153. Reform UK: What Would Farage’s Britain Look Like?

25:58This is why the Tories were so, why the Tories impact on this country's energy policy was so pernicious, because not only did they go down the net zero road, they changed their three chancellors in a week at one point. And by the way, everybody is planning for nuclear and for 10 years. I think that's what they're doing. We have had, so in this country, Rolls-Royce, an incredible engineering company who have some experience on building extremely sophisticated, high cost of failure technology in the form of their aerospace engines. They have as good a product in terms of small modular reactors as anybody.

26:32What we should be doing is sitting down with them, which is exactly what President Trump would do, exactly what Xi Jinping would do. You would sit down with them and say, listen, let's do a deal. let's give you the commitment we need to give you in terms of planning reform, regulatory reform and make sure that you have the visibility you need to be able to ramp up your capacity so that we can get baseload power in this country from nuclear up as quickly as possible that is zero emissions and that's how we get cheap abundant energy in this country and that will help not just with the AI it will help everybody listening to this programme your bills will fall that's the kind of leadership that Nigel will offer when he's the Prime Minister Right, let's go to a quick break before we ask you anymore.

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28:17Hello, I'm William de Rimpel. And I'm Anita Arnond. And we are the hosts of Empire, also from Goalhanger. And we're here to tell you about our recent mini-series that we've just done on The Troubles. In it, we try to get to the very heart of the violent conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the 1960s all the way up to 1998. It's something that we both lived through and remember from our childhoods, but younger listeners may not know anything about it. And it's the time when there was division along religious and political lines. Neighbours turned against each other. Residential city streets became battlegrounds.

28:54Thousands were killed and the IRA bombed London. It seemed as if an end was out of reach, but in 1998, a peace process finally brought those 30 years of violence to an end. But the memory of the Troubles is still present, not only within Northern Irish communities who experienced it, but in international relations and political approaches to peace. And new audiences are starting to understand this national trauma through films like Belfast and kneecap and TV shows like Derry Girls. In fact, our guest on the miniseries is Patrick Radden-Keefe. Now, he's the author of the non-fiction book that inspired the hit TV drama Say Nothing.

29:37It's one of my favourite books. It's, I think, the kind of in cold blood for our generation, extraordinary work of non-fiction. To hear the full series, just search Empire wherever you get your podcasts. So energy prices, but there's lots of other problems as well. So what else? OK, we need to cut waste in government spending. We just have to do it. We are, the current cost for this government of borrowing money is at 4.7%. It's on par with actually the highs of when Liz Truss was the prime minister. And I think it's edging higher. Again, all politicians are saying that though, that they need to cut waste.

30:12And what we are, well, OK, so let's talk about where we could find some of that waste. And we are doing a lot of analysis, you know, are the people working on policy for us. There are lots of places where you can cut waste in this country. One of them would be the net zero stuff, which is around 10 billion, for example, in terms of taxpayer money that is spent on that. Then you've got the at least 5 billion. We think it's probably double that per year that we spend on on asylum hotels and hotels for people who come here illegally. Then you have the foreign aid budget. And it's not to say that there aren't people in the world deserving of that.

30:45But listen, there are so many people in this country who are absolutely struggling. And I think it's unconscionable. And that is being cut. Well, let's see if it actually ends up getting cut. They say they're going to cut it. But last year we spent almost 15 billion pounds as a country on foreign aid. So that already is 30 to 35 billion. If you take something like welfare and benefits, again, difficult problem to solve. I'm not going to claim it's a super easy problem to solve. But when you actually look at the detail on this, number one, that budget is growing at a frightening pace. A double digit percentage of young people now in this country are on long term benefits.

31:19But just on the asylum hotels, for example, I mean, Nigel Farage has made it clear that, you know, you recently expelled from the parliamentary party Rupert Lowe, who was in favour of mass deportations. Nigel Farage has made it clear that he is not in favour of mass deportations. so how are you going to scrap the hotels in which you're, you know, and the very expensive accommodation in which these people are living? It sounds to me as though you're doing a sort of Boris Johnson having your cake and eat it. No, no. What Nigel said in that interview was that, look, so there's a few different points there, right?

