With less than a week to go until the general election, there's a lot to talk about, including the election itself, the impact of the early election, and whether or not the polls are actually on track to be as bad as some have been predicting. With just a few days to go before Election Day, Francis and Constance bring in their favourite pollster, Matt Goodwin, to talk all things polling.
00:07:09.420But the conservative vote share actually flatlined.
00:07:12.240And here's the most remarkable statistic for me of this election.
00:07:16.180All those people who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019, all those people who gave the conservatives an 80-seat majority,
00:07:22.880all those people who took a punt on Brexit and then Boris and they wanted to get Brexit done, they wanted to lower migration.
00:07:28.580What percentage of those people are now planning to vote Conservative at the 2024 general election?
00:07:34.800Remember, when we had that discussion, we said these are the people driving the realignment.
00:07:39.24037%, just 37% of them are planning to vote Conservative at the 2024 election.
00:07:45.360So the realignment that we talked about ahead of the 2019 election, we predicted it all on this show,
00:07:51.080has completely blown apart because Sunak and co have really come fundamentally unstuck from those voters.
00:07:57.840Matt, so I'm listening to these stats and I'm not being facetious here and this isn't a joke.
00:08:04.060Look, I can't believe the Tory party is actually going to be able to win that many seats.
00:08:08.240If you actually look at what they've achieved of 14 years in government, they've been, to put it bluntly, absolutely useless.
00:08:15.700They have failed to tackle all of the big issues.
00:08:18.400They've promised everything, completely failed to deliver, let down every single voter.
00:08:23.840I can't believe anybody would vote for them.
00:08:25.560Well, some people will, there are tribal Conservatives, but what we're witnessing at this election is the strange death of the Conservative Party in its current form.
00:08:36.260The Conservative Party will survive, but not in its current form.
00:09:40.740Well, if you look at the analysis of who's left in that situation, it's more Oxbridge educated, southern, one nation, moderate liberal Tories
00:09:49.580who are even more disconnected from the mood of the country on issues like illegal migration, legal migration,
00:09:57.400taking on woke ideology, countering radical Islam, all of the stuff that Farage is now talking about.
00:10:02.840So what I'm saying is this crisis, this identity crisis that's facing the Conservatives, this is just the start.
00:10:09.180This is just the beginning, because what's going to happen now after this election is they are going to face a sustained attack,
00:10:16.300assuming Farage is elected and in Parliament.
00:10:18.800They are going to face a prolonged ideological civil war over the battle, sorry, over the nature, over the soul of Conservatism.
00:10:26.680That is what is about to start with this election.
00:34:20.680There's a Rory Stewart view of the world or the George Osborne view of the world, which is very much a 10% view of the world.
00:34:27.340But nonetheless, they will now convince themselves that actually the answer to this complex dilemma is more Rory Stewarts,
00:34:34.340more Oliver Letwins, more Ken Clarks, when actually that's exactly what voters rejected through the Brexit referendum and the 2019 landslide.
00:34:41.960So the only, what I'm trying to say is, the only path forward for the Conservatives is complete renewal around national conservatism,
00:34:50.160around a conservatism that understands what voters really want in a way that they expressed in 2019,
00:34:59.700but in a way that the Conservatives really now fully apprehend and respond to.
00:35:03.440Because if they don't, if they go back to establishment Tory liberalism, they will be blown apart.
00:35:09.080There will be no future for the Conservative Party in that form.
00:35:13.340Lower migration, defend the borders, push back on woke, deliver one nation prosperity,
00:35:20.900accept that you can have affordable, available housing, but you can't have mass immigration at the same time.
00:36:01.660Where are they on all these different issues that people who'd be watching this would care about?
00:36:06.140Well, the Lib Dems are mainly prospering because the anti-Tory mood is so strong.
00:36:10.720So what they're prospering from is tactical voting in lots of seats where they are the only competitors to the Conservatives, or they're the main competitors.
00:36:20.480I would argue hyper-social liberalism.
