TRIGGERnometry - My Big Plan to Rescue Britain - Nigel Farage

00:00:00.700 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.

00:00:06.520 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,

00:00:11.780 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:00:15.780 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:00:22.600 Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:00:26.800 Get tickets at murbish.com.

00:00:31.000 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.

00:00:36.860 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love,

00:00:42.120 including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

00:00:46.120 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

00:00:52.940 Now through June 7th, 2026 at the Princess of Wales Theatre.

00:00:56.840 Get tickets at murbish.com.

00:01:00.000 Guess who's back?

00:01:02.680 Back again!

00:01:03.480 I said to Don Junior, I didn't used to believe in miracles, but now I do.

00:01:08.860 I mean, when you see the picture, that 3D picture of the bullet, the head, I mean, unbelievable.

00:01:13.940 But my first big project is going to be the first Thursday in May next year is the English County Council election.

00:01:24.320 So the plan is very, very clear.

00:01:26.040 The plan is to become the centre-right of British politics.

00:01:29.400 The plan is to replace what, for 190 years, we've known as the Conservative Party.

00:01:35.740 Is it wildly ambitious?

00:01:37.460 You bet your life it is.

00:01:40.040 Nigel Farage, MP for Clacton, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:43.960 Guess who's back?

00:01:44.960 Back again!

00:01:46.340 To quote Eminem.

00:01:47.300 Congratulations on all your success.

00:01:49.580 We're going to talk all about that and reform and British politics in a second.

00:01:53.360 But you've just come back from America.

00:01:55.160 You were there as a show of support, as I understand, for your friend Donald Trump, who'd just been shot.

00:02:00.440 What can you tell us that we haven't heard?

00:02:02.080 You haven't done many interviews, actually, recently.

00:02:04.440 What can you tell us about Donald Trump, his state of mind, what you saw out there?

00:02:08.340 I mean, obviously, if you've been through a near-death experience, you're in a strange place for a week or two.

00:02:15.620 I've been through a couple myself, so I know what it feels like.

00:02:19.140 Although, mine were accidents.

00:02:21.120 This was a genuine intent to kill.

00:02:25.420 I think the reaction of the family was even more interesting.

00:02:28.160 I mean, they are just incandescent.

00:02:29.600 How the hell can a guy with a high-velocity rifle and a sight get onto a roof 125 yards away from Trump?

00:02:40.440 How is that possible?

00:02:42.380 What has happened to Secret Service?

00:02:44.140 I mean, I've been to so many events in America run by Secret Service.

00:02:49.020 And normally, you know, all the buildings around, there are snipers up on the roof.

00:02:53.440 Everyone's frisked and checked, probably more than once.

00:02:57.420 Complete failure.

00:02:58.220 Whether this is a DEI thing, whether she was put into the position because she was a woman and she worked at PepsiCo.

00:03:07.240 You mean the head of the Secret Service?

00:03:08.360 Yeah, and that ticked all of Biden's boxes.

00:03:10.600 I don't know.

00:03:11.660 But the family, very, very angry indeed.

00:03:15.220 Is it going to fundamentally change him?

00:03:17.040 No.

00:03:18.220 You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

00:03:20.140 He's 78.

00:03:20.940 He's not going to change for anybody.

00:03:23.040 But it was a miracle.

00:03:24.260 I said to Don Jr., I didn't used to believe in miracles, but now I do.

00:03:28.860 I mean, when you see the picture, that 3D picture of the bullet, the head, I mean, unbelievable.

00:03:34.640 Unbelievable.

00:03:35.460 So thank God, literally, thank God that Trump was spared.

00:03:40.480 And America was spared.

00:03:43.780 Well, I can't even imagine how awful things would have been.

00:03:46.400 What do you think would have happened if the assassination attempt had been successful?

00:03:51.240 Well, I think we would have seen a total breakdown in respect for lawmakers and for law enforcers right across America.

00:04:04.880 I think the implications of that would have been very, very serious.

00:04:08.540 America is in a very fraught place.

00:04:09.940 You know, it's a level of division that we don't even understand in this country.

00:04:14.600 Well, at least not yet.

00:04:15.700 It's coming, but not yet.

00:04:19.160 And something needs to change.

00:04:22.480 But it's difficult.

00:04:23.260 And one of the things that you guys have charted on trigonometry since you started has been the growth of the illiberal liberal.

00:04:33.120 You know, the person that I might disagree with fundamentally politically, but I respect their right to their opinion, or I think they're a bit batty. 1.00

00:04:40.100 But, you know, fine.

00:04:41.960 Whereas they think I'm evil and I should be silenced.

00:04:44.560 And when you get a group of human beings who think they're superior to another group of human beings, well, then anything goes.

00:04:54.660 Literally anything goes, whether it's using the legal system in a way that it was never intended to be, whether it's comedians regularly saying things that are totally extraordinary.

00:05:07.240 But they believe that's all justified.

00:05:10.700 And so I think, I mean, all of that was a contributory factor to the mind of this young man that wanted to kill Trump.

00:05:19.120 I mean, I'm not saying assassinations are new.

00:05:20.940 They're not.

00:05:21.900 America has seen this, sadly, too often in the past.

00:05:24.840 But I do think, I do think that the cause of the division is the illiberalism of the new left.

00:05:32.020 And it's really interesting as well to see the Democrats' response to it.

00:05:36.420 And then barely a week later, Biden stands down.

00:05:40.280 I mean, who would have predicted that?

00:05:42.560 Me.

00:05:43.540 I predicted it last September.

00:05:45.780 I wrote a piece last September in Newsweek in which I said Biden would not be the candidate.

00:05:52.100 I mean, how this mainstream media, you know, I'm talking New York Times, CNN, senior officials in the Democrat Party, Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, etc.

00:06:04.020 I mean, they have been conning the American public for a very long period of time that Biden was up to the job of being leader of the free world, when very clearly he wasn't.

00:06:14.300 So, yeah, I think.

00:06:15.860 And Kamala Harris has come in and they all say she's wonderful.

00:06:19.100 Well, you wait.

00:06:20.180 You wait.

00:06:20.760 There'll be plenty of banana skins on the way.

00:06:22.640 Because we sort of glossed over that point about the Democrat Party.

00:06:28.500 But they were going, this is a man who is perfectly able to stand.

00:06:33.000 He is competent.

00:06:34.240 He's lucid.

00:06:35.300 And then you see him on stage bring Vladimir Zelensky to the stage as Vladimir Putin.

00:06:41.320 And now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination.

00:06:50.000 Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin.

00:06:52.980 President Putin.

00:06:54.740 He's going to beat President Putin.

00:06:56.520 President Zelensky.

00:06:58.060 He just about recovered from the debate the month before.

00:07:02.340 But of course, the NATO summit, they couldn't hide him.

00:07:05.080 They could not hide him.

00:07:06.540 Yeah, and then, of course, he introduced Kamala Harris as Vice President-elect Trump.

00:07:12.880 Yeah, I mean, look, you know, we can laugh, but it's not funny, really, is it?

00:07:17.180 Because it was the withdrawal of the last 3,000 American troops from Afghanistan.

00:07:23.880 Despite the fact no American soldier had been killed for 18 months.

00:07:27.360 They were just training the Afghan army, which was doing all the heavy lifting and fighting at great loss.

00:07:32.760 The leaving behind of nearly $100 billion worth of really prime American military equipment.

00:07:41.240 And it was that catastrophe and handing the Taliban back the keys after 20 years that led to Putin doing what he did in Ukraine. 0.59

00:07:50.100 I have no doubt that if Trump had been in the White House, that would not have happened.

00:07:54.940 So the serious side is that Biden finishes four years with the world a very much more dangerous place than it was when he took over.

00:08:04.500 And if you think about just the Democrats, they're not fit for purpose.

00:08:09.420 How can you have a party saying he's fit to run and at the same time you look at him and he looks like someone's granddad who's no longer able to function?

00:08:20.560 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, many of us have seen somewhere in our immediate or near families, you know, what the effect of dementia is and it's horrendous and you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy.