31:58So number one, reforms policy is that if you come here illegally, you will be deported to the country from which you came. You have to stop, you have to completely shift the incentives around this 180 degrees. At the moment, it's the opposite. You come here illegally and you actually get better treatment more quickly than the people who come here illegally. But hang on, putting to one side whether or not, A, that's legal and practical or the right moral thing to do. I'm just talking about the very large numbers who are here already. You can't just wish them away. I agree. And that's why we need properly detailed policy, which we will put in front of the British people prior to the next general election.

32:34And that's fundamentally Nigel's point. It's all very well saying we're going to deport three quarters. The numbers of people here illegally are somewhere between three quarters of a million and 1.25 million people. Our view is if you are here illegally, it is unfair to people who, A, came here legally like my parents and, of course, native British people for you to remain. And our view is you should be deported. But we have to be – we're a serious political party. We are preparing for government. And so you have to have a workable plan to ensure that that sort of thing can happen. And you haven't got it yet.

33:05By the way, that's exactly what – because we're working on that. But there is historical precedence for this not too long ago. President Obama, very few people actually realise this. President Obama deported millions, I think he deported three million people across his two terms. So it can be done. It does need to be done for the British people. We are working on a credible and serious plan to make sure that it is done humanely and it is done in a cost-effective fashion. But we can't do any of those things, of course, while we remain part of the ECHR and we have all of these treaties that tie the hands of the British government and effectively work in favour of the rights of foreign citizens over the rights of the people who are British citizens.

33:46So, OK, so in terms of what we've said so far, you're talking about energy, trying to bring down the cost of energy and about trying to send away the people who are currently here illegally. But what about growth? That's not talking to me about where's growth coming from. talking about exactly like the United States is doing at the moment. And you can question some of the rhetoric around it. Is Elon Musk your inspiration in terms of what he's doing? So look, what is clear, what Elon Musk has said, he has said that he believes, and whatever you think of him, he has built some pretty astonishing companies in his time.

34:21He's clearly a smart man. He has said, and I quote him, the United States is on a fast track to bankruptcy. And the United States is in a far better position than we are fiscally and in many other ways as well. They have a 130 % debt to GDP ratio. So they are definitely not in a better position fiscal. They are growing much, much, much faster than we are. Much faster. And they have this incredible consumer market, which is why President Trump is now doing all this stuff on tariffs. But just to be absolutely clear, their debt to GDP ratio is 30 % higher than ours. Yes, but their economy is growing much faster.

34:53And so we're talking about ensuring that people who do need disability benefits can get them. If you're talking about getting our NHS waiting list down from 7 million today, as opposed to where they were two decades ago at a million. If you want those things, if you want doctors, nurses, roads, the police, these things have to be paid for. The only way we will get it is through growth. So we need to cut the waste. That will allow us to then pass that on in terms of tax cuts to British consumers and to British businesses. We shouldn't forget it is the private sector. It is only the private sector that actually creates wealth for British people.

35:28So we have to remember that the majority of people in this country. And just to be clear, because, you know, you are somebody who built a business, so you understand, you know, balance sheets and projections matter. To be clear, Reform's manifesto in an economic sense, the last election was a joke, right? The numbers did not add up. it was a manifesto created by a party that obviously was trying to win votes but had no confidence it was going to be anywhere near power. Do you genuinely believe that by the next election you will have a programme that people will be able to look at and say OK, this is not going to bankrupt the UK?

36:11So I do disagree that the contract with the people that's still up on our website, which is our manifesto. But your costings were ridiculous. They were near realistic. Because the people who did that analysis in order to hurl rocks at us, they made the assumption that everything would be implemented on day one, which was not going to be the case. And a lot of that stuff, Robert, let's be clear about a couple of things in that. So, for example, I remember Richard Tice and Nigel were saying, listen, we want to get the civil service and public bodies to cut 5 % of their costs. And they were ridiculed for this, absolutely ridiculed.

36:47And what's happened now? Rachel Reeves, the Labour Chancellor, what, eight and a half months after the general election saying she wants to put pressure on these departments to cut by 15 % in many cases. So that would be the first point. The second point you'd make about that was defence spending. We were the party that said we want to take defence spending to two and a half percent of GDP and then to three percent and then beyond to three and a half percent over time. What's happened now? Labour saying that they want to increase defence spending to 2.5%, which, by the way, I think they will achieve, to give them credit, not by increasing defence spending, but by reducing GDP.