00:36:23.000Ed Davey has said he wants to push the pedal down on the gender stuff in a way that Labour are sort of trying to hold back on.
00:36:30.120They're instinctively very comfortable with migration, legal.
00:36:34.400They certainly wouldn't want to leave the ECHR.
00:36:37.200They are broadly content with the current tax and spending commitments.
00:36:42.900They worship at the altar of the NHS like everybody else.
00:36:46.200But I don't think they're a serious political party.
00:36:48.480I don't think Ed Davey is a serious political leader.
00:36:51.160I think the strategy through the campaign has been to use stunts to attract attention.
00:36:56.980But there's no niche issue that they are really able to benefit from because that big call they had at the last election of let's rejoin the EU, well, that's not going to be an issue really for another 10 years, 15 years.
00:37:11.560So I think the Lib Dems are mainly prospering, like the Greens and Labour, from an anti-Tory mood because there is no mass public enthusiasm for this alternative because that alternative doesn't really exist.
00:37:23.480Matt, do you not think that we're being a little bit overly optimistic about Labour's chances in the Red Wall?
00:37:31.200I mean, let's look at their behaviour historically.
00:37:34.000They have alienated this voter base over generations, generations to the point where the unthinkable happened and Labour were wiped out in these traditional strongholds.
00:37:47.360Do you really think the pendulum is going to swing back that quickly?
00:38:30.520OK, I agree Labour have treated a lot of their voters historically with complete contempt.
00:38:37.480I think Keir Starmer is very vulnerable.
00:38:40.960And my personal politics on the table, I'm very concerned about where the country is going under a strong Labour government.
00:38:46.840Not just because of the things that we usually talk about, migration borders woke,
00:38:50.680but also because Labour are now going to rewire the constitution to be pro-Labour.
00:38:56.640Vote for 16-year-olds, reform the House of Lords, devolve more power, strengthen Scotland, Wales, devolved assemblies and parliaments,
00:39:06.140extend the quangos, extend the unelected, unaccountable government bodies.
00:39:11.740It's going to be harder for the Conservatives in the future to compete with that.
00:39:17.000And if the polls are wrong, if we're sat watching the exit poll next week by my friend John Curtis and we find that there's a hung parliament,
00:39:26.880I haven't completely ruled out proportional representation coming into the mix in British politics over the next five years
00:39:33.220because the Lib Dems want it, Farage wants it, the Greens want it, a big part of Labour's base wants it, the SNP would support it.
00:39:41.980I don't think we're done with that debate over electoral reform.
00:39:46.280By the way, if the Tories get 40 seats, some of them are going to want it.
00:39:50.480I mean, like I say, the numbers this morning, you're looking at 40 to 50 seats for the Conservatives.
00:39:55.060My gut instinct is they're not going to do anywhere near that badly.
00:39:59.700So give us your gut instinct on all the parties.
00:40:01.700What do you think, just going by party by party, what do you think they're actually going to get?
00:40:19.920I think on these numbers, as I say, we're either heading into a polling error on the scale that the polling industry would have to pack up shop and basically go home.
00:40:29.740It would be devastating if there was anything other than a Labour majority at this point for the polling industry.
00:40:36.280So I think there will be a Labour majority, a significant, stable Labour majority, at least above 75, 100 seats.
00:40:46.140At least the Conservatives gut instinct somewhere between 100 and 150 seats.
00:40:53.100I'd be amazed if they went down to 50.
00:40:54.920That is, that's an extinction level event.
00:42:23.240So you have an awkward alliance between white graduate liberals like Lucas and minority, radical minority activists like that guy who are given a free pass by the woke, less identity politics because they're a minority group.
00:42:41.120And they're seen as being oppressed and being seen as victims.
00:42:44.500We don't need to rehash a lot of the identity politics stuff.
00:42:47.420But that's why I've become increasingly nervous since October 7th, because it's that alliance between the radical progressive left and radical Islam, which are really feeding off one another.
00:43:01.440So the Greens are enabling a sectarianism in politics.
00:43:06.140Politics being organized along the lines of race and religion in a way we've not really seen since Northern Ireland.
