The 'traitor' row tearing Reform apart

0:02This is a global production. Zia Yusuf calling a former conservative defence secretary, Ben Wallace, who has served his country, who has been honoured for the military service that he gave, to call him a traitor? Nah. But then what happens when you're on the down and you're trying to lift yourself again? You try and get attention. But the way that you get attention, as we know, in the content era and the attention economy that we live in is by being more extreme, by leaning into your worst excesses. You are maybe appealing to the far right flank and to those people who are on X, but are you winning the country over?

0:44The thing about insurgent parties like reform is in a way they're a conjuring trick. They're very good at casting a spell. I don't care about being called a moron. I do care about being called a traitor. A traitor is a very loaded charge. Traitor carries by history a death sentence. And this is a man who a few weeks ago was telling people to modify their language after the tragic murder of Anne Whittaker and spouts this stuff. I also think it's a bit cheeky. This is a guy who's an American banker, for God's sake, you know, never put a uniform on in his life. I spent nine years of my life on operational tools and in uniform.

1:18From a party whose Welsh leader is currently languishing in jail for 10 years for basically being a traitor, taking money from the Russian state. Nathan Gill. I think I know a traitor better than he does. That is the former Conservative Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, speaking on LBC. As a former serviceman, I think it's fair to say taking no prisoners against the reform home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, after he called Wallace a traitor to Britain, after Wallace had criticised reform's policies on sending prisoners in the UK to foreign countries. The striking thing since the 2024 election is how much reform got right in the immediate aftermath of it.

2:05But is it now getting everything absolutely wrong? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:16The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And before we start, John, I don't know about you, I just really fancy for some reason, I don't know why, like a 99 ice cream? Maybe with like a flake? And for some reason I've got green sleeves. I've just got green sleeves just going off in my head for some reason. You're trying to make a sartorial joke, are you? Well, you've said enough of them my way in the past. Just for people listening rather than watching, John is wearing today a very fetching cream suit. It would make Martin Bell blush, I think it's fair to say. That's how bright it is. It's very bright and it's very new.

2:50It's very new. Very lovely. From a holiday in Vietnam, made to measure, can't beat it. And it's a little lighter than I had anticipated. Well, it's lovely. It's summer, a little taste of summer, whereas you look rather gloomy and wintery. I know, I'm already preparing for the autumn. Calippo's all around. Anyway, back to our proper story. So this is a, well, as it often is with reform, it is a row which is engulfing the party, which started on X, and which is, I think, in all sorts of ways, reminding us of the ways in which this feels like a party at the moment, which is spiralling out of control.

3:24So Zia Yusuf, who we've had on this show before, he's the party's former party chairman, Home Affairs spokesperson. He's often been heralded by Nigel Farage as the rising star of the party. As you heard at the top there, he has been slammed by the former Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, for saying online that he was a traitor to Britain. And I have to say, this is the sort of language which has become more common, certainly in parts of the Reform Party and from Yusuf himself. This comes after Yusuf hit out at the Defence Secretary. Ben Wallace had criticised Yusuf's plans to fix the shortage of prison places by sending foreign criminals abroad.

4:05He said that on X. And in response, Yusuf said, incredible that this moron was Defence Secretary. Our policy today is in direct response to your government's failures. If their home countries won't take back their citizens that are languishing in our jails, we're going to rent spaces in countries like El Salvador to put them. And this all started off in a kind of like spiralled into a kind of Twitter exchange where Wallace, among other things, hit back by saying, oh, look, a lesson from a man who never put a uniform on, just worked at a bank, a man who is literally making policy and facts up. But it is that accusation of being a traitor, that deeply emotive language that really has basically cascaded through the Reform Party and indeed has led this afternoon to Nigel Farage having to disown what Zia Yusuf has said.

4:55Zia Yusuf, your Home Affairs spokesman, is called Ben Wallace overnight, a traitor. Do you think Ben Wallace, former Defence Secretary, put on the uniform, is he a traitor? That's too strong.

5:10do you encourage him to delete that tweet uh i'll speak to him i'll speak to him but yeah it's it's over um yeah so you may have struggled to hear some of that but uh nigel farage saying that's a bit strong he's going to get a ticking off uh you know he wouldn't have said that i i do think the sun which has been a brilliant newspaper over the years still needs a little help on the audio uh side of its production um I think the microphone was pointing. I don't know whether the microphone was actually connected to listen to what Mr Farage had to say. But anyway, it's interesting, isn't it, that Nigel Farage is even having to say, Zia, well, enough, rein it in, wind your neck in, son, and stop saying all this stuff.