00:08:33.180 And they've just been hiding this and hiding him, doing as few public engagements as he possibly could, scripted, you know, to the nth degree.

00:08:43.980 I mean, God knows what world leaders must have thought when they go to the Oval Office. 0.85

00:08:48.060 Keir Starmer was nice about him, but then I guess as a brand new British Prime Minister, it might have been undiplomatic to say that he's a complete old duffer.

00:08:56.640 Yeah, no, the Democrats, I mean, they, what's interesting is in Harris, they've got somebody who is really way out there on the Liberal wing.

00:09:10.780 Aligned to that.

00:09:11.820 Can I just pause you there? You said she's way out there. What do you mean by that?

00:09:16.380 Oh, I think on, you know, critical race theory, I think on trans rights, I think on all these issues.

00:09:23.440 I think on her support for Black Lives Matter, you know, when they were setting fire to places and killing people, but no problem, because they're lovely people. 0.99

00:09:32.520 You know, I mean, that's where she is on all this stuff.

00:09:35.240 She's also quite inconsistent.

00:09:36.580 You know, she'll chop and change as suits. 1.00

00:09:40.020 And so I think this initial rush of money that has come for her, this, oh, the polls are tightening, the polls are tightening, maybe she's in the lead, all this stuff that we've got just a few days in.

00:09:51.360 I don't believe it'll last.

00:09:52.900 I don't think that she will bear examination and scrutiny.

00:09:57.020 I just don't.

00:09:57.580 You know, what's interesting about what we're talking about, Nigel, is if you're a neutral observer and you're watching, forget about what your own politics are or anything, you're just watching the coverage and then you're watching the reality afterwards.

00:10:09.860 And you go, these people told me that Joe Biden was in perfect health and the right person.

00:10:14.480 And then next week he resigns and clearly not in perfect health and not the right person.

00:10:18.240 And now the new narrative is Kamala Harris is not a DEI hire.

00:10:23.400 Well, if you go back and look at the media coverage at the time, they were all saying the next vice president must be a black woman.

00:10:28.880 Yes.

00:10:29.460 And now people like me who are pointing that out are being told, no, no, no, you imagined it.

00:10:33.660 And if you were a neutral observer looking, if you had a memory and you were able to remember what they said before it changed, I think you must be just completely disillusioned with anything that you're reading or watching now.

00:10:47.540 Well, I am.

00:10:48.960 I am.

00:10:50.320 And, you know, you have to ask what is mainstream media for?

00:10:54.820 I mean, we've got the BBC in this country, which pretends to be neutral.

00:10:57.740 Well, maybe we'll talk about my interactions with them during the election campaign in a moment.

00:11:04.940 CNN in America, it doesn't even attempt neutrality.

00:11:08.080 Mind you, you could say by the same token, nor does Fox News.

00:11:11.780 But the whole purpose of journalism, any form of journalism, is yes, to have a fine, have an opinion.

00:11:20.380 If you're allowed to have an opinion, a newspaper is owned by a proprietor and it has an opinion, that's fine.

00:11:27.020 But it's also to challenge.

00:11:29.880 You know, it is opposition politics and the media that challenges government and holds it to account and speaks truth to power.

00:11:37.420 And we see less of that going on with the Democrat administration than we've probably ever seen.

00:11:44.020 What does happen, though, is I saw that interview that Emily Maitlis did with you out in America.

00:11:50.120 And is that the sense you've got that he's having a tough time right now?

00:11:53.920 He nearly died.

00:11:54.720 I saw it because it was tweeted by her or somebody connected to her and it had, you know, millions of views and thousands and tens of thousands of likes.

00:12:13.000 And I thought, OK, well, she must have got Farage.

00:12:15.240 Like, let's watch this.

00:12:16.100 This will be interesting.

00:12:17.700 And then I watched it.

00:12:18.460 I couldn't even understand why anybody liked or responded to it because it was just her asking you if Donald Trump is OK and you're going, he's just been shot.

00:12:27.120 And that seemed to be the entire.

00:12:28.900 But he was celebrated as some kind of victory, like you'd been scalped.

00:12:33.440 I think the other way around.

00:12:34.540 Quite.

00:12:35.080 I think I spoiled her evening.

00:12:37.360 You know.

00:12:38.440 And you will find, actually, millions of views on the other side in support of me.

00:12:42.360 But, yeah, how anybody supporting Emily Maitlis thought that was a victory for her, I have no idea. 1.00

00:12:47.100 I thought she made herself look very, very stupid. 0.99

00:12:50.080 And that's just not good journalism and good broadcasting. 1.00

00:12:52.700 And why would anyone want to speak to her?

00:12:54.780 You know, I mean, I won't bother to speak to her again.

00:12:57.200 Why would you?

00:12:58.240 What's the point?

00:12:59.980 There needs to be an exchange of views.

00:13:01.860 There needs to be a debate.

00:13:03.000 And you can disagree.

00:13:04.680 But, frankly, her behaviour is appalling.

00:13:06.940 And it just makes me nostalgic for people like Andrew Neil.

00:13:11.040 And we all knew that Andrew Neil was conservative.

00:13:14.500 He leaned towards the right.

00:13:15.620 But, you know, the moment that he was in that BBC studio, it didn't matter if it was Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn.

00:13:23.560 He was going to be absolutely fair.

00:13:25.680 And he was going to be relentless.

00:13:28.720 Andrew Neil, brilliant.

00:13:29.620 The other one, John Humphreys.

00:13:30.880 Yeah.

00:13:31.220 John Humphreys, terrific.

00:13:32.260 You know, the number of times I did the Today programme, going into the studio, you know, debating with John.

00:13:39.020 And he would always, after the interview, come out into the corridor, have a laugh about what was said, say goodbye, mutual respect.

00:13:47.440 And these were enormous figures.

00:13:51.500 Enormous figures in our lives for decades.

00:13:53.900 And now we have Nick Robinson.

00:13:57.120 There you go.

00:13:58.060 Well, since we've moved back to the UK, let's move back to the UK, Nigel.

00:14:02.160 Yeah.

00:14:02.340 One of the big sort of like memes, let's say, about you.

00:14:08.720 Oh, he's never been elected.

00:14:09.880 He's never.

00:14:10.260 He ran for Parliament so many.

00:14:11.980 He stood for Parliament so many times.

00:14:14.300 Now you're the MP.

00:14:15.100 Does it feel good to get that monkey off your back?

00:14:17.160 Was that something that bothered you?

00:14:18.180 No, no, no.

00:14:18.560 It's all cobblers, isn't it?

00:14:19.680 It's all cobblers.

00:14:20.700 Number one.

00:14:21.980 I was elected five times to the European Parliament.

00:14:24.260 The last two times, top of the list in the southeast of England and leading a party to national victory.

00:14:32.720 You know, when UKIP won in 2014, it was the first time a national election had been won by a party that wasn't Labour or the Conservatives since 1906.

00:14:43.280 And when the Brexit Party won in 2019, I became the first man in British history to lead two different parties to two national victories.

00:14:49.280 But that, of course, was proportion of representation.

00:14:52.540 Then we get the fix of first past the post and all that goes with it.

00:14:56.120 When I was standing in the 90s for UKIP, saving a deposit was the cause for a wild night out.

00:15:03.980 So they won't runs at Parliament.

00:15:06.620 That was us saying the way to get heard is to stand and start taking votes.

00:15:11.180 And it took a long time, but we got there.

00:15:12.820 I'd stood once seriously before this down in Thanet.

00:15:16.600 They cheated so much.

00:15:18.160 One of the party agents got a nine-month prison sentence suspended for breaking electoral law.

00:15:23.980 All right?

00:15:24.580 It was the one time I'd stood before.

00:15:26.320 So a lot of this stuff that was out there on social media is just cobblers.

00:15:31.240 When I sat here with you 18 months ago, I talked about the gap that I felt was emerging in politics,

00:15:42.600 that effectively the real differences between Labour and Conservative are very, very marginal.

00:15:49.920 Yeah, Labour will be a bit worse on the social stuff, but not much.

00:15:53.420 I mean, really not much.

00:15:54.540 Yeah, sure, Labour will put our taxes up, but look at what this lot have done over the course of the last 14 years.