00:43:13.080And it's becoming embedded in lots of communities, particularly outside of London.
00:43:19.580So we have a campaign group that's now actively organizing Muslim votes, trying to get British Muslims to vote along the lines of Gaza rather than on the lines of domestic issues.
00:43:29.420We don't want that in British politics.
00:43:31.000We want, you know, one nation politics.
00:43:32.640We want people to focus on national issues.
00:43:35.060We reject, I reject, divisive, crude, race-based identity politics.
00:43:44.100The radical left are enabling that because it fits with their identity politics worldview.
00:43:49.980I wish we'd had more mainstream leaders, including Keir Starmer, calling that out.
00:43:53.760But we know that he, too, is enabling that.
00:43:56.240We've seen the footage of Angela Rayner going to meetings in Northern England, the only woman in attendance, long skirts, falling over herself to placate the grievances of British Muslims.
00:44:05.580This is where we're headed, right, in terms of British politics.
00:44:08.400It's this alliance between radical left activists who are consumed by the binary matrix of identity politics and, on the other hand, minority activists, radical Islamists who are being given a free pass.
00:44:24.100Is that criticism of Keir Starmer fair, Matt?
00:44:26.400Because he's come under a lot of pressure from people within his own party because they perceive him to have a pro-Israel stance.
00:44:33.960Well, I think that's going to, this is what's going to be really interesting over the next five years.
00:44:37.960Starmer is going to come under enormous pressure from left-wing activists and British Muslims, 90% of whom until recently were voting Labour.
00:44:47.300He is going to come under enormous pressure to change his stance on Israel.
00:44:53.160That is especially the case if a second front opens up in the north, which I suspect it will with Hezbollah and a growing conflict with Iran.
00:45:01.500Prime Minister Starmer will, I suspect, have to go much further than any other prime minister in being hostile towards Israel,
00:45:10.860being pushed into some kind of formal recognition of Palestine and a two-state solution.
00:45:19.040And the people I feel most strongly about are British Jews because next week there will be lots of people in this country
00:45:27.960watching the election of a strong Labour government led by a man who wanted to put Jeremy Corbyn into number 10 twice
00:45:38.340with a great degree of apprehension and concern.
00:45:43.340There will be lots of Jews in Britain who will feel very worried about the direction of travel in British politics next week.
00:45:50.680And, you know, it is on all of us to make sure their voice as well is heard in this national debate.
00:45:56.440And the thing that's worrying is that I look at Starmer and I don't think even his wife would describe him as a particularly strong character.
00:46:03.560Is he really going to have the moral backbone to face down his own party when he can't even say what a woman is?
00:46:10.060Well, I think the thing that concerns me about Keir Starmer is the inconsistency.
00:46:14.840You know, so on the one hand, he's speaking for the common people, the working man and woman.
00:46:19.920On the other hand, he was the guy who campaigned, was very open in campaigning for a second referendum on Brexit.
00:46:26.320So when the ordinary man and woman voted for Brexit, he didn't want to know.
00:46:29.600He wanted another referendum until people made the right decision.
00:46:32.840He has been very inconsistent on issues around the economy, around immigration, around Jeremy Corbyn.
00:46:43.840I just don't think we really know who Keir Starmer is.
00:46:47.260I don't buy the media narrative that this guy is a return to moderate, responsible, sensible leadership.
00:46:53.620I don't think anybody that wanted to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister, who really put himself that far out in the debate to say that,
00:47:01.020who was happy to campaign and serve in high office alongside Jeremy Corbyn, I can't take that person seriously because it shows such a lack of judgment.
00:47:15.440And the idea now that he's saying, well, he didn't think Labour were going to win the general election, having gone through 2017, having known how close it was that Labour and Corbyn were, you know, how close they were to power,
00:47:26.520I do not believe for a second that Starmer thought, well, he won't become prime minister anyway, so I might as well campaign for this.
00:47:32.520It's a terrible post-hot rationale for what he did.
