EZRA LEVANT ｜ Nigel Farage heads to Parliament following key election victory
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Summary
Shame On You, You, Sanguine Bug, is a podcast from the town of Clacton on the coast of the UK. It's a town that has opinions and wants to fight back, and last night it elected Nigel Farage as their member of parliament.
Transcript
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tonight bad news from britain it's july 5th and this is the ezra levance show
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oh hi everybody i'm at the clacton pier in the town of clacton on sea you can hear the
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seagulls around me it's a lovely british town it's i don't know about 90 minute drive outside of
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london there's an immaculately groomed park near the war memorial there's lovely uh hotels along
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the boardwalk lots of fish and chips places lots of pubs to get a pint and behind me is a pier with
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an amusement park right now it's too windy and blustery it looks like it's really not operating
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uh there's you know life in this town but there's also sorrow we saw drug addicts we saw uh people
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who were down on their luck you can see i think symbolically i'm looking at a bunch of flags the
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union jack they're they're ripped in half they're still flying half of them that is but
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no one has either noticed or cared enough to replace them it's still it's a town that that
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has opinions and wants to fight back and last night it elected nigel farage as their member of
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parliament nigel farage of course is famous for leading the brexit movement they got the united
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kingdom to leave the european union he was the head of a party called ukip the uk independence party
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and he became a member of the european parliament where he would antagonize the socialists and
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globalists there after winning that battle he dabbled in politics a bit but he really became a
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pundit and a speech maker he had another important public moment when he was debanked by a bank called
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coots and by debanked i mean they suddenly said to him we don't want your business anymore and we're
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not going to tell you why he did a kind of privacy request and he found out it was his politics that
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had him fired he pushed back the bank had a disastrous pr uh implosion and he won a battle against
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debanking those are two important victories for the public interest number one brexit and number two
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fighting debanking but uh a month and four days ago i guess nigel farage jumped in for his third
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political act namely leading the new reform party here in the uk a party whose name he himself says
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pays homage to the canadian reform party and last night it had a similar result to the reform party in
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the early 90s when it received millions of votes in the british election yesterday largely at the
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expense of the tired and spent conservative party that is conservative in name only if you recall
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when the reform party had its success in 1993 that was after nine years of conservatives under brian
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mulroney and kim campbell and by the time that was over the party was more corrupt than conservative and
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people were just sick of it well imagine if that had drawn on for another five years if it were 14
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years of corrupt rudderless conservatives that's what it was here in the uk 14 years and in the last
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year or so the party had changed leaders a number of times from boris johnson to liz trust to rishi
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sunak i'm forgetting these names but they're all just footnotes in history rishi sunak being perhaps
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the least charismatic least relatable politician i've ever seen at that level and that says a lot
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because kirk starmer the leader of the labor party is fairly robotic too it was like they were having a
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a a contest of who could be less relatable who would you less like to have a beer with
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um so last night was an election and the results were interesting we came here as you know to study
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reform uk and to study nigel farage and his chief electoral promise of cutting off mass immigration
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as i mentioned to you yesterday this has been a key issue for nigel farage frankly one of the reasons
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the uk voted for brexit nigel farage has gone out in the english channel in a small boat to personally
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observe these dinghies coming over from france with uh migrants claiming refugee status you don't need to
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be a refugee from france it is a perfectly safe country the only reason to go from france to the
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uk is if you want more free benefits that's not the definition of a refugee nigel farage was against
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mass immigration especially illegal fake bogus mass immigration that's one of the things that we
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talked about yesterday when we went and did our streeters our interviews with people on the street
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some people were shy about explaining why they were supporting nigel farage but those who did speak
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out often mentioned the immigration issue um when we got to the vote counting center which is an
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interesting story in itself the brits bring all of their votes to one central building and then they
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hand count them first they hand verify them then they hand count them and in fact it took until
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almost 4 a.m last night oh my god i was so tired in our videographer ed it was i mean i had hopped on a
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night flight i mean i i don't know i think i was going 36 hours or something but it was quite something
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to see in all paper count no computers no touch screens so the confidence people have in the vote was
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very very high anyways when we arrived at the counting center like six hours early um and the election
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ended formally at 10 p.m the exit poll data was put on all the tvs and by exit poll you know what i mean by that
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it's people who are asked voluntarily when they're leaving a polling place how did you vote
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and they answer that and it's a way of sort of guessing or predicting several hours early
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what the result will be and the exit poll information that was published at around 10 p.m
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was that the labor party had a huge win the conservative party had been cut in half and that
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the upstart reform party led by nagel farage had a toehold they had two percent of the seats 13 seats
