200. Count Binface: Nigel Farage's Biggest Threat?

18:50Now, you might think that British members of Parliament should be working out how to fix the sodding economy, but apparently that's what they were spending their time doing. All power to their elbow. You're now dependent upon them. which is not a good place to be. That's my point exactly. Who wants to be dependent on the current state of parliament? I'm offering to change all that. Hang on, we need to finish this question. How else am I going to do? So just by being me, I'll raise some money. By winning, I will save the voters of Clacton 350 grand from another by-election, right? Stick that on a bus.

19:26That's 350 ,000 quid before I've even started. I know it's not going to match your salaries, but that's a good few nurses, right? So there's that one. I'm going to make Walton Pier just as great as Clacton Pier.

19:40Rory Stewart:Tell us a little bit about those two piers. Why is Walton Pier not as great as Clacton Pier? Have you not done your research? No, tell us about Walton Pier. We've read the manifesto. You say Walton Pier is going to be as good as Clacton Pier. How much does that cost? Well, it depends really. I mean, there's the reputational greatness. I mean, we're getting into the semantic debates. Rory's licking his lips. about the word greatness. Yes? Make America great again. Make Walton Peer great again. Just by me saying it, it gets greater for a start. But I'll give you a little tidbit. Nigel Farage did a social media post celebrating 155 years of Clapton Peer.

20:22Anyone could have read that on Wikipedia. So I put my post out celebrating 196 years of Walton, Old Pier and New Pier. It's even more historic. So I think we need to celebrate that. Give it UNESCO World Heritage Status, Rory. Camp in face, Rory Stewart. Quick break and back for more. So that's how the magic happens. I'll do one. Hang on. Yeah, you're good. Rory Stewart, Alistair Campbell. That was brilliant. Quick break and then we'll be back for more. That's much better.

20:56Rory Stewart:When you were putting together your manifesto, So there are two things going on, I guess, in a manifesto. One is laying out stuff which is about what you're going to do in the future. The other is stuff which is implicitly criticizing what your predecessor has done. You're not an incumbent, right? You're a candidate for change. You're a candidate for change. So I guess one of the things that was frustrating me when I was looking at earlier statements is that there's more potential for really pointing out some of the ways in which Nigel Farage has gone wrong. Right. So some of your pledges, it'd be nice to hear more pledges where we felt this is showing us something ludicrous or corrupt or absurd about it.

21:37Rory Stewart:I mean, I'd like references to posh George, to successful aristocrats and all this kind of stuff. No, no. No, I value your critique. OK. And I'm relishing this debate, but I disagree entirely with your premise. OK. So just to dismantle it piece by piece. Firstly, I do agree that a manifesto is made of two fundamental parts. Okay. Yep. Because the word manifesto itself comes from the root words manifest, meaning abundantly clear, and O meaning nothing whatsoever. That's what you guys do. But I'm different. And so you need to change your rationale. And so, no, my specific policies are to not be mounting ad hominem attacks in a manifesto.

22:29Why? Because you've just proven my point without me putting it in my manifesto. You've just gone posh, George, Harbourn, five million quid. Why do I need to waste my time when I have my minions here in their lovely untied, unbuttoned shirts doing it for me? You see? So I'm one step ahead of you. I'm playing 9D chess, Rory. Can you win this by-election? Probably not. But, you know, there's a chance, isn't there? Why do you say probably not? Well, because the forces of Nigel apparently have been mustered even from Manchester. They're putting it all in. And let's be fair. he has a sitting majority, which even the Conservatives probably from the last election would have done well to surmount.

23:20So you're talking about a bin-shaped alien who just scored 95 votes, a Dolly Parton, 95, coming from that in June to becoming a member of parliament in August. I'm not saying it's impossible. In fact, look at the book I brought. You're holding it right there. I have got the memoir of none other than the human Martin Bell. Accidental MP. An inspiration to you. Quite right. He even wore an interesting suit. Lovely suit. Not as good as mine. I was the person who persuaded him to do this. Were you? I was. And when Farage announced that he wasn't standing in Clacton, I wondered whether there wouldn't be a way of getting somebody like him to stand instead of Tory, Labour, etc.