00:47:36.300And it's also as well, when you look at the economic crisis that we're facing, do we really want someone who describes themselves as a socialist handling the economy?
00:47:45.500I'll be honest with you, as someone who has come from a socialist country, which isn't doing too well, the answer is no.
00:47:53.320Well, I do think there's a case now, the kind of settlement I wanted to see after Brexit is the opposite of what we got, right?
00:47:59.100And I think Constantine was just referencing this.
00:48:00.840We should have got into an economy that was business friendly, that was cutting corporation tax, cutting regulation, that was being responsible in the way it was doing that.
00:48:10.000I'm not saying slash and burn deregulation across the board, but I'm saying you have to make it clear to business there's a competitive advantage for coming to Brexit Britain over the European Union.
00:48:20.980That should have been step one on day one.
00:49:13.220You know, I had this guy over recently to our think tank, a Dutch academic, Jan van der Beek.
00:49:22.160He's done the study on the impact of the kind of migration we have in Britain.
00:49:27.720But he's looked at the Netherlands and he's looked at a few other European countries.
00:49:31.220And what he's shown is, contrary to what the elite class tell us, that actually it's driving economic growth and vibrancy and so on.
00:49:40.780And he's shown conclusively that it's weakening Western economies, that the more you rely on masses of non-European migration, low skill migration, what you're doing is you're basically hollowing out your economy.
00:49:53.140And by the way, you're also helping global corporates because they love this, right, because it's feeding their profit margins.
00:49:59.240And it's also making the elite class in Westminster feel wonderful and lovely because they can go on Twitter and X and they can say, look at me, I'm a progressive.
00:50:07.760And they win lots of applause from other members of the elite class.
00:50:10.460But what it's actually doing to the economy is it's costing, in the Netherlands, he's estimated about 80 billion euros.
00:50:17.700It's costing Western economies an enormous amount.
00:50:21.020And again, during the selection campaign, we've not had that conversation.
00:50:23.760We've not even talked about it at all.
00:50:25.020Nobody has raised that issue except Farage.
00:50:27.820Again, I'm not here to make the case for Farage.
00:50:30.380But I am saying Farage and reform are a very useful vehicle.
00:50:34.480If you want to have that debate, I want to have that debate in this country.
00:50:38.360I think lots of people out there want to have this debate.
00:50:40.140And if it wasn't for Farage and reform, we wouldn't even be allowed to have this debate.
00:50:44.060We wouldn't even be having this discussion.
00:50:45.380Well, one of the things he said fairly early on that I wanted to ask you about very directly, Matt, is he suggested that by the time of the next election, there will be a Muslim party of Britain.
00:51:50.320And that, too, speaks to this issue that we can see with the Greens, which is a sort of sectarian-type politics that George Galloway and others are trying to encourage.
00:52:14.100In that book, he turned up unannounced at, I think it was, a hundred or so mosques across the country.
00:52:20.340And he makes a very powerful point in that book.
00:52:22.300He says, if you are young and British and Muslim, you can spend your life completely immersed in Islamic culture, in schools that are overwhelmingly dominated and filled with British Muslims, in your local mosques, in shops.
00:52:38.820You can live in segregated neighborhoods.
00:52:40.820You can basically live your entire life without any meaningful interaction with the non-Muslim majority.
00:52:48.320Now, when I read that, I found it deeply alarming because, you know, this guy turned up unannounced, was just reporting what he was seeing.
00:52:55.660When I looked at the evidence at the number of British Muslims who tell pollsters they would like to live a partly or fully separate life independent from wider British society, you're looking at about 20 to 30 percent, which is a significant number.
00:53:11.680And then when you look at the projections of where we're going between today and 2050, I'll give you one stat so people can think about this.
00:53:20.200Go online, look at the Pew Research Centre, which is an independent, you know, centrist think tank.
00:53:26.380Nobody can say Pew is a kind of like right-wing crazy think tank.
00:53:32.040And they've done some pretty credible forecasts looking at where all European nations are going to be by 2050.