00:15:59.980 And it was the fact that the Conservative Party, ever since David Cameron became leader,

00:16:06.100 has just stopped even pretending to stand up for conservative causes.

00:16:10.420 I had to think a long time before deciding to go back into it.

00:16:19.040 For me, it's a lot to give up.

00:16:21.580 You know, I had my 60th birthday earlier this year, just had two grandkids.

00:16:26.320 All four of my kids are now adults and getting on with their lives.

00:16:32.260 I've loved GB News.

00:16:33.880 I mean, it's been the best job I've ever had.

00:16:36.340 I mean, what?

00:16:36.840 I can sit there at 7 o'clock in front of a TV screen with no script and just do my stuff for an hour, four nights a week.

00:16:42.680 So I've loved all of that.

00:16:44.500 I've been going back and forth to America, giving speeches at colleges, at foundations, at political events.

00:16:51.320 Income has been really good.

00:16:53.300 Health reasonable, better than it should be.

00:16:55.460 You know, and so to give all that up, to go back into a life of intense public scrutiny, big decision, big decision.

00:17:07.580 And so my thinking was that confidence in politics as a whole is breaking down.

00:17:19.480 Belief that the first-past-the-post system is the right way to run the country,

00:17:22.640 diminishing very, very much more quickly than anyone cares to admit or even wants to talk about.

00:17:30.440 And that the centre of gravity of public opinion is still a majority for common sense.

00:17:41.020 And that much of that's not being reflected in our politics.

00:17:45.640 And the feeling that I was doing this, not for a short-term hit,

00:17:53.440 but to really fundamentally try and reshape the whole of British politics.

00:17:58.940 That's why I'm back.

00:17:59.700 So let me ask you this, Nigel.

00:18:01.780 It was clear to me, looking at the numbers, that the Conservatives didn't lose to Labour.

00:18:06.280 They lost to reform.

00:18:07.560 That's what happened at the last election.

00:18:08.940 It's very clear.

00:18:09.380 The question then is, what's the plan?

00:18:13.860 Because for you to do much, much better the next election and to do what you want to do,

00:18:20.380 which is to take over the right-wing space in British politics,

00:18:24.380 you're going to have to do a lot of things.

00:18:25.940 You're going to have to peel off some Tory defectors.

00:18:28.600 For example, are you looking to try and get people like Suella to come to reform?

00:18:33.400 We don't need any Tory defectors.

00:18:35.320 You're wrong.

00:18:35.800 What we need to do is concentrate on what we do.

00:18:39.360 People spend too much of their lives worrying about the other bloke.

00:18:42.500 Worry about what you do.

00:18:44.340 It's actually quite good advice in every walk of life.

00:18:46.620 Now, if defectors come, that's great.

00:18:49.080 You've had defectors in the past.

00:18:50.500 It's not like you were averse to it.

00:18:51.660 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:18:52.260 In fact, I could have had a lot of defectors going back 10 years,

00:18:56.920 but I set the bar very high.

00:18:59.340 I said, if you was an MP, what would defector you get?

00:19:02.440 You've got to hold a by-election as a matter of honour.

00:19:04.920 And two came and two did, you know, fulfil that obligation.

00:19:09.420 Others would have come but didn't want to go through the by-election test.

00:19:13.300 And no question, both Carswell and Reckless coming was very helpful.

00:19:17.180 Very helpful indeed.

00:19:18.720 In fact, it meant that Cameron, there was no way Cameron could rat on a referendum if he won the next election.

00:19:25.540 No, if defectors want to come, that's great.

00:19:30.660 But if they want to come and bring their Conservative Party poison with them, please stay where you are.

00:19:35.040 Because they really spent most of the last four years fighting each other, not standing up for the country.

00:19:40.380 I mean, it's been an ongoing charade, hasn't it?

00:19:43.740 You know, with Boris, with Splits, the One Nation lot, the Eurosceptics.

00:19:47.860 I mean, it's so boring, boring, boring.

00:19:51.180 It's not even true.

00:19:52.700 So if they want to bring that into reform, I've no interest in having you at all.

00:19:57.480 If you want to come in and help me reshape the centre-right of British politics,

00:20:01.900 to debate genuinely the size of a state,

00:20:06.640 whether the state is delivering on its obligations to its citizens,

00:20:12.480 what free enterprise is actually all about,

00:20:18.180 and maybe to redefine what the national interest is.

00:20:21.300 What are we?

00:20:22.200 And I think what is really happening in the country is, in their tens of millions,

00:20:30.360 people are asking themselves, what is happening to our country?

00:20:35.580 What is going on?

00:20:37.820 There is a massive identity crisis out there.

00:20:41.360 Huge.

00:20:42.840 What does it mean to be British anymore?

00:20:45.260 In particular, what does it mean to be English anymore?

00:20:48.540 What are the values that we stand up and represent?

00:20:53.320 What is our place in the world?

00:20:55.800 Why is the town 20 miles down the road now literally unrecognisable in every way?

00:21:02.360 Why are my kids being poisoned at school

00:21:04.360 and told that everything about our history is wicked and evil?

00:21:09.420 Well, that's the really big debate that's happening in Britain.

00:21:13.280 And politics isn't filling that gap.

00:21:14.860 And that's why you saw a miserable turnout.

00:21:18.260 Less than 60%, despite postal voting on a level which makes it easier for a lot of people to vote.

00:21:24.640 It's why the share for the two so-called main parties fell below two-thirds for the first time ever in modern history.

00:21:34.200 There is a big sense of dissatisfaction out there.

00:21:37.520 People are looking for something that is positive.

00:21:41.240 People are looking for something that is affirmative.

00:21:44.500 People are looking for something that redefines identity and values and culture.

00:21:50.300 And I said all through the campaign, four weeks and three days was all I had,

00:21:54.700 but I said all through the campaign, the three things that are driving us as a political party,

00:22:00.620 but we're really a movement, are family, community, and country.

00:22:06.240 They're the things that we believe in.

00:22:08.420 We know in our own minds our definitions of what those things mean.

00:22:12.720 And to get four and a bit million votes and a handful of us elected into the House of Commons

00:22:20.760 is just the first step on that journey.

00:22:25.840 As I said a moment ago, I could just retire.

00:22:28.680 I could do a bit of telly, enjoy life, you know.

00:22:32.400 None of us know how long we're going to be here.

00:22:34.340 But I'm not going to do that.

00:22:36.080 I'm absolutely dedicated to this.

00:22:38.500 Because I think there's a possibility of something very major happening politically.

00:22:45.320 I believe that I can be the catalyst for it.

00:22:49.020 I may not be the person in the end that ever gets to wear the crown.

00:22:53.780 I've been quite good in the past at being kingmaker.

00:22:56.720 You know, I'm not sure Mr. Johnson would ever have made it to number 10

00:22:59.040 if I hadn't done the things that I'd done.

00:23:01.780 But that's fine as long as they deliver.

00:23:03.960 Just that Boris didn't deliver.

00:23:05.900 And so that sense of betrayal.

00:23:07.040 So what's the plan?

00:23:08.740 This is what I'm asking, Nigel.

00:23:09.840 As you say, you've given up a lot of opportunities to do this.

00:23:13.340 And you've got five MPs, which is a solid result.

00:23:16.340 Some people thought you would get way more.

00:23:17.920 Some people thought you wouldn't.

00:23:19.760 But to go from five MPs to making the type of impact you're talking about,

00:23:23.820 you have got five years of very, very hard work.

00:23:27.900 And the question that a lot of people might be asking is,

00:23:30.280 what is it that you're actually trying to do?

00:23:32.220 What does a reform success five years from now look like?

00:23:37.020 And how do you get there?

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00:24:08.180 Well, and that goes back to my priorities.

00:24:10.340 I've got three things to do, haven't I, fundamentally, politically.

00:24:13.060 Number one is to serve the constituency of Clacton and its people.

00:24:18.620 As an MP, I just represented those that voted for me.

00:24:22.480 But as an MP, you have a deeper responsibility towards that community.