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out of a parliament of 650 and that's exciting because getting nagel farage into parliament getting
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his upstart party a toehold that's what we came here to study and uh it was a victory of sorts
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what quickly became apparent though was the nature of the first past the post electoral system
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that they have here just like we have in canada and it turns out when the dust has settled and here
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we are the morning after that the labor party in the uk did not actually increase their vote i think
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they went up by about one percent but they received really a landslide majority two-thirds
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of all the seats in parliament belong to the labor party but they only got one-third of the vote
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just one-third of the vote in fact the party leader himself keir starmer who's an mp for london
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his own personal vote almost fell in half i think he got around 36 000 votes last time down to 18 000
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so it wasn't an enthusiastic win for the labor party at all it was people just absolutely disgusted
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with the conservatives moving to uh reform and reform got approximately 17 percent of the vote forgive
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me if my stats aren't exact and in the end they didn't get 13 seats they only got four so they got
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four seats out of 650 that's not even one percent four you could put them in a little mini austin mini
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or whatever those tiny cute british cars are called four uh and yet they they uh came in third in terms
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of vote count um if they were a proportional representation system um first of all the labor
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party would not have a majority the conservatives would be a strong opposition and reform party would be
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in third in the end reform party was pretty much last there's a tiny welsh party called plaid simri that
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i think got a few votes less but so that was uh sort of a um i don't know like air going out of the
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balloon when the reform party thought it had 13 seats but wound up with four now nigel farage is a
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charismatic speaker and he'll make the most of that and perhaps it's a good thing because i don't think
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he even knew who all of his candidates were and there may have been some wobbly ones elected
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but in the in the light of day the morning after the exuberance of reform party breaking through it's
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still a factor for sure but the massive dominant majority of the labor party is what terrifies me
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and i mentioned a moment ago that um if there had been proportional representation it wouldn't look
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that way but what what does the word if do that's a hypothetical imaginary scenario as as the old
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saying goes if grandma had wheels she'd be a wagon yeah if that's a if is doing a lot of heavy lifting
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there the rules are the rules and under those rules labor has a dominant majority and they are radical
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transformative left-wing activists and i am actually terrified by what they're going to do on
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everything from censorship that keir starmer deeply believes in to um you know obviously environmental
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extremism uh ultra low emission zones they're they're fully into 15 minute cities but here's a
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clip of um keir starmer the new incoming british prime minister saying if he had to choose he prefers
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davos and the world economic forum to westminster's parliamentary system i mean the guy just says it
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let's just ask you quickly you have to choose now between davos or westminster davos why because
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westminster is too constrained um and you know it's closed and we're not having meaning once you get
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out of westminster whether it's davos or anywhere else you actually engage with people um that you can
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see working with in the future westminster just as a tribal shouting play oh he's gonna be uh like
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justin trudeau a blander justin trudeau here's a picture of keir starmer taking a knee uh in response
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to the george floyd riots in the united states george floyd is an american personality he was killed in a
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police incident um i'm not going to get into the details of george floyd other than to say it's an
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american thing but here's keir starmer taking a knee so he's about racial grievances he's about
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economic grievances um and he has this massive result even though he has the weakest mandate of
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prime ministers in decades but what actually scared me the most when i got up this morning after having
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went to bed at 4 a.m well actually i'll get to that in a moment because i want to just show you
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one video from last night before i forget as you know i had to file my ezra levant show on time to
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go up but we were we were in the election office i'm not even kidding almost till 4 a.m so the the
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actual results we didn't get on yesterday's show um it was sort of exciting because nagel farage showed
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up and the entire national press gallery was there because uh nagel farage is an interesting character
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and would the reform party break through and what would the results be so there was there were probably
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almost a hundred reporters um at what would be a sleepy seaside constituency and when uh farage showed
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up uh it was after three i'm sure um i tried to get a couple questions in and i succeeded in fact
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i got two questions to the guy and i felt pretty good about that because the regime media here is just
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as bad as canada they're they're atrocious but here's a couple questions i put to nigel farage
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last night and i'm glad i did take a look is the result a rebuke of the of the media
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is the result of rebuke of the british media oh well it's a rebuke actually of the entirety of the
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political system it's not just the media it's the electoral system we've got it's so many of these
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things and you know britain is broken britain needs reform that's our slogan and i believe in it
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did you gain more votes from labor than you thought you might
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i think in the north of england yes absolutely absolutely and and and really you know labor
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have won this election without any enthusiasm at all uh and we'll now be going after the labor vote
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you watch what's a good vote share for reform tonight what what do you want vote share wise