24:17That's what I thought would happen. And you could argue it has. Did you wait until that kind of thing might have happened? Did you think, no, this is my moment? Well, this is my perfect moment. And Martin McCutcheon would say, can't be the first time you've quoted her on this program. But it's a good question. Well, my instinct was to send a little message saying, when I found out the by-election was on, game on, night. That's all I said. And then next thing I know, the British media, the international media, the Sigma 9 media, and gone, boom, it's BinFace versus Farage. So that you've kind of constructed that narrative yourself.

24:59I knew there'd be more candidates. I knew about the David Davis president. And I wasn't even here then. How could... Let me ask you that, both of you. How could reform have not... I talked about 9D chess. How could they not have predicted that this would have happened?

25:18Rory Stewart:Tell me, how? Given that David Davis found himself in the same predicament. Yes. He had, was it 26 candidates? Something like that. And also given Martin Bell. The interesting thing, though, is David Davis, a candidate such as yourself from another galaxy wasn't able to achieve the prominence that you've managed to achieve this time. I mean, I've always been a great fan of yours back when we were doing stuff together. But this is remarkable. You're in a much stronger position in this election than you've ever been before. That's kind of you to say. Just to clarify, when he talks about things we did before, back in the late 2010s, me and Rory were briefly in a short-lived electronic pop duo.

25:56Rory Stewart:We were. The pet shop lads. The pet shop lads. It didn't work. It didn't work very well. Well, partly because we look very different. I mean, I feel it's almost alien species. I can see the similarities, actually. Thank you. Underneath the surface, all of us. In the brain. Yes, there's more in common. Would you not say? But answer my question a bit more. Because there is hubris. Nigel Farage was on a roll. He thought he was on a roll. and he had the financial stuff finally getting some scrutiny coming in on him and he thought because he has the media right-wing media broadly on his side if i do this they will feel they have to come up against because i'm the man of the moment and as soon as i think it was kemi baden up was the first one said not playing and then everybody else fell into place he was exposed with the count though because they did the same to david davis everyone refused to run against him when he tried to pull yeah but This is different because Nigel Farage is somebody who thinks that he could be the next prime minister.

26:58And he said, it's me against the establishment. And it turns out, no, it's you against the bin. Even if he gets a landslide and you get 95 votes again, he's lost already. Exactly. So there I agree with you that he cannot win. Numeralically, he may indeed win, but morally, he cannot win. What's a good result for you, though? If he strikes me down, I will become more powerful than he can possibly imagine. Imagine that all he can say is that he defeated a bin. So he loses all his elan, all his grace. Then he's going to get whipped into the parliamentary committee. They're going to have a recall petition.

27:39You'll be back again. And of course, he'll then have to decide whether he wants to stand in that election or simply say, I've done my thing. I've got my mandate from the people of Clacton and the blob is out to get me. Like the prisoner. Something like that. And the£350 ,000, is that the estimated cost of this by-election? Apparently, I read in one of your newspapers that the estimated cost in today's money of a British by-election was£348 ,000 to be precise. I've done my reading.

28:10Rory Stewart:And your prediction is that he gets back into parliament and he'll be knocked out again by a parliamentary committee and he'll have to do another by-election. But that's not my prediction. That's all the parties, right? Yeah. Their supposition is that they will be fighting the next one. Okay. So will you, if you're going to be fighting the next one as a sole candidate against Raj, come back to us? Maybe we could work a little bit on the strategy in advance and get you a good lead up in Clouton because I think you could win this. There's an inherent critique there, isn't there, Alistair? He's basically saying you haven't really thought this would ruin the strategies week.

28:40That's what he's saying. He's saying it less politely than others would. Listen, where did I come in the 2021 London mayoral election? Ninth out of 20 with 92 ,000 first and second choice votes. It's good. Where did you come, Rory? Nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. Absolutely nowhere.

29:03Rory Stewart:So why don't you come on my podcast? 92 ,000 first. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. I enjoyed your podcast. One final question. something that's happening right now as we speak shortly before you go off back to Clacton. Yes. And that's this issue of postal votes and proxy votes. Yes. Have you got a strategy even for that? You're on top of the postal votes. You're on top of voter ID. You're on top of proxies. Short answer, no. But equally, I have seen the postal ballots drop. Have you seen the photos? I've seen the ballot, yeah. And have you seen how beautifully prominent? You are. It's lovely.

29:48It's kind of spot on. Number two, number three, bang, centre. Nigel, it looks like one of those Andrek's toilet roll commercials. Arguably, I mean, not as absorbent, but maybe should be doing the same job. Don't do that, voters, by the way. That will spoil your ballot in more ways than one. I can't emphasise that enough. But Nigel's right down the middle. He's hard to spot. So, you know, I feel like my work is being done for me by the cosmic power of alphabetical order.