00:24:26.880 So, you know, I'm getting going on that.

00:24:29.320 But, of course, you start with nothing.

00:24:30.940 You've got to hire staff and get offices and do all those things.

00:24:34.580 Number two, people want me to be effective within the parliamentary estate

00:24:40.480 and in the chamber.

00:24:44.140 But they're my smallest jobs.

00:24:47.020 They're my smallest jobs.

00:24:48.220 My biggest job is we have to build a national political party.

00:24:52.060 The Brexit party was a pop-up.

00:24:54.700 You know, it came out of nowhere because Theresa May was not going to deliver Brexit.

00:24:58.580 A second referendum was coming down the track.

00:25:01.660 This deadline that we had in 2019 for leaving at the end of the, if you remember,

00:25:06.840 Article 50 process wasn't going to happen.

00:25:10.320 And so I thought, right, we've got to do something.

00:25:12.040 So the Brexit party was a pop-up rebellion.

00:25:14.640 Very successful pop-up rebellion.

00:25:17.080 I then withdrew the troops, if you remember, against Boris Johnson.

00:25:22.520 Said, guys, you know what?

00:25:24.140 I don't really like the deal very much, but it's the best we're going to get.

00:25:28.580 And then I rebranded it as the Brexit party, as Reform UK.

00:25:33.080 I said to Richard Tice, look, I'm done.

00:25:36.860 I'm completely, again, I've done it before.

00:25:39.200 I'm done.

00:25:39.680 I'm out of here.

00:25:41.460 And Richard kept it going for three years at considerable personal, financial, and time

00:25:47.860 cost to himself.

00:25:49.260 But really, Reform was like an insurance policy.

00:25:53.620 You know, I've just renewed my house insurance the other day.

00:25:55.900 Now, I don't want there to be a fire for that premium to pay out, but it's quite wise to pay

00:26:00.640 the premium.

00:26:01.920 And that's what Reform was.

00:26:03.900 And I became the honorary president of the thing, sort of, you know, kicked upstairs,

00:26:08.980 played no active role, and Richard kept it going.

00:26:12.840 But it was really, when I decided, right, I'm going to come back to this, and that was

00:26:18.120 on June the 3rd, it's really a concept.

00:26:22.380 It wasn't a party with structure.

00:26:24.460 It wasn't a party that had a vetting procedure.

00:26:26.720 In fact, many of the candidates were last minute.

00:26:30.100 Charlie, Charlie calls.

00:26:31.000 Please, anybody, someone stand somewhere.

00:26:33.120 You know, so to succeed, you know, we've got to build a national political infrastructure.

00:26:43.980 We've got to raise tens of millions of pounds.

00:26:48.460 We've got to create the feeling of discipline within the party, whilst at the same time understanding

00:26:58.560 individual conscience.

00:27:00.440 And that's a balance that party leaders always struggle with. 0.53

00:27:03.140 They're always accused by the press of either being stunted or being absolutely useless, 0.98

00:27:06.860 you know, and weak. 0.95

00:27:07.720 And we have to succeed at other elections.

00:27:12.800 The Liberal Democrats, it's very interesting this, they've won 72 seats.

00:27:18.060 You know, a huge percentage of their national vote is in those 72 seats.

00:27:24.140 Why?

00:27:24.540 Because Paddy Ashdown put them on a path back in the 90s, where you build local teams, local bases, you start winning council seats.

00:27:34.440 And only when you've won a certain number of council seats, do you even have half a chance of winning a parliamentary seat.

00:27:41.980 That was the Ashdown formula.

00:27:43.780 It worked brilliantly.

00:27:45.800 You know, they had this big rise in seats and votes up till 2010.

00:27:50.260 And then Clegg was seen to blow it.

00:27:52.820 That was over students and money predominantly.

00:27:55.760 But the Lib Dems have come back.

00:27:57.120 And it's very interesting.

00:27:58.380 Even when the national opinion polls for the Lib Dems had them on the floor, they were still doing well in council by elections.

00:28:03.300 So building that grassroots base.

00:28:06.580 So my first big project, and I haven't really talked about this before, but my first big project is going to be the first Thursday in May next year, is the English County Council elections.

00:28:22.220 There are 2,300 county council seats up for grabs.

00:28:26.260 And that is my first big target.

00:28:30.540 And you can judge me whether I'm doing well or badly on that day.

00:28:35.180 But I think if, and it's a big if, we can build the structure, we can find over 2,000 really good, solid, reliable people who think the right way and are prepared to give up time, you know, for the local counties and communities.

00:28:51.440 I think we can make a massive step forward.

00:28:54.160 And I, it's interesting.

00:28:56.460 People think, oh, well, of course, you'll just hurt the Tories.

00:28:58.760 You know, one of the reasons that Labour vote share was down at 33.8% was more Labour votes came to reform than anybody has yet given it credit for.

00:29:09.740 And I found it really interesting that the Sunday after the election, there was Tony Blair in the Sunday Times saying the Labour Party need to watch reform.

00:29:20.860 He gets it, he gets it, he gets it, he gets it, he gets it, he gets it that in over 100 seats, second to Labour isn't the Conservatives, it's reform.

00:29:36.280 So, I think we've got huge potential.

00:29:40.920 I think next year is very, very big.

00:29:43.360 The year after that, we have Welsh Parliament elections.

00:29:47.960 The Welsh Labour vote was down 3.9%.

00:29:51.340 You know, we've got a real opportunity coming up in these years.

00:29:56.840 Now, you know, leading up to that, obviously, there's policy development, there's fundraising, there's structure, there's all the things that I said.

00:30:03.320 So, the plan is very, very clear.

00:30:05.220 The plan is to become the centre-right of British politics.

00:30:09.220 The plan is to replace what, for 190 years, we've met as the Conservative Party.

00:30:15.220 Is it wildly ambitious?

00:30:16.860 You bet your life it is.

00:30:18.420 But that's what I'm going to try and do.

00:30:20.600 They are not fit for purpose.

00:30:23.000 They serve no agenda.

00:30:25.620 They stand for nothing.

00:30:27.560 It's almost irrelevant who becomes the leader.

00:30:31.260 You know, I mean, personally, I want James Cleverley, personally.

00:30:34.040 I'm quite prepared to put some money into the campaign, if that's what's needed.

00:30:37.900 I think he'd be just perfect.

00:30:40.200 But they are so split.

00:30:42.740 You know, I mean, take attitudes towards me.

00:30:48.440 I mean, I'm a very, very good, you know, sort of diviner of where we are with Conservatives.

00:30:55.620 You know, the Jacob Rees-Mogg's of the party think I should be involved and invited in.

00:31:04.780 And you've got scores of other One Nation MPs who think, you know, I shouldn't even be spoken to in the team room.

00:31:13.260 And that sums up the divide that exists within the party.

00:31:16.920 And I can't see him sorting it out.

00:31:18.040 Nigel, whenever we talk to people on this show, they always spit into two camps.

00:31:23.720 And either you can reform the institutions or we need to essentially break them up.

00:31:29.600 They're no longer fit for purpose.

00:31:30.860 When you look at our major political parties, and let's include the Labour Party in this because they're important as well.

00:31:37.020 Where do you stand?

00:31:38.040 Can we save these parties and reform them?

00:31:41.080 Or are they already too far gone?

00:31:44.080 Well, electoral reform would blow it up overnight.

00:31:47.020 And of course it would, you know, I mean, the...

00:31:49.020 By that, do you mean PR?

00:31:50.440 Yes.

00:31:51.260 Oh, yes.

00:31:51.780 I mean, that, you know, the Conservative Party and Labour Party, as they are, would not exist.

00:31:57.060 We have a very, very different system.

00:32:00.700 Do you know, people might even go and vote for what they believe in.

00:32:03.740 I'm going to vote for them because I really, I don't like them, but I really hate them.

00:32:07.360 That's kind of where, a lot of people are voting on negatives and not on positives.

00:32:11.720 And maybe that also reflects the debate.

00:32:15.160 America's a bit like that, isn't it? 0.51

00:32:16.380 Yeah.

00:32:16.580 First past the post, two-party system.