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as many as possible what do you think about lee anderson i've no idea you're the clever people not me
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lee anderson do you know what lee anderson has won because he had the courage to jump to reform
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there are many conservative mps who tonight will lose their seats because they lack that courage and
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the really big message is this geographically now in most of the country a vote for the conservatives
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actually splits our vote and is a vote for labor the argument they've used against us can never be
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used again would you like to be leader of the conservative party now mr france conservative
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party what a ghastly bunch they are i wouldn't want to join them how awful what a terrible idea
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yeah the media was just absolutely abominable towards him their the whole campaign i mean not
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just condemning him which is their right not just ignoring his successes which is their right but
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actually setting him up hiring an actor to play a racist on his campaign that's something that a tv
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channel called channel four did a hand picking people in a grassroots town hall who were actually
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activists so the the media was atrocious and i think he liked my question about a rebuke to the media
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and um and there were some places where reform picked up votes from labor so that's how i went to bed
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last night feeling pretty excited about nigel farage thinking that he in fact would win 13 seats but i
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woke up to him winning four and i woke up to the astonishing news that across the uk in areas where
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there is a large muslim population five candidates won simply on a pro-gaza platform so they weren't
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with any party there was just not a muslim party in the uk that that i know of them there might
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technically be but i i didn't see any evidence of it jeremy corbyn the far left socialist former leader
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of the labor party he won as an independent gaza being a uh key part of his platform and four others
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here's a constituency in birmingham the second city of the uk where a labor candidate won uh but a
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islamist uh challenge uh narrowly lost if i if i understand uh the breakdown there and watch how
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the labor candidate who is a woman is shouted out shouted at and heckled by pro-gaza extremists
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in the crowd take a look at this this is a labor woman in a labor district take a look
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it's made with such reticence anyway this this election has been
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this election has been the worst election i have ever stood in today a brilliant community activist
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who puts on events for every single part of our community came out to campaign with me and people
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filmed her on the streets and then slashed her tires
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a young woman a young woman on her own delivering leaflets was filmed and screened at
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i was to be joined by the family of joe cox who wanted to come out and campaign with me
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and there is absolutely no way i could have allowed for them to see what was aggressive
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and violence in our democracy she's terrified i think and in like i say a total of five districts the
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muslim candidate pro-gaza candidate won so those are districts and in the past were labor districts so
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labor now having lost five seats to the islamist faction will surely be tilting hard to the gaza
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left because all of their mps who had a narrow win will be saying if we don't do so we're going to lose
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next time here's a chart i i saw by one analyst showing how in this multi-party world in the first
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past the post system the margin of victory for most mps is much smaller this time than it was last time
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so if there's four five ten fifteen percent of a community that's muslim and that is voting best
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based on ethnic lines that's going to command the attention of all party leaders much more than if we
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were in a world with large majorities and of course there are some districts with twenty thirty
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percent muslim population those places in the uk are going full on gaza expat politics
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there's an interesting wrinkle here in that keir starmer's wife is jewish and i see news that she
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intends to keep the jewish sabbath at 10 downing street i don't know what that means i can't imagine
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she's uh religiously observant in a significant way but it'll be fascinating to see what keir starmer
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himself does um does he tack his party to the hard anti-israel left does he change the way the party
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votes does he put uh sanctions on israel it would not surprise me if he does those things despite his
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own wife's jewishness so i wake up today excited that nagel farage is in parliament but i also wake
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up terrified for the future of this country i should say that uh it's not just a labor problem
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the last 14 years of mass immigration has happened under a tory watch so people who say well if you
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voted for the reform party you're a splittist and you allowed uh the labor to win i i don't think you
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can say that i think the conservatives stood for nothing they really were uh uh you could find no
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difference between them in significant policies between them and and the labor i'm worried that
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unintegratable unassimilable immigration will continue i'm worried that it will in fact increase
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i'm worried that sectarian voting will increase that there will be true no-go zones in the uk where
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entire political apparatuses start to resemble places in pakistan for example or syria where city
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counselors mayors mps police social services the entire institutional nature of towns and cities will
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cease to be british in anything other than postal code um i'm in clacton which is a fairly white
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city and we heard people tell us that they left london uh not just because the cost of living is absurd
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which is a function of immigration but because that's that's not they didn't feel at home there anymore
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i think there's a lot of white flight from london but that's going to happen not just in london but
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manchester birmingham and any other places the united kingdom is changing when tommy robinson was