30:21Rory Stewart:Very good. Well, Count, thank you very much for joining us. It's been my pleasure. And I hope you do make it. And it's interesting, your decision not to attack your opponent. Very interesting. It's quite Andy Burnham, isn't it? Exactly. It's quite Andy Burnham. You think people are actually just sick of negativity and they're all a positive bin against this negative, snarling reform UK leader. I did notice that that's what Burnham had done. Does it gain any extra traction from me saying the stuff you've said than from you saying it anyway? And I would argue not. My job is to provide an alternative.

30:57Like I said, we haven't gone through the other policies. We haven't mentioned the big one, which was that oil and gas companies should be forced to pay for solar panels for everyone. And I love that came from a child. It did, Jack, age 10. I've got loads. So this is my thing. It's their planet and mine, it's not yours, and you guys are screwing it. And so this kid, loads of children have been sending me their manifestos. So I wanted to start to honour that. Has any other party in electoral history put a manifesto commitment in from a 10-year-old? No. And the only thing they've done is occasionally they get 10-year-olds to design their Christmas cards, but I think what you've done in this is much, much better.

31:41I would say it's at least slightly better. A lot better. Yes. A lot better. I think on that alone, where I resident of Clacton, the oil and gas companies paying for solar panels from Jack H10, I would vote for you.

31:54Rory Stewart:Eat that, Stuart. Yeah, I will. I eat that along with a subsidized croissant. No, I would definitely vote for you. No, I'm not subsidizing the croissants in Clacton. I mean, I will, but I'm going big on the 99th. It's a seaside town. I do like to be beside the seaside. Very good. Well, thank you. Thank you, Count, for coming on and very, very good luck and hope to see you soon. If not, maybe in the House of Lords, Lord Count Binface. Oh, no, I can't do that because I remember my original election, I came down in disguise. Yes. In the guise of Lord Buckethead. And you got into trouble, didn't you?

32:28Well, there's a little tit-for-tat on the planet copyright. So I renounced my peerage. You renounced your peerage. Respawned in my true form. I'm the only politician ever to feel better after kicking the bucket. How about that?

32:41Rory Stewart:Very good. All right. See you soon. Thank you again. Thank you so much, listeners. Both of you. The rest is politics. In fact, I would say everything is politics. It's a misleading title. Everything, even football. It's all, look at Infantino. You should rename it. Everything is politics. Yeah, well, we could do that. Thank you. Bye bye.

33:27funny but i actually thought there were some quite good serious points that emerged from that not least the fact that i was so overwhelmed and confused as the resident linguist i confused my

33:38Rory Stewart:latin with my greek right at the start of the damn thing that was pretty amazing that huge bit huge bit of homeric greek i mean he can just recite huge chunks of homer it's a reminder that inside that bin is a guy who studied i think classics at oxford so it's kind of weird thing going on that He doesn't actually come from Sigma-9. Yeah, he's the establishment, isn't he? Nigel Farage, why hasn't he been using the classics at Oxford line of attack? Did he also sound like, rather than coming from Sigma-9, he might have come from Wales? Did you pick that up? Did you think? Where do you think he came from?

34:11Rory Stewart:What did the accent sound like? No, I don't want to dispel or destroy the magic, okay? But because he was a little bit late, and because I was getting a bit agitated, because, as you know, I'm obsessed about punctuality, I was kind of chivvying him along. And he wasn't a little bit late. He was like half an hour late, right? Yeah, because it took him a long time to get into the gear. So, you know, not for me to expose what goes on under there, but there was some sort of little weird box on his chest under the thing, which I think is slightly distorting the voice. And I think also the other thing that I thought was, there's quite a lot of kind of stuff being tied on in different parts of the body lots of pads everywhere lots of he had a dresser he had somebody who was sort of having to put this stuff this stuff on him and then as for the as for the bin it's like so that the he can see through what we think is his mouth right so he is able to react to us right because otherwise he wouldn't be able to walk anyway just be walking into walls all the time but i think look the point about the Homeric Greek and the point about the quick wit is that he's clever.