00:32:19.420 You know, you think we're bad?

00:32:21.560 Have a look at the other guy.

00:32:22.800 I mean, you know, that's kind of how it's been for years in America.

00:32:26.500 Even without electoral reform, that narrowing of the margins between what the two get and

00:32:41.120 the others get is going to diminish.

00:32:44.180 We've also got the new spectre, which I've been talking about for some time, of, you know,

00:32:50.440 it's sad and it's dangerous, but sectarian voting.

00:32:56.600 You know, people avowedly standing on Muslim religious tickets and four of them got elected.

00:33:03.180 And I suppose with Corbyn as an independent, it's almost five.

00:33:07.100 That will only grow.

00:33:08.740 So that will diminish and hurt the Labour Party.

00:33:11.340 The radical Greens, who are just so far to the left of almost anybody, who also, of course,

00:33:21.680 have quite a number of deeply intolerant people, particularly when it comes to the Jewish community,

00:33:26.720 et cetera.

00:33:28.060 That vote on the left is going to grow.

00:33:31.440 And the demographics mean that the sectarian vote will grow. 0.67

00:33:35.300 You know, we have a particular problem with 18 to 24-year-old young Muslim men in Britain, 1.00

00:33:40.720 British-born, a growing number being attracted to concepts such as jihad, et cetera.

00:33:47.120 And I believe reform can only grow from here as well.

00:33:50.020 So, you know, even with the system, big change is coming.

00:33:55.660 So what it really sounds like is a society that's going to become ever more divided and

00:34:00.620 ever more fractured.

00:34:01.440 Yes, I think it will.

00:34:07.340 I think the forces behind sectarian voting are growing.

00:34:14.900 The forces behind the Green Party are also growing.

00:34:19.480 You know, much of it coming straight from our universities, the unis, which I call the

00:34:24.060 madrassas of Marxism, you know.

00:34:26.000 And, yeah, and that group of people reflect the illiberal liberalism that we started off

00:34:34.740 this podcast talking about.

00:34:37.120 These are people with very, very extreme views.

00:34:39.880 Very extreme views.

00:34:42.620 And particularly their attitudes towards money and success.

00:34:46.660 I mean, can you believe it?

00:34:51.580 Last year, last year, more multimillionaires left Britain last year than any other country

00:34:59.420 in the world.

00:35:00.660 And why?

00:35:02.140 Well, because of what Jeremy Hunt as chancellor did to non-dom status, tax across the board.

00:35:07.740 And if you overtax people, they disappear.

00:35:12.160 And the number of people I know that are going, and not just multimillionaires, younger, aspirational

00:35:20.220 people, a lot went to Lisbon over the course of the last few years.

00:35:23.760 Milan, which, by the way, is a fab city, but I wouldn't mind living in Milan, you know.

00:35:29.440 Milan is just saying, come on down.

00:35:31.840 You know, come with your business.

00:35:33.580 You want to get on and make lots of money, make this your home.

00:35:37.000 So we're losing not just the super rich that are leaving, but aspirational entrepreneurs

00:35:42.460 are leaving our country as well.

00:35:47.060 And labor will make that even worse. 0.99

00:35:50.500 So, yeah, divisions along the lines of religion, sort of, you know, Jewish, Muslim, then you've

00:36:00.820 got Christianity, which still exists, believe it or not.

00:36:03.380 There is still an Archbishop of Canterbury.

00:36:05.080 I know we haven't heard from him for about 20 years.

00:36:07.500 But so that religious divide is growing in the country.

00:36:11.860 But there's also this wealth divide that is growing, where a growing number on the left

00:36:19.880 despise those that have money.

00:36:23.200 I mean, if you think about it, really, you know, it is Marxism all over again, isn't

00:36:28.980 it?

00:36:29.400 Then we have the race divide, which doesn't exist, but people want to exist because that's 0.98

00:36:34.940 their industry.

00:36:35.700 And when I say it doesn't exist, I genuinely don't think it exists compared to almost every

00:36:41.160 other country on the planet.

00:36:43.000 I think our general level of attitude towards different races, different nationalities,

00:36:49.580 different skin colors, I think we're the most relaxed people on earth.

00:36:54.320 And I mean, you know, you've written about this and talked about this in the past.

00:36:58.040 But there comes a point at which we say, who are we?

00:37:02.540 What is our identity?

00:37:05.000 So, yeah, the divides are going to get worse.

00:37:07.940 I sense the way in which we're governed is just not going to improve.

00:37:15.180 Labour want more and more and more devolution.

00:37:17.220 Devolution, well, that's fine in theory, but in practice, you've got to ask, is devolution

00:37:21.640 actually working?

00:37:23.700 Doesn't look very good in Wales to me right at the moment, or Scotland, but that's just

00:37:27.480 my point of view.

00:37:31.140 And so we need something to come through the middle of all of this that genuinely puts us

00:37:37.080 back on a path to national renewal.

00:37:38.880 Now, the only one good thing about all this is the situation in Europe is far worse.

00:37:43.160 You sound like one of those politicians. 0.99

00:37:46.540 If you think we're crap, look at them. 1.00

00:37:48.360 Well, no, I mean, but it is. 0.99

00:37:50.060 Yeah.

00:37:50.500 It's a very British thing.

00:37:51.540 Look at the French. 1.00

00:37:52.760 They're struggling.

00:37:53.500 Well, but look at the French. 0.89

00:37:54.980 You know, I mean, you know, the French economically and socially are in a far worse place than we

00:38:00.980 are.

00:38:01.160 And that's cold comfort farms talk in that way.

00:38:03.640 But, boy, we've got an awful lot to solve.

00:38:07.600 No wonder they're all coming here as refugees. 1.00

00:38:10.000 I was going to, I mean, this is not really a provocative question, but when we talk about

00:38:17.340 this, aren't we just using politics to try and solve a cultural problem?

00:38:21.980 And the reality is that politics' ability to solve that problem is fairly limited, isn't

00:38:28.380 it?

00:38:28.720 No.

00:38:29.880 No.

00:38:30.760 That's nonsense.

00:38:31.960 Politics has caused the problem.

00:38:33.640 Completely irresponsible, uncontrolled mass migration has not just diminished the quality 0.98

00:38:47.100 of life for almost everybody in this country dramatically in the last 25 years and particularly

00:38:53.560 the last 14, but it has also led to many of these divisions.

00:39:01.440 I mean, look, you know, and I've said this a thousand times, but I'll say it again briefly.

00:39:06.060 From Windrush until the election of the Blair government, net migration into Britain was 30,000 to 50,000 people a year.

00:39:14.160 Through the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s.

00:39:16.440 Now, I did it in my maiden speech in Parliament.

00:39:19.580 What's it been under the Conservatives for the last few years?

00:39:21.820 There's even net, net.

00:39:24.600 We're talking millions.

00:39:26.240 There are 10 million more people living in Britain than the world where Mr Blair came

00:39:29.820 to power.

00:39:31.140 Everywhere you go, you'll see 50 houses being built on here, 300 houses being built on there.

00:39:36.280 Does that mean there are more GP surgeries?

00:39:37.980 Does it help?

00:39:38.900 Does it mean there are more roads?

00:39:40.220 Does it help?

00:39:41.340 Does it mean your kid's prospect of buying a house has just got better or worse?

00:39:44.660 It's got worse.

00:39:46.400 So, no, politics has caused much of this.

00:39:49.440 And those of us on the outside that have warned about this massive population increase and said,

00:39:56.580 all the numbers you give for GDP growth are actually wrong, and now people are waking up.

00:40:04.840 It's made us poorer.

00:40:06.680 Oh, great for the big multinationals.

00:40:08.480 Great for the big employers.

00:40:09.500 At record levels of net legal migration, GDP goes up, and GDP per capita fell for six consecutive

00:40:19.320 quarters in the run-up to this election.

00:40:21.700 And the great British public are waking up to this.

00:40:24.440 And then you have the cultural problem.

00:40:26.880 You know, and I touched on it earlier.

00:40:29.160 Parts of the country are being literally unrecognizable.

