TRIGGERnometry - January 20, 2026


Why Reform Has No Choice - Konstantin Kisin

Hosted by
Francis Foster Konstantin Kisin
Guests
Konstantin Kisin
Mentioned
Robert Jenrick Trump Andrew Rosendale Beautiful Noise Nadeem Zahawi Nigel Farage Jake Berry Sweet Caroline Kemi Badenock Nadine Doris Lee Anderson Danny Kruger Keir Starmer Rupert Lowe JD Vance Ben Habib Elon Musk James Orr
The Radicalisation Of America - Gregg Hurwitz The Best Conversation About News, Opinion and Censorship You've Ever Heard - Richard Miniter

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

170.45

Word count

1,726

Sentence count

112

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Reform has no choice but to stay in the Tory party, says Boris Johnson. But what does that mean for the future of Nigel Farage's new political party, the UK Independence Party? And what will it mean for its future in Parliament?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:45.600 Why reform has no choice.
00:00:51.020 Over recent days, there's been much debate in British politics about the future of Nigel
00:00:55.180 Farage's Reform Party.
00:00:57.040 Cemented by the defection of Robert Jenrick, the conservative shadow secretary of state for
00:01:01.060 justice and shadow Lord Chancellor, who was pushed by Tory leader Kami Badenoch as he was
00:01:05.620 about to jump ship, reform is developing a reputation for moving to the center.
00:01:10.320 Jenrick followed in the footsteps of a number of senior or formerly senior conservatives,
00:01:14.320 including Nadeem Zahawi, Nadine Doris, Jake Berry, and others.
00:01:18.740 As a curious aside, the last time I saw Jake Berry was on Question Time, when he challenged
00:01:23.160 me on my criticism of net zero to explain that net zero is the solution, not the problem.
00:01:28.860 We have to let go of some of our obsessions like net zero and so on, and we will find out
00:01:33.620 if the government is prepared to do that.
00:01:34.820 OK, man there in the glasses.
00:01:37.560 Just to pick up on what Constantine said, you are so wrong.
00:01:41.820 We do not deliver a growing northern economy by turning our back on net zero.
00:01:46.380 The north of England, this county, this region is a global leader in green technology.
00:01:53.940 We deliver a better levelled up north of England by having green collar, highly paid, secure jobs 0.82
00:02:00.540 for people who live in this region.
00:02:02.960 Net zero is the solution, not the problem.
00:02:05.560 I think it's good for your voters to hear that.
00:02:07.680 I'm sure Conservative Party voters will be pleased.
00:02:09.740 But the programme was recorded as Nadeem Zahawi was in the process of being sacked as Conservative
00:02:17.040 Party chairman because he'd failed to declare that HMRC was in the middle of an investigation
00:02:22.300 into his personal tax affairs when he was appointed to various ministerial positions.
00:02:26.980 This anecdote alone gives you a flavour of the sorts of concerns many have raised about
00:02:31.900 the increasing Torrification of reform.
00:02:34.540 Last night, it was confirmed that another MP, Andrew Rosendale, had defected to reform,
00:02:39.480 bringing the number of reform MPs to seven, of whom more than half are now Tory defectors.
00:02:45.000 Lee Anderson, Danny Kruger, Robert Jenrick, and Andrew Rosendale himself.
00:02:48.680 The worry for many is that as Conservative refugees become more numerous than native reformers within
00:02:54.180 the party, the centre of gravity will shift away from reform's radical agenda towards the very
00:02:59.880 policies and personalities they so thoroughly rejected at the last election.
00:03:04.500 Reform's defiant position against the failed status quo was what won them their legion of
00:03:09.200 supporters.
00:03:10.080 Now, some feel they're cosying up to it.
00:03:12.460 Personnel is policy, after all.
00:03:14.660 And having forced out tough-talking right-wingers like Rupert Lowe and Ben Habib, reform appears
00:03:19.780 to be going slightly vegan.
00:03:21.040 It's rare for me to be accused of naive optimism, but in this instance, I do not actually share
00:03:26.100 these concerns for a number of reasons which we'll come to shortly.
00:03:29.420 But first, and much more importantly, we have to recognise that reform has no choice but to
00:03:34.420 continue salvaging what they can from the rotting carcass of the Conservative Party.
00:03:39.360 Why?
00:03:40.260 Because Britain is not America. 0.63
00:03:42.180 Our electoral system does not allow a charismatic leader with a small band of acolytes to storm
00:03:47.700 to power in the way that President Trump did with just J.D.
00:03:50.960 Vance, RFK Jr., Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, and Vivek Ramaswamy at his side.
00:03:56.220 To become Prime Minister, Nigel Farage has to have 650 men and women stand as candidates