00:53:38.240And they make the point that Britain is going to see the largest overall increase in the absolute number of Muslims compared to other European states.
00:53:45.760And that by 2050, about 20 to 25 percent of Britain's population will be Muslim.
00:53:52.960It'll be 30 percent in Sweden, about 25 to 30 percent in France.
00:53:57.240So I'm not saying that to be provocative or to be, you know, alarmist.
00:54:02.820I'm saying that because if we don't actually start to have a mature conversation about what we're talking about now, about integration, how to make young British Muslim kids feel British, share our culture, share our values, share our ways of life, how are we going to push back against radical Islamism, how are we going to stop sectarianism in our politics?
00:54:21.340If we're going to start figuring that out now, we are going to have very big problems down the line where we can already see.
00:54:32.760They're beginning to experience what happens when you don't – well, when you run mass immigration with no serious effort being devoted to integration.
00:54:43.160Some of my friends, Eric Kaufman, who's been on the show, you know, Eric would say you can't even have integration when you run mass immigration anyway.
00:54:53.280You have to stop inward migration, let the country absorb the demographic trends, you know, wait a significant period of time.
00:55:01.320And then if you want to continue with some high-skilled migration, that's probably the way that you can just about manage it.
00:55:07.040But running what we're doing now, a net migration of 700,000 with no real effort at integration and then calling anybody who raises these questions a racist or an Islamophobe, I mean, that's a policy for idiots.
00:55:19.240And unfortunately, you know, the idiots seem to be in charge.
00:55:22.340Matt, we've got lots more questions for you, but more importantly, our audience do.
00:55:25.860So we're going to take a quick break and then our audience will read you some questions from our locals.
00:55:30.180And also people are welcome to send in super chats and we will get to some of your super chats and locals questions after the break.
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00:57:59.080And what that does is it allows the government to immediately detain illegal migrants and then, over time, deport them back to their countries of origin.
00:58:07.700So Labour are basically going to remove all of those things.
00:58:10.100But they're going to smash the gangs with a new border control command post, which already exists.
00:58:16.880They're just going to give it a new name.
00:59:15.720That's going to be a massive problem for Labour.
00:59:18.640Legal migration, they said they would like to bring it down.
00:59:22.100But basically, as we know, Labour are pretty comfortable with mass migration.
00:59:26.220Most of the official economic forecasts in this country are assuming net migration will stay at least 250,000 a year,
00:59:34.700which is basically where it was just before the Brexit referendum.
00:59:38.240So the elite class is assuming mass inward net migration is going to remain at least 250,000, 300,000 every year for the foreseeable future,
00:59:53.980The next question is, is there any political party out there that has a serious, detailed policy proposal on how to deal with the UK's underlying domestic issues?
01:00:49.600They're not a perfect vessel, but they are the ones saying freeze all non-essential, non-NHS migration, leave the ECHR so we can control the borders, and push back on woke ideology, which I would argue underpins the elite commitment to mass migration.
01:01:03.860Keep the questions coming in, especially if you're not on Locals.
01:01:07.040Send in your super chats and we will read them out after we've done the Locals ones.
01:01:10.480How many terms will Starmer serve in number 10, given his age and ministerial lack of experience, as Pommi won Oz?
01:01:17.780My prediction is Starmer will serve one term and he will be ousted by some kind of internal Labour revolt, that he will come under sustained pressure from within.
01:01:30.760And he'll either lose the next election or he'll be ousted.
01:01:35.560I don't think he will be serving more than one term.
01:01:38.360Well, based on what you were saying earlier about the state of the British economy, which all of us can see with our own eyes, as you said, I think very, very quickly people will realise that the thing that was ruining the country was not the Conservative Party.
01:01:54.380So they're going to be saddled with all the same problems, many of which they will make worse.
01:01:59.600The question is, what is going to be your protest about the next election against Labour, right?
01:02:05.660And also briefly on that, I mean, again, I'll go back to the IFS.
01:02:09.100You know, you can't say the IFS are a right wing think tank, you know, they're sort of centre left.