5:55And I think it points to something else that is you've got Nigel Farage, who since the 2024 election has seen an opportunity where reform can be catapulted into the lead in British political opinion polling, could potentially win a general election. What does it need to do? It needs to win over. It needs to win over disaffected conservative voters who kind of are part of the mainstream and they want to see reform that's a bit more respectable. Zia Yusuf calling a former conservative defence secretary who has served his country, who has been honoured for the military service that he gave to call him a traitor.

6:41Nah, you're not winning friends there, mate. You are maybe appealing to the far right flank and to those people who are on X. But are you winning the country over? And you saw in Makerfield the danger for reform by trying to go far too far out to one side is that people think, you know what? I don't want to have reform as the MP. I will vote someone else. I will either vote restore or I will vote for Labour. And that is exactly what happened in the maker field by election. And Zia Yusuf seems to represent one strand of thought, which is we've got to go far further to the right. We've got to be even angrier.

7:22We've got to out restore, restore. But you've got Farage seeming to want to go in a different direction. i think what's what's what's revealing about this and why it's more than just a twist about is as you indicate john i think this is indicative of um a wider split within reform and in a sense we've already seen a split within reform because those who wanted to take that harder edge not only rhetorically politically but also in terms of policy in all sorts of areas going harder to the right and even to the far right in some cases that's already happened because it's happened with Restore and it's happened with Rupert Lowe.

7:56And I think what you're seeing here is at least two schools of thought within the remainder of reform, which is that, as we've talked about on the show before, 12 months ago, reform had a maximalist strategy where it was looking to get up to 35 % and 38%. And what I think is the danger with this sort of thing from Yusuf, which is not an isolated example by the way um is that it speaks to a party which is cascading out of control and if it is not careful we'll end up in a death spiral a political death spiral because this is the sequence of events and we're already halfway through it potentially which is that um the thing about insurgent parties like reform is in a way they're a conjuring trick they're very good at casting a spell right because what they do is they have to convince you that they have a sort of unalloyed chain of momentum.

8:51It's never going to be broken. We're getting bigger. We're getting bigger. We're getting more support. We are the people. And you can see that from 100 unbroken poles where we're top, 200, 300, 500. And that's great as long as you can maintain that momentum. The moment you stop maintaining that momentum, the moment you start to slide, the moment you start to make mistakes, it's almost as if the spell is broken. We're seeing that in the polls with Nigel Farage's personal ratings at the moment. It is something which is, and we've seen it with Polanski as well, it is something which is almost endemic within these parties, which is that the very forces, the vapours which lifted them, are so good at bringing them down again, because there is nothing that much more substantial than the waves and the sort of populist kind of instincts which brought to them where they were in the first place.

9:44So I think that the danger is, is that as soon as you're on the down in a way that reform art, at least for the moment, and it might not maintain, by the way, because they're still maintaining some decent levels of popularity. But then what happens when you're on the down and you're trying to lift yourself again? You try and get attention. You try almost at any cost to get attention, to try and be lifted up again. But the way that you get attention, as we know, in the content era and the attention economy that we live in is by being more extreme, by leaning into your worst excesses, which is exactly the opposite of the maximalist strategy, which is where reform were when they were at their strongest.

10:23And that leads you to the crazy situation of calling a former defence secretary who is in the Scots Guard a traitor for a policy for just criticising you online. There is a world of political difference between not agreeing with what Ben Wallace says, not approving of what he did when he was defence secretary. As Yusuf says himself, he took out the super injunction to prevent that. Well, he didn't actually do it, but his government took out the super injunction, which which which led to people like us not being able to report on that Afghan policy. But there's a world of difference between that and calling someone a traitor and treachery and treason.

10:58Look, I mean, what's striking is as well is the language of Zia Yusuf after the death of Anne Whittacombe when he's saying we've got to moderate the way we speak in politics. Wes Streeting, until recently, the health secretary, said, quote, if only science had a cure for Anne Whittacombe. A woman on Twitter said, quote, Anne Whittacombe better go this week. She is a little fascist beast. This woman happens to have been until just a few months ago the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Jess Phillips. Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, made the inflammatory declaration that, quote, the greatest threat to the Britain we love doesn't come from Tehran or Moscow.