00:04:02.200 in constituencies across the country, and more than half of them to actually be elected.
00:04:07.200 Even now, when much of the public is fed up with the status quo and Keir Starmer enjoying
00:04:11.500 the lowest favourability ratings in history, having a reform rosette pinned on you will
00:04:16.940 not guarantee victory in a specific constituency, especially to an unknown, politically inexperienced
00:04:23.380 candidate.
00:04:24.260 Once elected, that MP will be faced with the reality that standing as an MP is almost the
00:04:29.700 exact opposite of being an MP.
00:04:32.100 A political campaign is about making speeches, knocking on doors, and selling yourself to the
00:04:37.160 public.
00:04:37.440 But once the sale is made, your constituents need you to solve their problems.
00:04:41.880 Making witty comebacks on TV requires an entirely different skill set to filling potholes.
00:04:46.900 And metaphorical potholes are no small matter, nor one to worry about once the election is
00:04:51.700 in the bag.
00:04:52.660 The only way reform can succeed as a political project is to win the war of the next election
00:04:58.260 and then win the peace by actually delivering both locally and nationally.
00:05:02.800 Which brings us to the final reason why reform has no choice.
00:05:06.300 If elected, the biggest challenge they face is turning the sinking oil tanker that is Britain
00:05:11.680 around.
00:05:12.560 This will require an understanding of how the machinery of government works, something that
00:05:16.960 can only come from experience of being in government.
00:05:20.160 Many recent defectors are being described as Tory failures.
00:05:23.660 And in a sense, this is fair and correct.
00:05:26.120 The Tories failed.
00:05:27.300 But what the public do not know is that the Tories failed despite many of their ministers
00:05:31.460 being talented and brilliant people.
00:05:33.660 This is not a joke.
00:05:34.820 It's a tragedy.
00:05:35.540 Having met a number of the people who would be at the very top of your list of incompetent, 0.76
00:05:41.720 self-serving, unprincipled, slithering creatures, I can tell you the tragedy is that most of them
00:05:47.280 are none of those things.
00:05:48.700 Many were good, capable people trying their best within a party that had lost its way,
00:05:53.520 dealing with an openly rebellious civil service and operating within the suffocating straitjacket
00:05:58.820 of powerful Blairite legislation, which curbed their ability to actually govern the country.
00:06:04.160 Put simply, you need Tory failures to avoid reform failing in the same way.
00:06:09.160 This was, of course, what President Trump and his team learned from his first term in office.
00:06:14.160 They spent four years trying to do things and being obstructed at every turn.
00:06:18.760 It was only on his triumphant return to office that the Trump administration has been able to
00:06:23.900 actually implement their agenda.
00:06:26.040 This explains part of my lack of acute concern about this trend within reform.
00:06:30.720 This was always going to happen.
00:06:33.080 Indeed, by the time of the next election, I expect the entire Tory right to have switched to reform with
00:06:38.040 up to 60 reform candidates being current conservative MPs.
00:06:41.980 But the other reason for my optimism is that ultimately the direction of a political party
00:06:46.200 is set at the top.
00:06:47.720 Nigel Farage, his immensely impressive great Cardinal James Orr, and the rest of the leadership cadre
00:06:52.800 are no wets.
00:06:54.120 As long as they're in charge, reform will remain radical in the healthy sense of the word.
00:06:58.780 They're not extremists, which is a strength, not a weakness.
00:07:01.320 The very online world rewards the hotness of one's takes, but electoral politics in Britain
00:07:07.100 rewards a strong, clear-eyed focus on the silent majority, who are tired of economic stagnation,
00:07:12.860 illegal immigration, rising crime, and crumbling infrastructure.
00:07:16.020 The public are angry, and they are frustrated.
00:07:19.460 But they aren't extremists, nor will they tolerate extremism.
00:07:22.960 For every vote won by posting unworkable demands on Twitter, there are five to be lost in the
00:07:28.500 country at large.
00:07:29.280 Many activists and commentators feel that the next election is the last opportunity to turn
00:07:34.440 things around.
00:07:35.540 I agree.
00:07:35.920 However, urgency requires more pragmatism, not less.
00:07:40.680 Whether you're a centrist like me or an ardent right-winger, the recognition of this reality
00:07:45.180 must force you towards realism.
00:07:47.820 Reform is the only party capable of winning the next election.
00:07:51.620 Purity spiraling about how they are not right-wing enough will only make the outcomes you want 0.81
00:07:56.140 less likely.
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