01:02:13.080But even they have said, pointed out, Labour have committed to £20 billion worth of public spending cuts that have been factored into the budgets by the Conservatives.
01:02:23.800So it's not only that we don't have much growth, it's not only that we've got this insane pile of debt that nobody wants to talk about, partly because of COVID and the lockdowns, which we all know were pretty disastrous.
01:02:35.040It's that they are also already committed to public spending cuts.
01:02:40.320So if you want the NHS to get better, your local GP to get better, your schools to get better, I mean, it ain't going to happen under Labour unless they break their manifesto commitment, which I think they will, which is having to raise taxes considerably.
01:02:52.920And we've already got the highest tax burden in this country since the 1950s.
01:03:31.460There's a big, long conversation to be had about that.
01:03:34.160What I think he said in that interview was quite reasonable.
01:03:38.260I didn't have that much of an issue with it, but that's my personal opinion.
01:03:42.800But what I also then said on Twitter the subsequent day and got lots of pushback for was that was the first time the media got him on something that his own demographic, his own voters disagree with him on.
01:03:54.360Because I would say the model, the median reform voter is in their 50s or 60s, 40s to 60s, I'm guessing, probably sees Russia in a kind of Cold War kind of haze, so to speak.
01:04:07.840I think, you know, we saw the level of support for supporting the Ukrainians after the war started in this country.
01:04:13.580I'm not saying it's at the same level, but I think the vast majority of British people that I speak to, including people who are interested in voting for reform,
01:04:20.560they're not that keen in sort of pretending this was some kind of, you know, the West made Russia invade, which is not what he said, actually.
01:04:29.480But that is kind of how it landed after all the media reporting of it, etc.
01:04:34.260And so I think he's actually been very consistent on this over a long period of time.
01:04:39.480As I say, I don't personally agree with his view.
01:04:42.800But what I think the mistake has been, and I think you alluded to earlier, is that story should not have been allowed to keep going.
01:04:50.160He shouldn't have been trying to say, oh, Boris Johnson said this.
01:04:53.560And, you know, getting into all of these arguments, I just think it's derailing to the main message of the reform.
01:04:59.040And, you know, actually in the break, I checked my Twitter and I tweeted that we were having this conversation saying, is reform sliding back?
01:05:07.100And someone said, oh, you're only saying that because you want them to.
01:06:08.980You can go and read the original article saying that Putin, you know, Putin's people had said, no, sorry, Zelensky had said that it was the virus of Putinism had infected, you know, people.
01:06:23.300And the implication in the newspaper, the original newspaper front page was that Zelensky said that about Farage.
01:06:29.080And actually, he didn't say that about Farage.
01:06:31.120They were just talking in very vague terms.
01:06:32.720I think Mary Harrington has actually written a very nice piece on this in Unheard, where she makes the point that actually, you know, if you look at the realist school of geopolitics that says, you know, on balance, you know, kind of NATO, EU probably did irritate Russia through expansion and so on versus the liberal internationalists who are saying, you know, actually, it's on us to defeat Russia and so on.
01:06:52.460I think Farage was kind of expressing one side of that debate.
01:06:59.280I think we have to have a discussion about how this ends because we seem incapable of talking about where this conflict ends.
01:07:06.500I don't, my gut instinct is simply saying, well, we're going to beat Russia is not a realistic view, but that's my personal political view.
01:07:16.860But the way in which there was very clearly a coordinated effort among, you know, the sort of the Telegraph and, you know, Tory supporting papers, I thought was pretty transparent.
01:07:44.000And what that means is that people's views about really major geopolitical British involvement should be ventilated and should be heard.
01:07:54.740And like I said, I think unlike some of his supporters, Nigel has actually thought about this very carefully and has been talking about it for a very long time.
01:08:02.960There is a kind of he predicted the invasion.
01:08:11.420I think that's a separate conversation.
01:08:13.280But I think more broadly what it speaks to is I see this election as a kind of test of, you know, the online echo chamber versus reality.