37:20That's probably the way they're going to hit it. So what we've got to focus on is how do we get the British economy growing? How do we improve the lives of British people? You've got to reduce the size of the state. You've got to reduce taxes on British people. You've got to make Britain one of the best countries in the world to start a business, run a business and grow a business. And the opposite has happened. More millionaires are leaving this country per capita than any country in the world. And some people might roll their eyes about that and say, good winds. Well, the problem with that is the top 1 % of income taxpayers pay around a third of the income tax in this country.

37:54So we have to take the whole population with us. We have to take the people who are working really hard and don't have big incomes. You have to ensure those people's earnings are growing much faster than inflation. And again, the opposite is happening. Wages, real wages, so wages adjusted for inflation currently, are lower than they were in 2008. So everyone listening to this who feels poorer, it's because you are actually getting poorer. So we're not going to solve any of these problems, Robert, without actually some decisive leadership that where difficult conversations need to be had. We are going to need to use a lot of cutting edge technology.

38:34And by the way, by the time we get into government, which is obviously our plan, even if you look at technology today, you look at most of these civil service offices and you look at things like the DVLA and even HMRC, huge amounts of efficiency to be gained by deploying technology in a competent way. We have the talent here. The problem is the talent doesn't exist in Westminster. Most of these MPs have absolutely no idea about what's going on in terms of the frontiers of cutting edge technology. Most of them, I mean, the Labour cabinet, again, I emphasise the point. From what I can tell, none of them have started a business.

39:07None of them have meaningful business experience. On that point, though, do you think you will get a lot of business people who will want to become MPs for reform? We already have. Yeah, we already have. So we have two things. So as chairman of the party, I have some visibility of this. Perhaps others won't yet anyway. The number of people, the talent pool that has availed itself to us, even over the last few months as we've gone up in the polls and been on this journey, it's incredible. These are people who could be doing many, many other things, actually not dissimilarly to what has happened in terms of the Trump administration, where you have the founder of Uber and all of these people turning up to work for free in service of the national good.

39:51We in the UK might not like the decisions they're making because they're making decisions that they believe in the interests of the United States unapologetically. We need leadership in this country that are willing to do the same thing. A lot of those decisions are not going to help the American people. Their inflation is going to rocket with all these trade tariffs. Listen, I don't think if Nigel was the prime minister, number one, I believe we would have gotten carve out on a lot of these tariffs that are happening now. I do think, I take your point that there was a collegial meeting in the Oval Office that Keir Starmer had.

40:27And President Trump actually does have a soft spot for the UK. But I will say it was deeply, deeply unhelpful. Absolutely catastrophic, actually, for this country. That so many members of this country's cabinet have made personal, personally insulting comments about President Trump. I'm talking about what America is doing. It's not going to help American people. And you're saying you want to do that here. Well, you've got to judge that. You've got to judge that in a few years' time when you see the result of it. I mean, clearly. Hang on a second. I mean, business and consumer confidence is absolutely tanking in America.

40:57You know, I mean, there is no credible economic theory which would say what Trump is doing in terms of tariffs will do anything other than make a America poorer and the world poorer. I am not in favor of the actions that the Trump administration is currently doing in terms of tariffs. I'm a British person. I don't think I don't want any of our exporters being exposed to tariffs. Let's be really clear about that. I will make this point. But you're also saying you're praising Trump for putting America first when what Trump is actually doing is damaging his own citizens. I'm not praising anyone. I'm observing and just making a factual statement.

41:43We live in the real world. President Trump has made it abundantly clear. You've seen the signal chats, et cetera. The view amongst many people in the United States in terms of Washington, D.C., is that firstly, Europe, including the United Kingdom, needs to spend a lot more money on defense. And we are. We are now starting to do that, yes. Unfortunately, you've got to ask yourself, well, there's a plan to do it. But again, you've got to ask yourself, where is this money coming from? If you have no growth, it's all very well saying you're going to increase it as a percentage, but that money has to come from somewhere.

42:14I want to live in a United Kingdom that does stand on its own two feet in terms of a military that isn't chronically underinvested thanks to 14 years of Tory rule. I want to live in a UK in which the economy is growing 3 % to 5 % per year. And most importantly, I want to live in a United Kingdom where GDP per capita, output and incomes per head, is also increasing 3 % to 5 % a year. And we're not going to get there unless we have politicians and leaders who are willing to make decisions through the lens of which decision can I make that is most in the interest of my citizens. And we haven't had that, frankly, in my lifetime.