35:26He's a very clever guy. And I thought the most important political point he made, I thought, was when he said that whatever the result, I'm not sure as a campaigner you should ever say, I'm not going to win, or I don't think I'll win. I think he should have been, look, strange things happen. The world is in a very strange place. People like the challenger, et cetera, against the incumbent. Farage is the establishment in this contest i'm against him he could have done all that but i tell what i thought was really interesting was when he said whatever the result farage has lost because he's going to stand on that platform with 30 odd kind of weirdos and misfits many of them dressed in very strange dress the image to the world will be what a strange country but for farage to take anything

36:15Rory Stewart:out of this other than he survived an embarrassment what about his other point that he kept making which is that he'd obviously listened to the rest of his politics and listened to our critique. And one of the things he'd said is he disagrees with the idea that he should even subtly be attacking Farage through either his manifesto or statements, that he leaves other people to attack Farage. What do you think about that as a technique? Well, he does attack him through the manifesto. When he talks about, you know, spend more time in Clacton than Washington, I'm not going to take any dodgy donations from people on earth.

36:47So he's going for Farage. I thought it was interesting again goes back to it he had clearly watched Andy Burnham's approach in Makerfield and he probably thought Andy Burnham has done better by not constantly just going after Rob Kenyon the reform candidate so he's decided to go down that route I think there's something in it I think there's something in that I think that what he's going to find hard is the I didn't get the sense of any organisation behind him

37:15Rory Stewart:I would have thought as an independent running he could have got he would have been able to get because i i found this in the london meryl thing he would have been able to get thousands of young volunteers to leaflet for him knock on doors for him and actually it wouldn't be very difficult for him to show real affection and local knowledge and understanding of the claxon constituents he's obviously a bright guy he could have really got out into those villages i i think he's slightly missing a trick here he he's too much still in the mindset of I'm a comedy candidate. He could have actually gone a little bit more Martin Bell on this.

37:52Rory Stewart:But mobilise that vote, get those leaflets out there and say, look, I may be an alien space lord, but I do know something about this constituency and actually I wouldn't be too bad a member of parliament. Yeah, and also if you think about it, so the Labour and the Tories and the Lib Dems and Restore and the Greens, none of them are standing. they've all got members and activists who really don't like Nigel Farage being their MP now what effort has he made to go and get those people who love a bit of politics party members tend to like campaigning to get them to say you know they can go out wearing a Labour you know badge and say I'm Labour but I want you to vote go Labour go to Labour people and say vote bin face, damage Farage, show that Clacton's fighting back.

38:40That's what I wanted to hear him do. So, listen, he's adding to the gaiety of the nation. You know that yesterday he actually was briefing the Foreign Press Association. I mean, normally they have like the Foreign Secretary, the permanent secretaries of the civil service, or people like you and me going and blathering on about what we think. So he's sitting there and he's been talking to journalists from all over the world. What I really hope he doesn't do is use this to build the bin face profile so that next year we see him in the jungle or on traitors or on all that stuff. I think he should try to become the MP for Clacton.

39:19Rory Stewart:The final reason I was hopeful about him becoming an MP is that actually there's a lot of precedent, as you mentioned when we were covering this a couple of weeks ago, of comedy candidates actually becoming quite serious people. I mean, actually, they end up as mayors and they end up doing quite a good job. I mean, Zelensky famously was a comedian who'd done a show on pretending to be president and actually is a really good president. At another extreme, Beppe Grillo in Italy was a comedian. And so what's interesting is, is he willing to make the transition? The pirate parties, I think, started a slightly comic fancy dress things that ended up in government.

39:55Rory Stewart:Is he prepared to make the transition? And it wouldn't be very difficult to do. he ought to be able to say listen along with the jokes as an aside here are two or three things that i think could make people make people's lives better in klaxon and i will campaign for if you let me yeah yeah so there we are there was one we were in iceland i was in iceland recently interviewing the prime minister for leading and there was a candidate there who started out as a joke and is now a frontline politician so it you know it it does and of course we had the we had the monkey in Hartlepool, the mascot from the football club who became the mayor and seemed to go down pretty well as the mayor.

40:32So look, I think he adds to the gaiety of the nation. He is part of a long British tradition that the rest of the world finds a bit weird, but sort of, you know, reminds us that eccentricity is not a bad thing. And, you know, he's making Farage look utterly ridiculous. So what's not to love about him? what's not to love.

40:54Rory Stewart:Well, thank you, Alistair. Have a great day. See you soon.