01:08:21.760And I think a lot of people across different sides of the political spectrum may be in for a little wake-up call, including people in our space, too.
01:08:46.820It has a great – in fact, the data shows this.
01:08:49.280Sky have just published the things looking at which of the parties has had more social media impressions and engagements than Reformer, number one.
01:09:04.540If I'm right and Reform end up with one, two or three seats, six million votes, a bunch of second places, I would personally say for a new small party that's a good outcome.
01:09:16.100But there will be lots of people who will see that and say, oh, what happened to the revolution?
01:09:22.700Because they're not quite in tune with how difficult it is to actually impose yourself on this political system.
01:09:29.760I think the point you made earlier about that is 100% valid, though, which is if Farage wins in Clacton, he gets into parliament.
01:09:36.260And then he has got the opportunity he had before that he has demonstrated he's capable of seizing, which is you're standing in the heart of the liberal establishment right there in their space.
01:09:50.780And you can punch at them all day long and talk about how they look like low-grade bank clerks.
01:09:55.540But let me play devil's advocate on that because there are three things he needs to do simultaneously.
01:10:00.500One, he needs to run a Clacton constituency office and deal with the everyday humdrum of life as an MP.
01:10:15.180It doesn't pay very well either, by the way.
01:10:16.900The second thing he needs to do while doing that is maintain his national brand, maintain his brand in broadcasting media, print media, continue to drive the revolution in British politics.
01:10:30.460And third, he's got his international dimension, helping Trump in November, being active on the campaign circuit in the U.S., doing all of the things Nigel, as an Atlanticist, loves to do.
01:10:47.540I'm saying he's going to need to completely rethink who he has around him.
01:10:52.780He's going to need to have professional, experienced, serious operators who understand what urgent questions and ministers' questions takes to kind of how you table questions in parliament, how you develop policy, how you lobby, how you influence the committees.
01:11:08.700He's going to need a whole new operation because, in a way, Farage, if he is elected, is going to reach a level, in a way, it's strange to say it, but he's not actually operated at that level yet.
01:11:20.660Yes, he's been in the European Parliament.
01:11:22.500It's a very different kettle of fish compared to the House of Commons.
01:11:25.980He's going to need to really up the game, while also, P.S., building a national infrastructure.
01:11:30.720I mean, this is a thing people don't understand about reform.
01:11:37.080UKIP had garden parties, summer parties.
01:11:40.520I used to go to UKIP conferences when I was writing books on the party, you know, and they would have their own little kind of microculture in these branches where you'd turn up and, you know, they'd be selling fruitcakes because they took the insult that they were cranks and fruitcakes from David Cameron.
01:11:55.960They embraced that, you know, and they had this whole UKIP culture going on.
01:12:37.760The next question is, Matt, your astute analysis about statistical and, sorry, I'll start that again.
01:12:43.080Matt, your astute analysis and statistical data about immigration has opened many of our eyes to the situation we are facing and has brought most understanding to what needs to be done.
01:12:58.400Is this a subject that will continue to be ignored as it is a reality too unpalatable for voters and will undermine a leader that tries to tackle it?
01:13:32.200We have to stand in our gardens banging pots and pans and saying how wonderful this organisation is, even though we're giving 190 billion a year to the NHS and social care, but we are getting diminishing returns for that money.
01:13:44.940We need a frank and open conversation.
01:13:46.640I think that's starting to come through.
01:13:49.440I think with the strikes and with some of the policies and ideas, interestingly, Labour have been putting forward, saying we're going to have to reform the NHS in some way.
01:13:57.200Farage is saying we're going to need to move to a French-based model, an insurance-based model.
01:14:01.640I think he's right to at least be starting that debate.
01:14:14.560We have to be able to criticise and change the NHS or at least say, look, if you can afford it, you should be buying, you should be opting out of the NHS, buying out of the NHS.
01:14:24.540And then, you know, you shouldn't be paying as much in a way of, you know, financial support for the NHS.
01:14:30.200I think we're going to have to come up with some kind of alternative solution.
