and post a tweet saying, we need to find out who funds this bin. No one funds him. No one funds him. He's just a guy who just turns up dressed as a Count Bin face and can test by-elections for a bit of attention. Well, that's your enemy now, lads. Yeah, I think that this framing,

11:09Jon Sopel:which probably looked good two or three days ago, the people versus the establishment, when, you know, as you were saying yesterday on the show, Nigel Farage with his sort of, you know, son of a stockbroker who goes to Dulwich College, who then becomes a commodities trader, becomes a politician who, you know, hangs around with millionaires and billionaires, is hardly the kind of everyman fringe character on the outside of politics. He is the establishment. And I just think it seems so absurd now when you are trying to say, Count Binface, he is the very epitome, the representation on earth of the British establishment.

11:47Jon Sopel:He's a bit of an eccentric who's having a laugh, who's quite funny. He's an aristocrat, an aristocratic bin. Yeah, he's count. Yeah, yeah. He's not one of your ordinary run-of-the-mill bins. He's not a pleb bin. No, no, no, no. Far from it. He's not like a recycling bin. He's not like a green bin. He's a good old-fashioned, you know, hard-ripe bin. Yes, and it's silver-lined, his bin. He was born with a silver-lined bin in his mouth. Look, this is all absurd. I'm fascinated by how Nigel Farage is going to fight this by-election in Clacton. Is he going to be out every day? Is he going to be holding news conferences?

12:26Jon Sopel:Because you can be sure as eggs is eggs that we are going to be asking questions about the five million pounds and what he did with it and what it was for. And all those other questions that have not been given satisfactory answers. or is he going to be sort of like Robert Kenyon was, you know, in Makerfield, where you don't really see him and you've got to find him and he doesn't do news conference and he disappears from view? In which case, what sort of campaign is that for Nigel Farage in his fight of the people versus the establishment? So I just don't know how he's going to fight this campaign.

12:59Jon Sopel:And I think it will be a bit of a circus. And I think that if you are Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Green, you're going to enjoy voting for Count Bimface aren't you? Well I think so I mean and it's already had some cost because just today Reform UK activists have been urged to divert from what was supposed to be we were told the big contest which of course was the succession race for Andy Burnham's old job as the mayor of Greater Manchester and Reform the Guardian's report today Josh Halliday had a story saying that Reform UK activists have been urged to divert from that contest from that by-election to support Nigel Farage's by-election which was obviously completely needless and unnecessary 250 miles away pure vanity and the message went out saying the message could not be more not more clear this was internal communications to members we now need all of our fantastic activists branch officers and councillors to come and help us in clacton that was a text as i say seen by the guardian so i mean you know this is supposed to be the biggest political party they often boast now it's the biggest political party in the uk they think they may have overtaken labor or at least is you know sort of level pegging with it, but they're, you know, clearly taking it seriously as to try and get people to get there.

14:07I mean, whether they'll succeed in that, whether they're able to convince even reform members that this contest is especially vital, I think again remains an open question, just as like it will for his electorate. It was quite intriguing. Robert Jenrick, who of course is their shadow, well, they call him the shadow chancellor, but they're not because they're not the official opposition, even if they are on their own minds. Their shadow treasury spokesperson and former Conservative cabinet minister turned LBC radio host today, sitting in for James O 'Brien. I bet his listeners loved that. I bet James loved that.

14:35And he was accosted. He was accosted on the air, interestingly, not just by the sort of typical liberal progressive voter or caller you might expect, although there are a few of those, but actually by a reform member who herself didn't understand why this by-election was even happening. I've been a reform member for almost two years and I was overjoyed when you jumped ship. And I had so much faith that you guys will get rid of this awful authoritarian Labour government. When Nigel made his speech, I actually cried that the far left can be so vile and vindictive. Now, I'm not part of what you would call the cult following of Nigel.

15:12I vote reform because I believe in the outcomes you all stand for. But what's happening now is leaving me in despair. I don't like this by-election sideshow nonsense. Nigel is giving the media exactly what they want. No matter what channel you turn to, TV, radio, they're loving it. all slagging off Nigel when really all this is going on and Andy Burnham is sliding straight into number 10 unchallenged and I just feel if Nigel wasn't doing this perhaps people would be on Andy's case. Yeah I think that's a very important point and look I was listening to an interview which Nick Robinson the BBC political journalist had with Morgan McSweeney who was the chief of staff to Keir Starmer.