11:47It comes from within. I'm talking about Nigel Farage. is it any wonder with such rhetoric relentlessly leveled at reform that some may be moved to try to eliminate that supposed threat through lethal violence so that was zia yusuf then and obviously the traitor comments is zia yusuf now and they're only separated uh by a few weeks and i think what you were saying lewis about the need to show that you're continually rising and once it stops rising then you're in problem because how do you reinflate the balloon i remember back in the day thatcher had a great phrase for it and the sdp where you know she said i as someone who can cook knows that you can't make a souffle rise twice and i think that it was a kind of what one of those very brilliantly written uh phrases for her because it hit home about the sdp you know they'd started to sink and they weren't going to rise again.

12:46I've sometimes wondered whether with reform and what you're seeing now between Zia Yusuf going out on a kind of, you know, more extreme view than Farage, whether it is the same trick that Thatcher and Tebbet pulled off when, you know, Tebbet was the party chairman, Thatcher was the prime minister, and Tebbet would say much more inflammatory things than Margaret Thatcher would. And he was there to be the Rottweiler attack dog to kind of go out and say the things that were unthinkable, but would play well with the Conservative base at that time. I'm not convinced that it's as well organised as that in reform at the moment, where I don't think there is that discipline of, right, this is what we're doing.

13:26This is how we're doing it. I think an awful lot of people are going their own way. And it's not working well for them at the moment. If you look at just the recent cascade of publicity that has been so negative. Yeah, well, I think Reformer found themselves in a very unhappy space, which is that, you know, we've got the Clackton by-election this week. That result will come in on Friday. Farage is almost certainly going to win. For all those people out there hoping that we were going to see a Count Bim face MP, you know, it's not going to happen. But during that time, because he has absented himself in the political battle, because basically broadcasters haven't been able to really include him very much, as a Burnham has become prime minister.

14:07They've receded, they've fallen down the agenda. At the same time, they've been slipping in the polls. And so they've been trying to find ways of getting back into the conversation. And until Farage is actually re-elected, by which time, of course, all the investigations will resume in Parliament about his financial affairs, but until he's re-elected, they've basically been without a leader. And it feels to me that in that space, to some extent, has stepped forward, Yusuf and others who have been trying to kind of get some attention and what I think is the problem here with Yusuf in particular and I think with his style of politics and it's sometimes Farage employs this sometimes he doesn't but it is this battle which is going on with reform Yusuf's tick his rhetorical sort of tick here and other politicians on the kind of this part of the right do it as well is to basically collapse the distinction between between being wrong and between being wicked right like basically it isn't just that politicians like ben wallace have made bad decisions they betrayed you they betrayed britain they should face consequences for it he's always talking about like a reckoning of there being some sort of when reform is in there that basically the government's going to come after you like in some way right like there's something that is so online about him and about his politics like he the constant escalation of nouns that he has right It's not just that someone's wrong, it's that they've become an enemy and the enemy becomes like a version of betrayal and then that becomes treason.

15:41And the problem with that is, right, the problem with that is, this is the guy who's going to be Home Secretary. The argument is that this is the guy who's going to become Home Secretary and to have a potentially incoming Home Secretary accusing former politicians of betrayal, of not just betrayal, but of being a traitor, when he would be in charge of the apparatus of the British state, of the security state. do we want that is that what we want is that the sort of country we want to be we want to be because i can think of no precedent for that i can think of no precedent of someone who fancies themselves as an incoming home secretary accusing a recently departed from government a former government minister of being a of being a traitor but isn't that the mistake that people are making online where you live this life by demanding attention the attention economy which we've spoken about many times and you you've kind of mentioned this is is that the center of political gravity online the likes that you're going to get on x the algorithmic boost you're going to get by being extreme i mean sure i bet you it gets you a huge amount of likes but if we're talking about those constituencies which you know reform strategists will have looked at in surrey and hampshire and wherever else where there are an awful lot of tory seats is is attacking ben wallace for being a traitor, going to win over those voters who might have thought about going with reform, I don't think it will.

17:07I think it's entirely counter... We're not America. Yeah, we're not America. Please wake up to this. I think this is a schism, like at the heart of this party. I think some people in reform, and there are some really clever people in reform, there are people who rightly are capitalising on the deep anti-politics feeling there is in this country, the deep anti-Westminster feeling. absolutely there's a feeling that the big parties have let this country down a lot let lots of people down and it's completely legitimate important that those voices are heard and there is a channel for that and don't get me wrong you know they're still doing well in some by elections they did spectacularly well at the local elections and they're still i mean if you talk to them they'll say look this is andy burnham's best best moment that there's going to be it's all going to be downhill for here and from here and we're hanging in there do not write us off and i think this is perfectly possible indeed plausible that in three months time or six months time we're talking about them at the top of the polls again right so there's this is there's nothing certain about this but i guarantee and i think their big mistake which has come over the last 12 months is the moments that they think that we're america the moment that they think that they can transpose mega politics and superimpose it onto our country and our politics and yes there are elements of our politics which are becoming more american over time we are becoming somewhat more polarized there is radicalisation going on, some of those same sort of forces, but we are a long way behind that.