01:14:33.620Let's go to the next question, which is, given the general trend towards right-wing parties across Europe, does Matt really believe this could be a reform's moment?
01:14:41.480Or does our electoral system doom them to few, if any, seats, despite a good chunk of the vote?
01:14:46.260If you look at it through a five-, six-year strategy, yes, Nigel Farage, if he surrounds himself with the right people, if he gets money and manpower, yes, we could do Canada 1993 over the course of two general elections.
01:15:02.220You then need a five-year strategy for by-elections, local elections, building a party infrastructure.
01:15:07.560You need to get good people around, famous people, celebrities, people that make the voters look up and say, oh, hang on a minute, that guy's joining reform.
01:15:18.280Yes, it could happen, especially if I'm right with where we're going under Labour and also the hopelessness of the Tories.
01:15:26.180And if those two things come together, I can't think of another time where Farage has had an opening as big as a potential opening he's about to have.
01:15:35.500Do you think, because I was thinking about this the other day, we all talk about the shy Tory phenomenon.
01:15:40.940Do you think the shy reform phenomenon would be even stronger than that?
01:15:46.160Because it's one thing saying to people, look, I'm going to go vote Conservative.
01:15:50.280It's quite another saying, I'm going to go and vote for Nigel Farage.
01:15:53.180Well, so I'm glad you mentioned that because I've been saying, you know, my gut instinct has genuinely been torn, right?
01:15:59.240I think maybe 60% of me is saying reform, one to three seats, five to seven million votes, a bunch of second places.
01:16:07.900But there is part of me that thinks I might actually be underestimating the anti-establishment sentiment in the country and reform end up actually outperforming expectations.
01:16:18.020Like, I am quite conflicted on that, but I think you're right.
01:16:23.380Maurice Duvage was a French writer in the 50s, and he said, if you want to disrupt a two-party system, the biggest obstacle you face is the credibility gap.
01:16:33.260You have to be seen to be a credible alternative.
01:16:36.700If you're not seen as credible, you're not going to go anywhere.
01:16:42.660It means to get the shy Tories to go reform, they have to believe you're going to win seats.
01:16:47.900They have to believe you can become prime minister.
01:16:50.200They have to see you as a credible alternative.
01:16:52.740To do that, Farage needs to do all the things we've talked about during this interview in order for him to position himself in 28, 29 and say, look, I am it.
01:17:42.920Watch by-elections over the next year.
01:17:45.060If those by-elections start being held in Red Bull seats, pro-Brexit seats, and Reform are winning them like UKIP used to win by-elections, this thing will take on momentum of its own.
01:18:36.000I don't want to play into any narrative that might or might not be going on in British politics.
01:18:40.800All I can say as a pollster is there's been a significant shift.
01:18:46.040Matt, you published a list of Brexit benefits at the weekend, with 10 specifically highlighted that you felt were important in this election.
01:18:54.520Why aren't these being highlighted better by the media?
01:21:13.940Because if you go back to the Brexit referendum, one of the reasons Leave went over the line was because of lots of previously apathetic voters who came out to vote.
01:21:22.680If the polls are off, that will be one reason why.
01:21:25.220They're underestimating people who didn't vote previously.
01:21:28.220Now, when I run a poll, I'm filtering people out in a number of ways.
01:21:33.420I'm saying, on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to vote?
01:21:36.420And if you give me a 6 or above, I'm including you in my final sample.
01:21:41.140But if you're 1 to 5, I'm thinking you're not really likely to vote and you're going to be excluded.
01:21:46.760If you say to me, Matt, I don't know how I'm going to vote, or I refuse to tell you how I'm going to vote, or I'm not going to vote, in the end, I'll exclude you from my headline numbers.
01:21:56.060So you can see through that process how actually the polls could be off, because maybe in the end you're like, oh, to hell with it.
01:22:03.260I'm going to go and vote reform or whatever, and I haven't picked you up.
01:22:06.500So that's where you might see some variation on July the 4th that we haven't picked up in the polls currently.
01:22:13.820Matt, thank you so much for coming in.