Polls close in Clacton by-election triggered by Nigel Farage

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1:07Thank you for downloading the World Tonight podcast from Thursday the 13th of August. I'm Luke Jones. As we came on the air, polls closed in Clacton. Nigel Farage is widely expected to defeat the comedian dressed as a bin. But was it worth it? We'll speak to Reform, who forced the vote and the bin. Much of the UK has sweated through a record-breakingly hot day. We'll ask how hospitals are coping. Five days in, Israeli settlers continue to besiege two Palestinian homes in the West Bank. The US say they're involved and trying to stop it, but what can they do? Also tonight, how did Harvey Nicholls go from being the place where Lady Penelope and Princess Diana and Eddie and Patsy would shop to being bought up by Sports Direct's Mike Ashley?

1:51And can he turn it around? Polls have closed in the Clacton by-election, a contest where the leading candidates are the leader of a party riding high in the polls and a grown man dressed as a bin. Nigel Farage is the reason this by-election is happening, of course. It was at the beginning of July that he took to the podium to announce both his resignation as an MP and his candidacy in the election it would trigger. With a parliamentary investigation underway into an undeclared donation of£5 million from a British crypto-billionaire in Thailand, and new reporting into gifts in kind given by a convicted fraudster, Farage furiously took to the airway saying the by-election would give voters the chance to, quote, stick two fingers up at the entire establishment.

2:34Why should they be the people that decide my fate when, as I repeat, I've done nothing wrong? I've thought about it hard and I've decided today, today I will resign as a Member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea. thereby forcing a by-election which should happen, I hope, in short order. Now I've decided that the people of Clacton should be the judges of my actions. This will be a people versus the establishment by-election. Pretty soon afterwards, however, every party you might expect to stand said they wouldn't. Then Prime Minister and Labour leader Keir Starmer had this to say. This is a desperate stunt from Nigel Farage, and it's obvious why he's doing it.

3:23He is up to his neck in sleaze. Politics should be about improving the lives of millions of people, not about personal gain, not about hiding dodgy donations, and I think the public will see this for exactly what it is. Conservative leader Kemi Badnock called it a fake by-election. He is having a hissy fit, he's having a strop, because for the first time he is facing intense scrutiny. His honeymoon period is over, but we all have to follow the rules. We all have to register our donations and gifts like that. He doesn't want to follow the rules, and now he's called a by-election to fight himself.

3:59Well, despite those parties not taking part in the polling station today, voters in Clacton were presented with a record-breakingly long ballot paper, 34 candidates in total. The most vocal, aside from reform, of course, was Count Binface, the comedian John Harvey in a big hat. who's been popping up in by-elections for years. Does he think he'll do well? What counts as a good result? Let's have a philosophical chat, shall we? Because I got 0.2 % in Makerfield, so if I get 0.3%, imagine that, Luke. 0.3 % of the vote. That's a swing to bin face. Hashtag swing bin. Anything more than that, I'm laughing.

4:41Do you think you'll keep your deposit? Again, I don't want to spoil the surprise for you, but let's just say if I did that would be a seismic result for novelty politics not just on in the United Kingdom but earth-wide and solar system-wide it's never been done before how about that have you been to Clacton I wonder what you make of it what a patronizing question I'm there right now sunshine my starship is cloaked above the premier inn on the seafront Yes, Lenny Henry told me it's a good spot. But of course, other budget hotels are available. But I'm loving it. It's the sunset. Obviously, no solar eclipse tonight, but that was lovely last night.

5:22I've loved every single minute in Clacton. Visiting plumbing showrooms, having my feet inspected in a Flint and podiatry clinic. But of course, you'd know that from your Trenton's journalism, looking at my social media after the last few weeks. So that was an excellent rhetorical question. There's obviously the possibility that you could be back in Clacton, having to fight this again if the parliamentary authorities find against Nigel Farage. Will you stand again if there is a second Clacton by-election? Well, again, I don't want to spoil the surprise for you, but of course your question is predicated on the idea that Mr Farage wins this one.