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on tour with us in canada he talked about demographic change and frankly some of the language he used was
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was harsh he talked about uh demographic replacement and and that's a delicate matter to talk about but
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whether it's the the car whether it's the purpose or just the effect it is happening i mean in the uk mass
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immigration and the high birth rate means the demographic of the demographics of this country
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are changing and whether that's an accident or an unintended consequence or an intended one it is the
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consequence and i think that there will come a tipping point when certain places no longer are
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british in any essential meaning of that term you might recall a few years ago i went to the swedish city
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of malmo which is just across the sea from copenhagen malmo's about well when i was there was about 40 45
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muslim and i'm sure it's much more now and i was in a neighborhood called rosengard for the entire day i
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was there i saw just one ethnic swede and it dawned on me what makes sweden swedish is it its geographical
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location is it the buildings is or or is it the people and i saw just one swede left and and how long
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before they renamed rosengard or malmo itself why would you keep those swedish names if it's now
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essentially islamic in character and we see the tearing down of history the tearing down of statues
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the tearing down of you know figures in the past historically i think they're raising to the ground
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they're tearing down all traces of british history and culture and national identity and into that
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void you know many things come environmentalism comes uh other you know communism wokeism but i
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think the most powerful and confident ideology that's that's coming into that void is islamism
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that is political islam and i find it absolutely terrifying that there are five members of parliament
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more than in the reform party who are elected on a gaza platform nothing to do with the british
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interest everything to do with a sectarian interest it's a gloomy gray day here i've never seen the
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the sea that color it's sort of a dirty green color those british flags ripped in half fluttering in the
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wind the the shrieking of the seagulls that's that's how it feels here not just observing the outdoors
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that's how i think the politics in this country feels i love the united kingdom and i i want to
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see it and i want my kids to see it but i think it's changing and i i don't know what it'll look
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like in 25 years and i'm a canadian though and i don't know what canada is going to look like in 25
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years you know there's a saying if you continue on the path you're on you're going to wind up where
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you're going to and um we are going to the same destination that the uk is justin trudeau has quadrupled
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immigration he has no values testing we see that on the streets with the anti-semitic anti-canada hate
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marches that go unchecked unchecked by politicians and police that are starting to do the same political
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math as here i should say that keir starmer's vote fell in half and much of that went to a pro-gaza
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candidate to his left in his own constituency i'm scared about the uk but i'm not a brit i'm scared about
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canada and i am canadian and i think that's something we have to think about i'm going to
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head back to canada now thanks for joining me on this adventure in the uk and um hopefully we can
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well mr returning officer all here at tendering and i have to say fellow candidates it's been a
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well-run well-thought and remarkably clean election battle i think we'll all agree on that and thank
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you for your services i promise that i will do my absolute best as a member of car winning
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but it's not quite the same league or same responsibility with constituents i will do my
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absolute best to put clackton on the map i'll do my best to bring more tourists i'll do my best to try
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and bring some private investment it's over 30 years ago that i fought my first parliamentary
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by-election and i fought lots of them over the years and i've had big successes in european elections and
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perhaps less so under first past the pace which is a very demanding uh very very demanding problem
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for smaller parties i will say this it's four weeks and three days since i decided to come out
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of retirement and throw my hat in the ring i think what reformer uk has achieved in those just few
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short weeks is truly extraordinary given that we had no money no branch structure virtually nothing
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across the country we are going to come second in hundreds of constituencies how many seats we're going
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to win i don't know but to have done this in such a short space of time says something very fundamental
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is happening it's not just disappointment with the conservative party there is a massive gap
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on the center right of british politics and my job is to fill it and that's exactly what i'm
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going to do but it's not just what we do in parliament as a national party that matters
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it's what we do out around the country getting five thousand people in that room in birmingham
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last week the energy the optimism the enthusiasm the belief that westminster is just completely
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out of touch with ordinary people says to me that my plan is to build a mass national movement over
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the course of the next few years and hopefully be big be big enough to challenge the general election
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properly in 2029 what is interesting is there's no enthusiasm for labor there's no enthusiasm for
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starmer whatsoever in fact about half of the vote is simply an anti-conservative vote this labor
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government will be in trouble very very quickly and we will now be targeting labor votes we're coming
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for labor being no doubt about that i want to thank the team that have helped me do this over
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the last few weeks my fellow candidates for behaving as impeccably as they have believe me folks this is
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just the first step of something that is going to stun all of you thank you very much