00:40:31.600 Language being used by the extreme within the Muslim community, that if you or I said any

00:40:41.540 of those things the other way around, we'd probably get arrested and put in prison.

00:40:45.680 No, politics has caused many of these problems.

00:40:47.960 Therefore, logically, politics has to try to help to find some of the solutions.

00:40:53.660 Well, let me ask you about that, Nigel.

00:40:54.920 The interview we released before this one was with a Silicon Valley investor called Peter

00:40:59.700 Teal.

00:41:00.740 He's a very interesting guy, interesting thoughts about many things.

00:41:03.860 But one of his central themes for a long time has been that what is happening to much of

00:41:11.320 the world, actually, but particularly in the Western world, is an economic stagnation.

00:41:15.200 We're not innovating in the real world of building and making things, et cetera.

00:41:19.940 We're innovating in computing.

00:41:21.200 We're making new AI and all of that.

00:41:23.280 But really, the economy is stagnating and much of the division and many of the political

00:41:29.240 problems that we talk about, in his view, are a product of it.

00:41:32.360 And immigration would be a good example of this because mass immigration of low-skilled 0.97

00:41:36.620 labor that's happening.

00:41:37.720 I know you and I probably agree, partly it's ideological.

00:41:40.880 There are people who think immigration is the thing that we must subject ourselves to

00:41:45.380 because it's the morally right thing to do.

00:41:46.960 But when you talk to people who have just left government, what they'll tell you is,

00:41:53.260 well, we tried to reduce the number of people coming, but then the Treasury won't let us.

00:41:58.060 Why?

00:41:58.540 Because we know that economic growth, not per capita, but the headline figure, is going

00:42:04.140 to go down.

00:42:05.020 So essentially, mass immigration is a way to pretend we're growing when we're not. 0.73

00:42:10.140 We're aligned to, and this is, by the way, no one talks about, I mean, we got, I'm off

00:42:16.080 to Parliament after this.

00:42:17.820 Rachel Reeves will tell us, we've just discovered a 19 billion pound black hole in the Tories

00:42:23.480 numbers.

00:42:23.980 How that's possible when it's all in the OBR books, I've no idea.

00:42:28.180 But what's the real black hole?

00:42:30.600 What's the real economic black hole?

00:42:32.740 It's 2.7 trillion.

00:42:36.060 Oh, wash my mouth.

00:42:37.120 That was soap and water. 0.68

00:42:37.980 We're not supposed to talk about that.

00:42:39.100 That's our national debt.

00:42:41.120 It's almost trebled since David Cameron came into office in 2010.

00:42:46.200 So without us living on borrowed money and without mass imported cheap labour, goodness

00:42:55.680 only knows what the true state of the economy would be.

00:42:59.460 Hence my question, Nigel, which is, how do we get out of this economically?

00:43:04.120 Let's say, you know, by some miracle, and miracles do happen, as you mentioned,

00:43:09.100 earlier, at the time of the next election, whether it's through a pact with the Conservatives,

00:43:13.460 I know that you probably spit at me as I say it, but whatever, let's say that you were

00:43:18.340 actually in charge of the country.

00:43:20.980 How do we get this country with this level of debt, with this addiction to low-skill, low-wage

00:43:27.980 immigration, et cetera, growing in such a way that we can actually fix these problems?

00:43:33.020 Well, several steps we have to take.

00:43:34.060 Number one is to recognise that real economic growth doesn't come through a handful of giant

00:43:37.920 multinational companies.

00:43:38.880 It comes through millions of individuals taking risk, taking risk with a profit motive.

00:43:46.420 Oh, my goodness me, there I go again, using forbidden words.

00:43:50.440 But actually, you know, when human beings are incentivised to do stuff, and they set up their

00:43:56.100 own companies or go out as sole traders, they remove a massive burden from the state.

00:44:02.100 These people don't get holiday pay or any other entitlements like that.

00:44:06.800 So the encouragement of individual entrepreneurship and the great 80s boom in the British economy

00:44:13.700 was led not from...

00:44:14.820 Yes, of course, Nissan came.

00:44:16.620 Yes, of course, big things happened.

00:44:17.980 But actually, the real economic revolution came from the bottom up.

00:44:22.480 It came from lots and lots of people going out, taking risks, borrowing money, setting up

00:44:26.760 businesses.

00:44:27.560 And what have we done to that?

00:44:29.060 We absolutely stuffed them.

00:44:31.820 I mean, small business hates both the Labour and Conservative parties, and rightly so.

00:44:35.480 We run a small business.

00:44:36.320 I can tell you we do, yeah.

00:44:37.460 Well, IR35, absolute nightmare for the self-employed.

00:44:41.340 Corporation tax up 30% last year, which damages reinvestment in your firm and every other firm

00:44:47.300 around the country.

00:44:48.900 A regulatory burden, which in some areas now is worse than it was before Brexit.

00:44:54.120 Worse.

00:44:55.220 Now, we're in charge.

00:44:56.580 The man from the ministry making life an absolute misery.

00:45:00.660 That's one thing we have to do.

00:45:02.120 Nigel, but hold on.

00:45:02.740 You've just listed a list of problems that I completely agree with you about.

00:45:06.020 All of which can be dealt with.

00:45:07.080 Well, how?

00:45:07.820 This is the question, right?

00:45:08.840 Because your argument would be, well, you've got to cut taxes, get people the opportunity

00:45:12.860 to make money, et cetera.

00:45:14.680 But if we are so indebted already...

00:45:17.580 Actually, what I said were three things, of which tax was just one part.

00:45:20.800 Okay.

00:45:21.080 And I wasn't suggesting radical cuts in tax.

00:45:23.580 So how do we do it?

00:45:24.360 That's all I'm asking.

00:45:24.820 I was suggesting, going back to where we started, where we had a corporation tax that people

00:45:28.880 paid and thought was reasonable.

00:45:30.460 All right?

00:45:30.820 What I was talking about was regulatory burden.

00:45:33.840 What I was talking about were disincentives to setting up.

00:45:37.000 What I was talking about with IR35 is now an impossible piece of legislation that makes

00:45:42.960 it very, very hard for people to be self-employed.

00:45:45.820 Nigel, look, I'm not trying to trap you.

00:45:47.360 So government can...

00:45:48.260 No, no, no.

00:45:48.700 But I'm arguing passionately government can sort all of...

00:45:51.420 You know, it's back to your point earlier, Francis.

00:45:53.320 Actually, there's a lot government can do.

00:45:56.100 Government can't create wealth.

00:45:59.120 But government can create the environment in which individuals have got the incentive

00:46:04.460 to go out and better themselves, and in doing so, better the whole of the country.

00:46:09.280 And I don't believe that's hard at all.

00:46:11.860 Because the problem is, is when you look at the amount of people in this country, I can't

00:46:18.060 remember the figure off the top of my head who were not working.

00:46:21.440 It's terrifying.

00:46:22.340 It's genuinely terrifying.

00:46:24.120 And a lot of them are just not looking for work, which shows, to me, that is defeat.

00:46:31.060 They've given up.

00:46:31.840 And no one's got the guts to deal with it or even talk about it.

00:46:34.480 I mean, you know, we've got three and a half times the number of people on disability benefit

00:46:38.680 that we had 40 years ago.

00:46:40.660 I think about it.

00:46:41.240 40 years ago, people were working in heavy engineering, working in factories, working

00:46:45.920 down the pit, industrial injuries were a very real part of lives for many, many working

00:46:52.300 class communities.

00:46:53.380 Well, that's not the case anymore.

00:46:55.600 And you actually, under this government, during the pandemic, you could, through a quick online

00:47:03.400 consultation, be signed off on mental health issues, get an extra £375 a month in benefits

00:47:10.800 without the obligation of even having to go and look for a job.

00:47:15.000 That's what government's done.

00:47:17.160 We've allowed this to happen.

00:47:18.780 Their benefits are hard.

00:47:20.680 It was once described to me rather like there's a big dog there, big aggressive dog there.

00:47:25.200 And you've got a bone up on the table that you can choose not to give that dog the bone.

00:47:33.060 But once you've given the dog the benefit bone, you try and get the bone back, right?