5:56And we don't know yet, do we? So we shall see. But just on the off chance that Nigel wins this time, yes, everybody loves a sequel, don't they? Yes, ding, ding. The thriller in Manila, ramble in the jungle. If he's ready to go again, we shall see. Obviously, I'd have to clear my diary. Sigma nine needs my attention as well. It's a really long list of candidates that you're on for this by-election. What do you make of the other people on it? Well, I'll be honest, I got bored after I got to my name because I'm about fourth on the ballot and I can't be bothered reading the others. But I would say this, that although it is a record number of candidates, 34, that even so, and of course, this circus has been caused by Mr.

6:42Farage, just like David Davis in 2008, I'm sure you're aware, caused one of these by-elections, 26 candidates then, 34 now. Even so, it is every British citizen or space warrior's unique right to stand for election, no matter who they are and what they believe in. So each of them for having the bravery to stand up for what they believe in. I think it would be wrong to sneer at that. I applaud them. It's expensive business, though, isn't it? I mean, could you afford another by-election? Well, I mean, it depends what you mean. I mean, in some terms, 500 Earth pounds is pretty much a full space piggy bank.

7:20So yes, that is tricky. But by the same token, I have had some tokens through a bit of crowdfunding. And when I've stood for London mayor twice. The deposit for that is£10 ,000. So by comparison, parliamentary elections are a bargain. Tell us about your policies, Binface. Are you sad that you'll never be in charge, or at least in Clacton, maybe, to actually see some of them through? Yes, my policies are the most fully costed and comprehensive manifesto in the business. I say that because no other candidate at this election provided a manifesto. But even so, I will cut your taxes, Luke, and raise everyone else's.

7:59I will cap bus fares at£1.99 and£99 flakes at£99p. I pledge to build at least one affordable house. And how about this? I got a policy from a child, Jack, aged 10, oil and gas companies to pay for solar panels for everyone. How about that? No one's offering the Binface programme apart from Binface. Count Binface. Apologies for the rubbish line. Despite all of that, Nigel Farage is widely expected to be returned to Parliament for reform. Gawain Towler is a member of the Report Reform Party board. He's been in Clacton today and he is live with us this evening. Gawain, welcome to the world tonight.

8:36Has this been a massive waste of time? No, of course it's not been a waste of time. What was happening is this sort of constant battering of Nigel and others and anybody surrounding him. And the purpose of doing is just to get clarity. You have a group of people in Westminster making decisions. The process by which they operate is very opaque. The decision-making process is very opaque. And let's be honest, a combination of a bunch of politicians that doesn't like Farage and a bunch of the lanyard classes making a decision about things is one thing. But the idea of having a recall petition and a recall election is to ask the people of a constituency whether they still want that politician to represent them.

9:26Yeah, I think that's the case. Everybody, according to the Salvation Poll, over 90 % of people in Claction are aware of the gift and the failure to register that gift. That's known by everybody. So that is the election that would be fought either now or indeed in the future if the Standards Committee decides to go forward with a 10-day, 10-working-day suspension. But on that point, Nigel Farage has jumped the gun. There hasn't been a recall petition. No, there hasn't. The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner hasn't come back with their findings. So you've sent the people of Clacton to the polls without having the final facts and the judgment.

10:10Well, we know what the facts are. Do we? We know that he received the money and he didn't register it. that's why he's in front of the beak. So we know that. There's nothing new, nothing more. That's what he's being charged with. And they will, no doubt, find him guilty, because they will. And then what do they do? Do they ask the people of Claxton to have another by-election? Which would be another great waste of money, and would look, because it is true, like the establishment of ganging up on Farage, I suspect a second by-election would result in an even bigger vote for Nigel. and I suspect that it would be foolhardy on the part of the Standards Committee to do it again.