18:26And the proclivities and the instincts and just the sentiment, the kind of the manners of British politics and British people are different and are in a different place and different space to where America is. And these people, frankly, sometimes their association with MAGA and their kind of finger on the pulse, some of them with American politics has been an asset. Increasingly, It feels like a huge, huge problem and something which is impeding them rather than propelling them forward. Can we just talk about one other thing which kind of emerged over the weekend, which hasn't been discussed much?

18:59And that is that Aaron Banks, who was one of the original bad boys of Brexit, who is very close to, yeah, who's, you know, very close to Nigel Farage, stood to be mayor of the West of England on the reform ticket. So and he's often put up as a kind of reform voice. He paid for investigators to look into the background of the Sunday Times Insight editor, Gabriel Pogrand, who's been on this podcast a number of times into what his background is. And is there any dirt on him because of the stuff that he had been digging up on reform? And you think Gabriel Pogrant is really in this unique position now where not only has he been investigated from the right reform, but also by the left, by Josh Simons or the think tank that Josh Simons was involved with.

19:52And Josh Simons paid a hefty price. He was forced out of government. What is the price that Aaron Banks is paying for this investigation that he's launched into a journalist who was doing his job? What a journalist is paid to do? Well, I think Gabriel should take it as an enormous, although it must be very disturbing, he should take it as an enormous compliment in a sense that both the Labour Party and reform, well, someone very closely associated with reform and someone closely associated with the Labour Party, I should say, have been so bothered by his reporting that they have gone to the trouble of doing this.

20:27But that doesn't mean it isn't a deeply disturbing development, profoundly disturbing development in our politics. And just to be absolutely specific about it as well. I mean, this is this is according to the Sunday Times. Investigators reportedly reportedly from Precision Risk and Intelligence, a private investigations firm that banks previously owned. When the new statesman put the allegations to banks, he didn't deny commissioning the investigation. He instead justified his stance by alleging that the Sunday Times had used hack material, something the paper strongly denies, and reportedly said, when you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

21:02And the Sunday Times has described the investigation into Poggerind as reprehensible. And reform, important to say, reforms say that they themselves weren't involved and didn't know about Banks' investigation. But Banks, as you say, John, is basically as a longstanding and prominent ally of Farage as it gets. You know, he's given a lot of money to Farage's different political vehicles over the years. He stood for the party as a candidate. Is he going to get kicked out of the party? Is he going to be removed from the party? If Farage says rightly that it's a bit far, a bit far, a bit over the top to call someone a traitor, Is it a bit far and a bit much for one of your most prominent supporters to commission an investigation into a journalist for doing his job?

21:49Is that the sort of country we want to live in? Like, this is the point. This is this is the point that reform have to kind of ask themselves. Right. They want to be treated seriously as a credible government in waiting. And there have been moments in the recent past where that has looked very probable or at least, you know, very credible. um do can we expect from reform government that we'll have a home secretary who is accusing his predecessor ministers in government of being traitors as a matter of course can we expect that prominent allies of reform ministers will be commissioning investigations from private investigators into journalists and journalism that they don't like is that the sort of country that we can expect to be in 2028 or 29 after the next general election if there is a reform majority.

22:38Because it's not the sort of government that we'll have ever had before. Lewis, you spoke a moment ago about the mistake reform are making by trying to borrow everything from the example of the United States. The United States has this thing called the First Amendment. And we have freedom of speech in this country as well, something the reforms say they are firmly in favour of. If you believe in freedom of speech, you also believe in a free press, able to go about its work legally, lawfully, within the rules, which is what Gabriel Pogrand has done. You don't start getting the goons involved to have an investigation into what he's doing, into his work, and whether there is anything that could compromise him.

23:17I think it's outrageous and gone way, way too far. Right. When we come back, the Prime Minister has got an announcement about, well, you guessed it, high streets. And we'll be talking to someone who perhaps unexpectedly may have been the inspiration for what he's had to say. Stay with us.