42:51What's harder, running a business or trying to convince the nation of what you're saying about what we need? Business is really, really, really hard. I think politics is harder. Politics is harder. And it should be because, you know, we are making the case to the British people that reform should be the government. And that is a grave and serious responsibility. It's the point I'm making. You know, our government spending is 1.2 trillion per year. The two most important people in this country as we speak in making decisions with that money are Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves. And without being unkind, I personally think I can think of many people whom I would like to be making those decisions more so than them.

43:34Now, look, the reality is they were elected in a free and fair election and we absolutely respect that. So we've now got to make our case to the British people. As chairman of the party, I'll also say it is as challenging assembling a political party from scratch. I mean, you know, eight months ago, there basically wasn't really a... There was no infrastructure whatsoever. We've still got a long way to go and we're going to continue to building, but we're proud of what we have achieved. But you think you'll be ready in three years, do you? You don't need to merge with the Tories, which is what a lot of people believe.

44:03No, I don't believe that. And I think if we did do that, the reason why we are against it is because, number one, we don't think we need to. So if you look at the general election, we won 14 % of the vote share, 4.1 million votes. Current national average of the polls puts us at 25 odd percent. That is nine percentage points. We've done that in as many months. Our membership, while the membership of the other major parties from all reputable sources, is in decline, as has gone from 60 ,000 in July last year to 220 ,000. So we have huge momentum. And again, as someone who, look, in Westminster, well, you can, but almost nobody seems to be able to look beyond the news cycle tomorrow or maybe the end of the week.

44:44And I think that's actually a really big problem, a big reason why the country is in the state that it's in. We think if we can carry on with the momentum that we have, we don't need to merge with the Tories. But you expressed it as, you know, if you carry on with the momentum, you're not saying we're rooted out on principle of merging with the Tories. Well, look, we believe that, well, let's just look at the evidence of 14 years of Tory rule. One doesn't need to speculate about this, right? They were the party. And whether you agreed with this policy or not, in four consecutive manifestos, they committed that they would reduce net migration down to the tens of thousands.

45:20They left office with it at over a million. And again, whether you agree with that policy or not, they literally did the opposite of what they promised. They took taxes to they took the tax burden on working people to the highest level since the Second World War. And I know Covid happened and you can argue about that. But under Boris Johnson, public spending as a representative of GDP got not far off Soviet Union level. So, again, this is not what people expected when they voted Tory. That's why their vote has collapsed. What we believe needs to happen now and we have a historic opportunity to do it, to actually get to the point where we can have, well, we need a minimum of 326 clearly to have a majority.

45:56Our goal is to get to 350 to 400 reform MPs who are in no uncertainty about why they have been elected with a clear mandate from the British people. So as a sort of business plan, then, since we started off talking about your business, at what point will you be able to decide that you've got a credible machine that could win an election? Two years from now? Well, it'll be for the British people to make that decision. No, no, what I'm saying is if you're saying you don't think you need to merge with the Tories, so at some point before the next election you have to make that formal decision. Let me be crystal clear.

46:34All of the things we are talking about, all the things I've talked about in this podcast, all the things that Nigel and the MPs and I talk about our vision for the United Kingdom, we do not think that will be possible if we had to merge with the Tories, partly because the Tories are 50 % small C conservatives who are values aligned with us, and the other half are basically Lib Dems. And that was the reason why, by the way, they got through six leaders in eight years. It's why Rishi Sunak failed on every single one of his KPIs a year before the general election. I actually don't think it was because Rishi Sunak didn't want to stop the votes, for example.

47:06It's because he has a parliamentary party where every conservative leader, and I believe Kemi is doing exactly the same thing now, the lens through which they make decisions is not what's in the best interest of the country, But how do I minimise the likelihood of another letter going into the 1922 committee to have me removed? Do you know what's really interesting to me sitting here now chatting to you is like you guys pitch yourselves as kind of anti-establishment. And I know people who voted reform. I'm up in the northeast. So, you know, I know plenty of people who voted reform. What they have always rated about reform is not sounding like politicians, like the Westminster politicians.