10:54Now, I can expect them to find him guilty but I suspect they won't because they have to because that's what they do. It sounds like you think he's guilty but by the way you've laid it out. No, I don't think he is. I just think that they will say he is. That's a very different thing. Okay, but there are still lots of questions hanging in the air not only to do with the£5 million if you let me finish but also with regards to the gifts in kind being given by george cottrell the standard commission can i get a word in edgewise the the the gifts in kind provided by george cottrell marge varger said he didn't need to declare any of that because he wasn't planning on on running for the leadership at that point we've since seen that in april 2024 he was striking deals to become leader and what that would mean no he was talking about it we all knew that you knew that everybody knew that the previous i didn't know he was sorting out deals to come back as leaders he was considering whether to come back as leader He was making plans.

11:45He was considering it. He was thinking about it, which is what everybody knew, because he'd said so. He went to the Tory conference as a GB News presenter, and everybody talked about it. At his birthday, his 60th birthday, he talked about it. He was making plans for himself, by the way, and he was trying to work out what to do. And at the time of the start of the general election, he decided not to do it. And honestly, I was there with him. He was campaigning in Skegness about a week into the general election campaign. The Tory party were cock-a-hooped because they'd managed to, cleverly, they'd pulled the election early and therefore had rather queered his pitch.

12:23And I sat there as he was talking to an old veteran. And the veteran turned to him and said, it's great you're campaigning for Richard Tice up here in Skegness. It's great, but you're letting us down. We need you to do it. And I saw his eyes just go, I'm going to have to do this, aren't I? This wasn't a let's do it. I really want to do this. This was, I feel, a duty bound to do so. But that, of course, has ramifications that we're now talking about. We'll have to leave it there. Gawain Taylor, thanks for joining us. Let's take you to Clacton and to our political correspondent, Harry Farley, is there.

12:58And Harry, we are talking about this as if it's a foregone conclusion. Of course, no votes have been counted yet. But, I mean, is the result in doubt at all? I mean, not really, to be honest. We have to sort of have a degree of confidence whenever we're talking about any democratic exercise. But no one I've spoken to either here in Clacton and the days that I've spent here in the last couple of weeks or in Westminster believes that anyone other than Nigel Farage will win tonight and do so comfortably. I think the margin of victory does matter. You know, people that I've been speaking to in reform say that if Nigel Farage can win 70, even 80 percent of the vote here tonight, then they think that will secure this seat for him, even if that parliamentary inquiry finds that he was in serious breach of the rules and may even have to come back and contest another by-election.

13:45They think that this exercise will show that he can win this comfortably, whoever the opposition is. So I suppose the result is not so much in doubt. The bigger gamble for Nigel Farage is whether at the end of tonight, whether into tomorrow morning, he looks like a popular winner or he looks like an unserious politician rather than the Prime Minister in waiting that he insists he is. Do we know how many people have actually turned out for this and what time will all their votes have been counted, do we think? Well, we think the turnout is about 43%, which is about average for recent by-elections, perhaps higher than some had thought.

14:27but in terms of when the result could be I'm looking at the ballot papers now they are absolutely huge they're about nearly a metre long and so that inevitably takes more time for the counters to go through all 34 candidates to see who has a tick against their name so we're not expecting the results until the very early hours possibly even breakfast time tomorrow OK, so we won't stay up in terms of what happens from now how quickly could these if Nigel Farage is returned to Parliament How quickly could these investigations get back up again, and when might we get some white smoke from them? Yeah, it's a good question.

15:02I mean, the honest answer is no one really knows, because the independent parliamentary commissioner overseeing that investigation, he doesn't give any sort of insight about the timetable of that investigation. I mean, Nigel Farage, at the moment, he would have to be re-sworn in as an MP if he won this by-election. That wouldn't happen until Parliament starts, so it's not entirely clear whether that investigation would have to wait until he was officially an MP again before he could get up and running. Some people I've been speaking to suggest early September for that inquiry to come back one way or another.

15:38The honest answer is at the moment, no one knows. Harry Farley in Clacton, thank you very much indeed. Yesterday on the programme we heard of the two Palestinian households being besieged by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. It is now day five. Around a dozen Palestinians' households have also been told to leave by the military who say it's needed to remove the settlers and, quote, protect the residents. The US ambassador Mick Huckabee issued a scathing social media post earlier calling the settlers, quote, Israeli terrorists. No excuse for such thuggish behaviour, he said. And tonight he wrote, settlers are not the problem, unsettlers are.