00:47:38.400 It's not easy.

00:47:40.120 And it's going to take somebody with huge political courage to deal with.

00:47:45.120 And they'll be accused of sending people back to slavery.

00:47:47.660 They'll be accused of human cruelty.

00:47:50.040 They'll be accused of everything under the sun.

00:47:52.360 But we have to get people who are unemployed back to work.

00:47:56.360 Now, you know, I'm not arguing.

00:47:58.140 We shouldn't be a compassionate society.

00:48:00.240 But we've got the lines in the wrong places.

00:48:03.320 And I'm reminded of Reagan back in the late 80s, middle, late 80s, who introduced Workfare.

00:48:11.180 He said, you know, we just can't have all these people being paid not to work.

00:48:15.700 So we're going to give them jobs to do.

00:48:17.320 We're going to get them out building roads. 0.96

00:48:19.220 Amazing how many of them actually found jobs.

00:48:22.360 So we're going to have to be very tough on that.

00:48:27.260 And no one's got the courage to do it.

00:48:29.480 There's been a little bit of talk about it because there was an election campaign going on, you know.

00:48:33.440 But to have the courage to deal with that's got to be very, very real.

00:48:36.600 We also have to rewire how people think.

00:48:41.540 And this is going to be even harder because as government gets bigger, people become more dependent upon it.

00:48:48.260 And the constant refrain is, why can't government give us more?

00:48:52.560 We want more money.

00:48:54.400 Why can't government give us more? 0.60

00:48:57.360 And the increase in the size of the state in the last few years has been horrific.

00:49:03.820 And, you know, the pandemic sums it up, doesn't it?

00:49:05.520 I mean, you know, our liberty is taken away.

00:49:08.380 But it's okay.

00:49:09.060 You can stay at home because we'll pay you a lot to work.

00:49:10.780 So a rewiring of the minds of younger people, particularly when it comes to what is success, what is happiness, what is fulfillment.

00:49:25.920 And I'm not sure we're really debating this stuff.

00:49:27.680 Now, the one thing I'm happy with is I'm seeing in Gen Z quite a big reversal that I didn't see with the millennials. 0.68

00:49:41.340 An awful lot of young people now, a growing number of young people now, are actually rejecting what they're being taught, are really ambitious, want to get on.

00:49:53.220 And I hope this is the start of something positive.

00:49:55.860 But it's coming as a reaction to, frankly, just pure socialism, strong state socialism that's being taught in virtually every school in Britain.

00:50:08.060 I've had quite a big uptick in support from young people or, I don't know, some sort of fame, I guess, with the teens out there.

00:50:19.260 And, you know, I'm approaching a million on TikTok followers, et cetera.

00:50:25.860 And I do some fun stuff.

00:50:27.960 It's a bit crazy, some of it, but they seem to like it.

00:50:30.500 And I did The Jungle on ITV last year and all the rest of it.

00:50:35.020 But it's very interesting to hear the frustrations of young people, you know, getting a house, getting a good job.

00:50:42.960 All they want is what their mum and dad have had.

00:50:46.200 That's all they want, all their gran and granddad have had.

00:50:50.580 And they feel that society is somehow taking that away from them.

00:50:54.460 But there's a much more can-do attitude among them.

00:50:58.600 But they're deciding this for themselves and on social media platforms.

00:51:02.980 We are not, through the education system, teaching people that actually, do you know what, being self-reliant is quite good.

00:51:12.260 But the problem is, and as we touched on before, which is political courage.

00:51:17.980 So, what we have now is a Labour government that are not going to challenge this.

00:51:24.500 They're not going to address this because they don't want to alienate their core fan base because they market themselves as the caring party.

00:51:32.420 So, it's a rather pessimistic question.

00:51:35.560 But isn't everything going to get worse for the next four or so years whilst we have a Labour government?

00:51:39.520 Yes, and it would have done.

00:51:41.220 And Rishi won.

00:51:42.280 It doesn't make much difference, really.

00:51:44.600 They'll just make it worse more quickly.

00:51:47.820 I mean, that's the only fundamental difference.

00:51:49.580 I've been sitting in the House of Commons now for three weeks.

00:51:52.100 They don't disagree on anything.

00:51:54.840 Even at Prime Minister's questions, the leader of the opposition, now Rishi Sunak, gets up and says, how we wholeheartedly agree.

00:52:00.700 I mean, they agree on virtually everything.

00:52:02.420 Yeah, all of these problems are going to get worse.

00:52:04.300 And remember, this government does not have a huge tidal wave of love behind it.

00:52:10.320 You know, 33.8% of the vote.

00:52:12.420 A third of the vote, yet two-thirds of the seats.

00:52:16.620 Very few frontbenchers who I think are very competent.

00:52:20.000 One or two are.

00:52:21.080 One or two are, no question, but a lot of them are completely untested.

00:52:25.120 Rachel Reeves on economics.

00:52:27.600 You're having a laugh, aren't you?

00:52:29.120 No idea.

00:52:30.780 Absolutely, blooming clueless.

00:52:32.720 I'm convinced of that.

00:52:35.900 And love for this government's going to run out very, very quickly.

00:52:38.920 All the problems that we've talked about already, of people getting poorer, of our chronic productivity levels, of those divisions in society that we ran through earlier, they're all going to get worse.

00:52:54.060 Which means there's a bigger and bigger gap.

00:52:55.740 In fact, the gap is so much bigger than what I sat here with you in February 2023.

00:53:00.940 There is an enormous gap for a new kind of politics that is much more bullish, much more assertive, and much more optimistic.

00:53:09.400 And that is what, in reform, we are going to do.

00:53:13.200 Well, that's the big opportunity for you.

00:53:16.520 One of the things somebody put to me recently, and they said, oh, you're interviewing Farage, you've got to talk to me, is this idea of a pact with the Tories at the next election.

00:53:25.960 I think we're nearly over, aren't we?

00:53:27.420 Look, you know, as I said earlier, people spend their lives worrying about what the other guy is doing.

00:53:37.280 We are building something here.

00:53:39.060 We're very optimistic about it.

00:53:40.780 I've appointed a new party chairman, very successful young entrepreneur.

00:53:44.460 He's 37, Zia Youssef.

00:53:47.040 And he's from the Muslim community, but from the majority, moderate Muslim community.

00:53:52.520 He believes in what I believe in.

00:53:54.640 He believes in family.

00:53:55.840 He believes in community.

00:53:57.160 He believes in this country.

00:53:58.380 And we're working together on a really exciting project.

00:54:01.000 And you transform my morning by asking me, do I want to do a deal with this terrible bunch of backstabbers that wouldn't know the truth if it jumped up and bopped them on the nose?

00:54:10.480 That is not my ambition.

00:54:12.380 No, I'm not suggesting even remotely that that would be your ambition.

00:54:15.460 What I'm suggesting is that may be the way that you actually start to have a real impact on this country in a way that you've had today, admittedly.

00:54:26.720 But this would be an opportunity for actually a party that you have strong influence over to be in government.

00:54:33.080 That would be quite an opportunity, wouldn't it?

00:54:36.100 I have no idea what I'm having for lunch tomorrow, let alone what the relative strength or merits.

00:54:42.520 Become a politician.

00:54:45.460 No, I have no idea.

00:54:48.020 There needs to be a realignment of politics.

00:54:53.100 And it's not, but as I say, everyone obsesses about the Conservative Party and my relationship or non-relationship with it.

00:54:59.380 But I still believe there are a huge number of Labour voters out there that actually agree with many of the values that I believe in and that we're going to promote.

00:55:08.480 So maybe, if there is a radical realignment of British politics, maybe it's even more radical than anybody at the moment can yet even begin to imagine.

00:55:17.700 Look, when I started all this off 30 years ago, exactly 30 years ago, it was 19, in fact, more than that 31 years ago.

00:55:27.820 It was 93 when, you know, a young businessman, one of my little brokerage firm in the city.

00:55:34.200 I said, I've got to do something.

00:55:35.540 I've got to get involved.

00:55:37.080 This European thing, you know, this is a mile away from the common market that we thought we were joining when I was a kid.