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24:21so Andy Burnham is on the latest stage of his cost of living tour and what is wrong with Britain and the small measures that will make a big difference and today he is focusing on the high street and what has gone wrong with the high street the fact that it's full of vape shops and casinos or slot machines or whatever that are operating 24 hours? And how do you get ordinary shops back onto the high street? And he's been speaking to LBC's Henry Riley. Annie Burnham, thank you very much for joining us. What has gone wrong with our high streets, Prime Minister? They've been in slow decline, possibly from the 80s, as shopping habits changed, but also de-industrialisation as the big employers left, people had less money to spend, So it's been a combination of factors, but you can go up and down Britain now and you see hollowed out high streets.

25:13And it's sad because people in those areas say, well, why can't it be more again? Why can't it be better? It's also linked to councils. Councils have not had enough power and resource to turn them around. And that's what today's announcement is about. Give communities more power to close the shops they don't want, stop the spread of them as well. and then there'll be a phase two of this campaign which is looking at more incentives to support businesses through business rates. Well, as the Prime Minister speaking to LBC and Jacob Hawley has joined us in the studio. He's a comedian but also host of the Screamrot podcast which I'm a big fan of, a podcast which explores internet content, content creators and, most germany for this, a long-standing campaigner to save the British high street.

25:57That's correct. I've been passionate about this for a long time. I'm very glad to finally see action being taken. What? Obviously, when we think of campaigners to save the British High Street, most don't tend to be, how can I put this, as young as you. Go for it, Lewis. No, no. It's nice. Don't tend to be as young or as content savvy as you. What is it about the British High Street which has attracted your campaigning zeal? Do you know what? I think it started, funnily enough, it was one of those chicken and egg things where it started as something I spoke about on the podcast. But as I spoke about it more on the podcast, I started thinking about it more and getting more bothered by it.

26:35And I remember someone sort of messaged me after a gig being like, oh, yeah, I like the cut of your jib, mate. I'm from a similar place to you. You know, I've probably got similar concerns to you. I don't like this, don't like that. And I don't like the sort of fall of the high street. And I just thought that was a really funny thing to say to someone that you'd assume that that's something I care about. And then after he said it, I was like, yeah, I'm fed up with it, actually. and I think it's one of those really like everyday normal things that everyone notices every single day you know the amount of people who walk around Britain now and they go yes rubbish it's awful it's just worse than it used to be and you can't really put your finger on why but that's one of the things that's one of the reasons why like when I was a kid I would go around with my mum stop at a little bakery get a biscuit brags the bakers well do you know what I mean it felt quaint and nice and now as you say those places are gone and they are replaced by vape shops barber shops with no one in them sort of tat shops do you know what I mean everything shops alright Robert Jenrick well right but you've just hit on the problem is it gets grabbed by people on that side of things Robert Jenrick Farage stuff like that but then ostensibly it's like why is it a right wing no it shouldn't and that's why it's really smart of Burnham to a lighter point I mean you tweeted last month if a politician just said I'm going to put a bit of money in and just wipe this i.e.

27:54vape shops all out it'd be one of the most popular things a politician's done in years everyone's fucking fed up with it yeah vindication for you today thank you well I'm glad that Mr. Burnham was reading my tweet I mean to be fair he does follow my podcast's Twitter account does he? yeah and I am doesn't follow us Jesus Christ Prime Minister well so do you think he's do you think he's been listening to you do you think that this has helped kind of inform his judgement Do you think I did it? I'm trying to give you... I'm picking you up here, man. I couldn't give it any more welly than saying, you know, are you responsible for Downing Street?

28:27You could be the new Mary Portis. Well, I don't want to... We had some messages from people who work for councils who've said that they sent proposals to Number 10 where they had used clips from us talking about this thing. Really? But I do think it's because, as you just say there, all right, Robert Jennerick, it's like it feels like a right-wing issue. It's not, and it shouldn't be. But the reason it does is because we're quite a plain speaking podcast. I think that's the reason we talk. Because let's be honest, it's not Pam and Sue, the former dealer ladies running the vape shops. It's lads from overseas.

29:02Do you know what I mean? And that makes people a bit tense. That makes people, oh, God. It doesn't feel great as an ostensibly left-leaning person to go, can we get rid of those brown people? They're making things look a bit untidy. But that's not what you're saying. What we're saying is a lot of it's crime. Yeah, of course. A lot of it is crime. And I think ultimately, normal people who just potter up and down going to work, getting on the tube every day, using the train station, whatever, when they walk past these places. And the left have been way too squeamish about just like, and not just the left, just like mainstream political parties have been way too squeamish about addressing this stuff head on.