15:58The argument there was that the biggest mistake that Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, a lot of them made, was that they didn't really have any idea what they were going to do when they got into number 10, when they were given this incredible responsibility to privilege to run our country, and that there was next to no scrutiny in the general election back in 2024 of what Labour was actually going to do. Everyone just wanted to get rid of the Tories, They were sick to death of the lot of them. It was a by-election on the Tory party. And everyone gave Labour the benefit of the doubt. Isn't it strange that we seem to be doing exactly the same all over again?

16:35No one is asking, what is Andy Burnham actually going to do? So there's a general call, I'll be seeing, filling in for James O 'Brien. And not answering the question about what? And not answering the question. And not even attempting to answer the question about an unnecessary by-election. No, pulling him in idiot's corner, James O 'Brien. Listeners know what I mean by that. Look, I think they can't escape this. and they can be sort of as aggressive as they want about it, but they can't escape it. And, you know, as you say, John, it has set off a cascade now of more and more stories looking into different elements of either generic sort of financial affairs, the party overall.

17:12And look, if you talk to reformed people, they are absolutely convinced. They're convinced that we're all misreading this. That the public hates the media. They see it for what it is, which they genuinely see it as a witch hunt. They look to, as we talked about over the last couple of days, what happened with Trump in 2024. They think it's a very similar phenomenon. You know, someone told me, Lewis, you cannot overestimate just how much you, you know, the media is hated. Farage is going to channel that. And even if he's up against a bin, his opponents will look cowardly and stupid. And he will use this basically to just ignore any questions which emerge in the future because he'll say, I've been to my constituency.

17:51they've re-elected me and so on and so on and as i say again i think this is reform actually at their weakest when normally they actually have a pretty good finger on the pulse where they constantly transpose and transplant american politics onto our own and frankly we are just not as we are not in that position and we're not as polarized as that and we're not in a situation where yet at least where questions around probity and questions around personal conduct are seen only and solely through a partisan lens. And if you want proof of that, ask Boris Johnson.

18:26Jon Sopel:You can look at America and think, oh my God, look what Donald Trump has got away with. And last week, there was a disclosure, we talked about it on the News Agents USA, about how Donald Trump had made$1.4 billion since returning to the White House for a second term, including hundreds of millions of dollars made through crypto with kind of people investing from the government of the UAE? Why were they investing in Donald Trump's crypto coins? Were they seeking to curry favour with Donald Trump? I mean, it was just extraordinary. We are not the United States of America. We don't like the idea that£5 million goes into someone's bank account and we don't know, hang on, what is this all about?

19:13Jon Sopel:And it isn't declared. We don't like sitting MPs being brand ambassadors. Exactly. I just don't like that idea fondly enough. And also, the other thing I would say, which I think makes this by-election a farce, is that we are a nation of laws, a nation of rules. And there are rules about MPs that are based on some of what happened in the Tory government back in the 1990s when they were taking cash for asking questions on behalf of various different lobbyists or interest groups. And so a whole set of rules came in by which MPs would be judged on their behaviour and rules that they had to follow.

19:53Jon Sopel:And so whilst Nigel Farage can say it's nothing to do with Parliament, it's for the people to decide. No, it's for Parliament to decide. Parliament sets the rules of the road for what MPs can and can't do. And you can have your by-election, but that doesn't alter the fact. And what Nigel Farage is trying to do is what Donald Trump tried to do, which is to say it's it's you know, I am all that stands between you and the swamp taking over your lives. And if they can get me, they can get you. So you've got to stand up for me when I'm being accused of wrongdoing. Donald Trump was found guilty. You know, he was found guilty in a court of law in New York over, you know, campaign expenses and paying off a porn star.