16:17A very small minority who do great damage to Palestinian families and to Israel. Well, Louis Riddie lives in the US state of Ohio and owns one of those Palestinian properties. His brother and his 18-year-old nephew are living there and are trapped. Louis has been watching events from 6 ,000 miles away through security cameras he's installed in the property. We are in fear of his life and his son's life. I heard on the news Mike Hakabe, the U.S. ambassador, called the settlers are terrorists, disgusting, which is good. But we need an action to remove them, not just talks on media. I mean, is anything have been achieved yet?

16:59My brother has been under siege for the last five days. Hundreds of IDF soldiers in town, around the house, and those settlers still walking freely. David Mensah is a spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister's office. We don't condone violence against innocent people. We're a country of law and order. Where there is wrongdoing, we act against it and we investigate it and we arrest those responsible. That's why we're taking the action that we are taking. But what here is so often missing from this discussion is that these crimes, and they are crimes, and they're committed by a tiny extremist minority, maybe only 150 in number.

17:42They're juvenile delinquents. Very often they're not even from the area of Judea and Samaria, as you call it, the West Bank. They don't represent the more than half a million Jewish people who are living in a law-abiding way in Judea and Samaria. Judea and Samaria being the official Israeli government term for the area known internationally as the West Bank. Let's go live to David Satterfield, who was US ambassador to Turkey during Donald Trump's first term and went on to become Joe Biden's special envoy for the Middle East on humanitarian issues. He's now director of the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

18:15So he's well qualified. David, thanks for joining us on The World tonight. David Mentzer there saying that these crimes are committed by a tiny extremist minority, juvenile delinquents. Is that right? Well, the record of the past two years has shown an increasing number of incidents like this. And describing these individuals as criminals and effectively terrorists is absolutely spot on. But there's a missing piece to all of this. This steady rise in violent acts has been accompanied by, abetted by, facilitated, if not incited by, the very most senior members of the Israeli cabinet who have made no pretense about their desire to see Palestinians expelled from the West Bank.

19:05Prime Minister Netanyahu does not have that view, and he has criticized both statements supporting these actions and the actions themselves. But more than rhetoric is required here, there need to be two things done. Israeli security forces must act to uphold law and order against these individuals. And secondly, action needs to be taken publicly against those in the cabinet who are actively advocating for or protecting, which perhaps is worse, those perpetrating these events. But this is electoral season in Israel. Knesset will hold its elections on October 27th. And until then, there's going to be great reticence in the prime minister acting against members of his own cabinet, his own government, who are frankly supportive of these acts.

19:54So what should the US be doing? If you have got a situation where you've not only got this violence, but you've also got an IDF, some of whom are settlers, are seemingly not doing enough? Well, not doing enough, or in some cases have been actively engaged with the violent settler elements. So what should the US do? Well, Ambassador Huckabee's statements, and these are not the first that he has made deeply critical and condemnatory of these acts. His statements are fine, but very honestly, this requires the president, the White House, to weigh in directly with Prime Minister Netanyahu and tell him these actions don't just harm Israel and the concept of rule of law in Israel.

20:40They hurt the relationship with the United States, and needless to say, for your listeners, That relationship is going through a very, very difficult moment right now. Yes, and does the president have that kind of sway over Netanyahu, especially on an issue like this? I believe when the president is explicit, clear as he has been in the past on other issues, yes, he does have significant influence over the prime minister. But I have to caution, this is, as I said, electoral season, and the types of pressure and directive instruction is going to have to be quite precise and quite forceful to get the prime minister to act against his own political self-interests.

21:21Could the United States get a bit more directly involved even? Mike Huckabee, in one of his posts on social media, said that the U.S. embassy there had been very involved. The IDF and Israeli police, quote, have gone at our request to remove the Israeli terrorists doing this. So it seems like they're doing a certain amount of directing of the law enforcement there. Well, I think the ambassador raising this issue as publicly as he has. It's been front page news in all of the Israeli English and Hebrew language press today. That's very important. And the focus needs to stay. And I'll go back to your previous commentator who has a home there and family members there.