47:45and you sound like a Westminster politician. Like you're doing all the same tit-for-tat attacks on politics and you're not worried by, you know, you're starting as a start-up but you're becoming a corporate, you're becoming a mainstream party that's going to just sound and look like all the others. Well, I think fundamentally the thing that we think is broken is Westminster in general. We think we need a reboot, which is why, as I said, we don't think we should be... We think that if we were forced to merge with the Tories because we didn't have the success we think we can and need to over the next few years, and we obviously got to make the case of the British people in order to do that, then none of the things that we want to happen will happen.

48:25For example, securing our borders, stopping the boats, withdrawing from international treaties that prevent us from doing that, freezing net migration, reducing the size of the state. I mean, these are all actually, I think, going to be quite radical things that we put in front of the British people. We will put it in our manifesto, unlike Labour. One of the reasons why Labour's popularity has collapsed, by the way, since the general election is less because people like me or people like Nigel don't like the policies. I mean, that's baked in for them. It's because none of the things that they were, that are most unpopular in terms of policies were in their manifesto, taking away the winter fuel allowance, the inheritance tax rate on farmers, the increase in national insurance contributions.

49:05So look, I think you've just proved Steph's point there because this just sounds like the normal party knockabout. Well, look. Whereas what people want to hear, I think Steph's saying a solution. Yeah, it's just what you're going to do, not what everyone else has done wrong. That's just, you know, like my, you know, I was in, I'm from Middlesbrough, I was there when covering Brexit when it happened. I know why people voted for Brexit in the North East. I know why they did. And it was because they were so annoyed with Westminster and they were annoyed with this political and media elite who were making all the decisions for them.

49:39That was the big driver. A lot of people didn't realise that at the time. and I was like the one of the lone voices shouting it. I know Robert thought it too because we were working together, but there's a danger you're going to look and sound like everyone else and that's going to be your downfall. Well, I don't think there's anybody else who is saying the things that I've said on this podcast, right? So not only are we going to leave the ECHR as quickly as possible, that will allow us to then stop the boat, we'll freeze migration, we will deport people here illegally, we will dramatically cut public spending, We'll reduce people's taxes and we'll get our economy growing three to five percent a year and on a per capita basis.

50:17Well, I don't believe any other party is saying those things. And I think, you know, even when we talk about energy policy, I mean, ironically, we actually agreed on some of these points, partly because the way policy is made in this country by both parties, by the Tories over 14 years and now, frankly, by Labour is incredibly short term, motivated by totally the wrong things. All we will do is continue to put that case to the British people. Right, unfortunately we're out of time. I always think it's good to end on a point of irony. Listen, it's great to see you. Very interesting conversation.

50:48Thanks very much for coming. Yeah, we've covered loads there. Thank you very much.

50:53Wow, that was interesting. It was interesting. I mean, look, in case anybody out there is sort of, you know, some of you may well think everything he has to say is absolutely brilliant and others of you will be really horrified by the kind of policies that he's got, including essentially branding pretty much all asylum seekers as illegal. Obviously, there will be asylum seekers here who are escaping persecution. And the idea that we're going to expel all of them, I think many people would regard that approach by reform as absolutely toxic and reprehensible. But it's important, you know, the reason we talk to Zia Yusuf is people have to understand what they represent.

51:33Because if you don't shine a light on a party that's challenging for government, people will not vote in a rational way. Yeah, and as we said at the start, they do need to be taken seriously because they are challenging the traditional parties. They're currently getting a 25 % vote share. Now, let's be absolutely clear. At this stage of the parliament, 25 % of the vote share does not mean that's what you're going to get in a general election. There's a lot of discontent with the government, but they are an important force. And I think it was important to get him to talk about what they stand for, where they're going.

52:13And people can make up their own minds whether that's the sort of thing they want to support or not. I think it was a bit annoyed with me at the end, though, suggesting that he sounded like other politicians. But he did, you know. No, he massively did. And actually one of the things that is, you know, I mean, listen, you know, paying money takes your choice whether you want them to succeed or not. but it is interesting to me I mean you made a very important point that you know they do increasingly sound like just another one of those knockabout you know political parties that engages in the normal knockabout and as you say the more they sound like that quite a lot of the people that you know who voted for them the more those people may well be disillusioned yeah interesting right we better wrap up that's it from us and the rest is money bye bye goodbye