00:55:43.940 And I can see where I can see where it's going.

00:55:47.040 We need to leave it.

00:55:48.500 And everyone told me I was a complete nut job. 0.89

00:55:51.960 Nigel bonkers Farage, as Private Eye called me, week after week, year after year. 0.97

00:55:57.380 And that's fine.

00:55:58.840 But you know what?

00:55:59.500 My vision then of what Europe would become with a full political union and why we shouldn't be part of it, that came to pass.

00:56:09.800 And I've got a lot of things wrong in my life, huge number of things wrong in my life, but occasionally I get things right.

00:56:15.900 And what I'm good at, I believe, is seeing the very big picture of thinking outside the day-to-day, outside the petty, the pernickety, and looking at the big picture.

00:56:27.080 And that was my big call then.

00:56:28.600 And my big call now is that a major change and realignment in British politics is coming, that the electoral system itself,

00:56:37.660 whether that's the voting system, whether that's the powers of patronage on display in the House of Lords.

00:56:45.360 All of this is going to change.

00:56:47.380 All of this is going to change.

00:56:48.960 And I think some good can come of it.

00:56:52.380 You mentioned Europe, Nigel, before we start to get towards the end of the interview.

00:56:55.980 I mean, a similar thing is happening in Europe.

00:56:58.440 They have very different histories and political systems and everything else.

00:57:02.360 But it's very clear that you've got the radical left and a response from the right both going up at the same time.

00:57:10.480 How do you see Europe and what's happening there?

00:57:13.640 Because many of the issues that we've talked about, whether it's the Muslim stuff or anything else, is happening there on an even bigger scale.

00:57:19.280 Yeah, I mean, Europe is, as I said earlier, a far worse place than we are.

00:57:25.640 The politics of Europe is changing very, very rapidly.

00:57:28.380 It will go on changing very rapidly.

00:57:32.980 I don't think that the current European political structures can survive.

00:57:37.200 I think there is a major, I believe there is going to be a very major financial shock that is coming back over the course of the next five years, maybe six years.

00:57:53.920 I don't know.

00:57:55.520 I think that you can kid yourself all you like.

00:58:00.520 Do you remember modern monetary theory a couple of years ago?

00:58:03.940 I mean, the biggest load of baloney I've ever heard in my life.

00:58:07.240 But people believed it.

00:58:09.120 There were university professors talking about modern monetary theory.

00:58:12.820 You just create money.

00:58:14.140 It's all going to be lovely.

00:58:16.780 And if the 2008 big crash was precipitated by an excess of debt, an excess of individual debt, an excess of corporate debt through some of those housing deals in America,

00:58:32.080 an excess of national debt leading to terrible crises in the Eurozone and huge money transfers to Greece and countries like that,

00:58:41.040 that wasn't even a fraction of where we are now.

00:58:44.560 It wasn't even a fraction of where we are now.

00:58:47.180 We are desperately in debt.

00:58:49.980 We've had one dose of inflation.

00:58:52.380 Inflation is a disease of money caused by government.

00:58:57.240 You'll never, ever forget that phrase because it's true. 1.00

00:59:01.620 And much of this is going to come crashing down.

00:59:03.800 And when that happens, there will be huge political change in Europe, although I'm not sure it'll be changed for the better.

00:59:14.160 Because much of the so-called right in Europe is actually wedded to the same economic philosophies that have put us in this mess in the first place.

00:59:26.320 And so they would be cultural shifts exacerbated by a financial crash.

00:59:32.460 And what I'm hoping here is that we're able, when these difficult times come, that we're able to come back with a set of economic as well as cultural policies that put us in the right place.

00:59:48.280 France, let me just ask one quick question.

00:59:50.040 Nigel, I hate to ask this question because it sounds very black and white, one-dimensional, etc.

00:59:56.400 But the way you described it there, you know, financial problems, more inflation, the radical left versus the radical right.

01:00:04.600 For anyone who's studied history, there's some similarities there with a period of time about 100 years ago in Europe.

01:00:10.940 Do you see those correlations?

01:00:13.400 Yes.

01:00:13.920 I mean, I worry.

01:00:15.100 Are we in the 1930s is what I'm asking you?

01:00:16.940 Obviously, you know, the two catastrophic world wars or one war really was a rivalry with Germany.

01:00:24.400 It was within Europe, whereas now it's external forces that give us the threat.

01:00:28.720 Iran is a major threat to world peace. 1.00

01:00:33.740 Quite why Obama and Biden and the European Union and David Cameron and Boris Johnson thought it was good to do deals with Iran and free up tens of billions of dollars for them is beyond me.

01:00:46.820 Then we got China.

01:00:49.000 Or should I say China, as my friend said?

01:00:51.260 But clearly, a very different regime to what it was 10 years ago.

01:00:58.180 10 years ago, we always thought of China as being quite introspective.

01:01:01.600 Now it's not.

01:01:04.640 Putin, who I think a lot of us 10 or 15 years ago thought was a very intelligent bloke, but now appears to have lost his marbles, frankly, with what he's doing.

01:01:13.560 So the world is in a very, very dangerous place.

01:01:18.700 If we do head into serious conflicts, it won't be Europe.

01:01:26.260 And that's why the similarity with the 30s doesn't work directly, looking at Europe.

01:01:31.760 But, yeah, it's a world in a very, very dangerous place.

01:01:36.260 Nigel, thank you so much for coming on the show.

01:01:38.420 We always finish with the last question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

01:01:43.800 I think I'm going to come back to money and personal money.

01:01:49.560 If you're young and watching this, you ain't getting a state pension.

01:01:53.380 Forget it.

01:01:53.860 It ain't going to happen.

01:01:55.160 Well, they've switched off now, mate.

01:01:57.100 No.

01:01:57.840 No, no, no.

01:01:58.580 No, I think they're going to be paying attention to that, mate.

01:02:00.900 No, they'll get their mates to switch on. 0.99

01:02:02.640 Yeah.

01:02:02.860 And I think that if I'm even half right about the financial situation we're in, I think one of the best indicators of that has been the gold price.

01:02:13.460 And I know that, you know, I've been working with a gold company who are sponsoring this, who are sponsoring this particular episode.

01:02:20.600 The gold price could be a lot, a lot higher.

01:02:23.060 Big secret, folks, you could actually put gold bars into your pension.

01:02:27.080 No pension advisor out there will ever tell you that, but you can do it.

01:02:30.920 And it's a wise thing to do.

01:02:32.040 And the other thing is I don't think the crypto revolution has even begun.

01:02:38.160 How so?

01:02:41.300 If you don't want the state to control every aspect of your life, and I sit here talking to you since I was last here.

01:02:50.460 I was debanked, of course, famously.

01:02:52.300 We're fighting a big row with the banks.

01:02:54.120 The level of control that the state and the banks want on your money, not just how you earn it, but how you spend it and how you live.

01:03:04.080 And I think it was a growing realization that crypto offers some remarkable freedoms from that.

01:03:09.780 And whilst it's true, there have been some appalling frauds that have been committed within that market.

01:03:18.860 I think as government gets bigger and bigger and bigger, which it will in the short term until we get this massive political revolution that I pray is going to happen, I think more and more people will be attracted to crypto.

01:03:30.460 And if we were sitting in Miami now having this conversation, you could go out now and buy a Starbucks with crypto, buy a Ferrari with crypto.

01:03:39.040 This isn't just a punting mechanism.

01:03:40.660 It's actually, for an increasing number of people, they're choosing an alternative lifestyle.

01:03:46.340 You watch it, it's going to get bigger and bigger.

01:03:48.600 Nigel, thanks for coming back.

01:03:50.020 Head on over to Locals, where we ask Nigel your questions.

01:03:55.040 Nigel, if you were PM with a sizable majority, how would you navigate the kind of issues Liz Trust faced in regards to the civil service and establishment players?

01:04:03.240 And I will add to this, the markets, too.

01:04:10.660 We'll be right back.

01:04:40.660 We'll be right back.

01:04:41.000 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - July 31, 2024

My Big Plan to Rescue Britain - Nigel Farage

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