20:34Jon Sopel:He was found guilty of a criminal offence. It's true, the American people chose to ignore it. But that doesn't mean that Nigel Farage can just say, I don't need scrutiny now because I've won a by-election. I'm sorry, the scrutiny carries on regardless. and i think this is all part of a political movement which too much is listening only to the people who already support it online and i think another phenomenon of that is what we've seen with rupert lowe the leader of restore and we're going to be talking about a quite extraordinary interview that he has done with the american podcaster joe rogan just after this

21:23summer is here which means we all want to look and feel our best a glp1 may be right for you visit orderlymeds.com to learn more about which glp1 you could be eligible for getting started is fast easy and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds.com slash podcast. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Taking care of yourself feels great. Compatite medications are not FDA approved. Deligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

22:01Well, some of you may be familiar. You may even listen to Joe Rogan's podcast in the United States. obviously highly, highly influential. He has introduced people into the mainstream who were never heard of before. He gets 11 million listeners every episode. Don't we get that? Well, I was going to say, it's not quite newsagents' numbers, but it's something for him to aspire to. God bless him. Yet, despite the fact they've had 2 ,524 episodes, up to now, up to the 2 ,524th episode, they have not had any British politician, any sitting MP or anything like that until this week. Was it Keir Starmer?

22:39Was it Nigel Farage? Was it Kevin Baden-Ock? No. Was it even Boris Johnson? No. It was the MP for Great Yarmouth, Rupert Lowe. Here's an extract of the interview that they've just done. I think you and I share something in common. I'm a pureblood. I didn't have those injections. I wouldn't go anywhere near them. How did you get away with that in the UK? Well, I used to go to Australia a lot because I have some businesses in Perth in Western Australia. I love those old rocks in Western Australia, the mining, the sort of wild West and Kalgoorlie and places like that, which have got a huge historical connection to sort of gold prospecting and stuff.

23:20So I stopped going, I stopped traveling because it was very difficult to travel. But I don't know about you, I found the lockdown profoundly concerning. I thought things that I thought were the norm, I was losing everything that made sense. And, you know, there were things happening that I didn't think could ever happen in Britain. You know, the state literally took over and it frightened people into submission. So that's Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore on Joe Rogan's show, as I say, hugely influential show. And I think this speaks to, I mean, let's not, let's, let's, you know, make no bones about it.

24:02Rupert Lowe is a hard right political figure. Whatever you want to describe Farage as being, and they've tried at some points to try and move a little bit more to slightly more moderate direction, failed largely partly because of Lowe. This is a hard, hard right guy, his politics. You know, this is a guy who says that his answer to Britain's illegal immigration problem, people coming over the channel, is to take them all to an island off the coast of Scotland, give them some porridge and let the midges do the rest, right? And he says that entirely clearly with a straight face, along with all sorts of other, you know, deeply, deeply hard right policies.

24:35And yet he has become, obviously, with the assistance of Elon Musk, who is a huge fan, who has weighted X algorithmically to him in every way, which has actually been a huge part of Nigel Farage's problems. He's become easily one of the most influential British politicians, not so much in Britain, but certainly across the world because of that link with the United States. And you see it in full flow there being invited onto Joe Rogan's podcast, which is a privilege. And I use that word advisedly privilege, as I say, not extended to any other British politician.

25:06Jon Sopel:I was with somebody the other day who'd done business with Rupert Lowe and had, you know, they'd invested in some things together. This person was saying, I'd never heard Rupert Lowe express a single political opinion ever. He seemed utterly disinterested in politics. And yet suddenly he has emerged. Was it a friend of his in Western Australia with all those lovely rocks? I know. But also we haven't talked about the phrase, the use of that phrase, pure blood. What does that mean? Sorry, when you say you're a pure blood, that kind of has slightly fascistic overtones, doesn't it? It's one of those things, if you are a politician being accused of being a fascist, it might be just a thought, Rupert, just worth maybe avoiding any talk about purity of blood.

25:50Look, I'm just a journalist. What do I know? But it might just be an idea.

25:55Jon Sopel:Yeah, it was pretty extraordinary. Elon Musk is seeing Rupert Lowe, I think, while he's over in America. So that will give him another boost on X. Rupert Lowe also said some other things, which I mean, this one I find astonishing. Shooters who perfectly legitimately like to go and shoot clay pigeons, who like to go and shoot game, who like to go and hunt. Effectively, they're trying to make that very difficult through the licensing laws for guns. As you probably know, they banned handguns. The 90s, right? In the late 90s because there was a murder up in Dunblane. One murder. One murder. So everybody, my father used to shoot pistols for Oxford University and he had, he's dead now, bless him, but he had, all his pistols were taken away, the gun.