21:58It is extremely important that displacement of Palestinians described as necessary to secure them while these settler extremists are being expelled doesn't translate into permanent displacement. David Satterfield, good to talk to you. Thank you. You're listening to The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4. I'm Luke Jones. Good evening, our main headlines. The polls have closed in the Clacton by-election, triggered by the resignation of the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage. I've just seen that counting has got underway as well. Elsewhere, several large fires have been raging across the West Midlands as the UK records its hottest day of the year so far.

22:40And two people have been seriously injured in a train derailment near Lewis in East Sussex. Rob Bradley was on board the train with his six-year-old daughter. He told the BBC what happened. We felt the train kind of speeding up and then starting to rock. And at that point, I knew something was very strange. And then our carriage actually jumped vertically upwards and we could tell there was a derailment. The emergency brakes then went on the train and everything got thrown forward. And I was all, you know, my laptop, my AirPods, our bags. The train kind of skidded for quite a while before it stopped.

23:16Only then, when we turned around, did we see that the whole back of the train, literally where we were sat, was open and there was smoke and dust pouring into the carriage. Rob Bradley in East Sussex. A little bit later on in the programme, we will think about the problems affecting Harvey Nicholls and whether Mike Ashley is the person to turn them around.

23:41Have you been record-breakingly warm today? Kew Gardens has 38.1 degrees centigrade was recorded, beating the previous UK record, which itself was only set in June. The Amber Heat Health Alert across the whole of England continues until Friday night, warning of significant detrimental impacts to health and social care services. The Royal College of Nursing has said that nurses have been collapsing, such are the, quote, inhumane and impossible conditions of hot hospitals. The new Health Secretary, Yvette Cooper, had this to say. The heat is impacting on our health and also on our NHS. We've seen record numbers of people coming to A &E in July and also it's impacting on conditions for staff in many of our really older hospitals as well.

24:29So that's why we're also putting£6.7 billion into the capital improvements, the repairs, and that includes new cooling systems across our NHS and also working to support our NHS staff who have managed to increase the treatments, increase the numbers of patients being seen at the same time as seeing this increased demand. It's that partnership working across our NHS and backed by the government that really is keeping that support in place for patients. Is that enough? Matthew Hopkins is from NHS Alliance, the independent body who represent health and care providers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

25:06The challenge that the NHS has across a number of hospitals, whether that be community hospitals or indeed acute hospitals with emergency departments, is many of the buildings are very old and they're not designed for the kind of temperatures that we've been experiencing. And for staff and patients, there's no doubt that that's been very, very difficult. We know that our members have hired in air conditioning units and fans to try and cool the environment. But there's no doubt these extreme temperatures are challenging with the building stock that we have, which is why we're pressing the government for additional capital funding to make our buildings more fit for purpose.

25:43So it's work specifically on the buildings, not necessarily more short term to cash to try and either retrofit with some air conditioning systems or have some of those sort of portable units that you mentioned there. Yeah, I mean, one of our organisations has hired in 600 portable air conditioning units. But we heard yesterday from one of our trust chief executives in London that their power supply challenge has made it very difficult to go further in relation to portable air conditioning units and fans. So there is a structural problem for a number of our organisations that requires both that capital funding to make the buildings more viable in this heat, but also, as you say, the ongoing funding to make sure that it doesn't get in the way of hiring in air conditioning units.

26:26Has that been somewhat lost? Of course, we've had a number of pay settlements for staff. There's money that's needed for new and innovative treating. Do you think that some of the arguably more boring stuff like buildings and air conditioning units is somewhat forgotten in the mix? Yes, I mean, it is a challenge for hospital boards, particularly when they're faced with requirements to increase diagnostic capacity, shall we say, for reducing waiting times versus the need to make sure their generators are fit for purpose, that their buildings are safe, fire safety and air conditioning. All of those elements are a tricky balance for NHS boards because inevitably there's a trade-off that those organisations are needing to make each year, which is why, again, we're pushing quite hard for a proper settlement over the medium term.