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Transcript
00:00 Nigel Farage is to run for election to the UK Parliament on July 4th.
00:06 The man considered as the godfather of Brexit has done a spectacular U-turn and declared
00:10 as the Reform Party candidate for Clacton-on-Sea.
00:13 He has also been named leader of the party too.
00:15 This could put Farage face to face with the main contenders in any election debate situation.
00:20 The main effect though is supposed to be, or predicted to be, an effective split of
00:25 the Tory vote in Clacton immediately.
00:28 It was a surprise U-turn.
00:32 Pro-Brexit, anti-immigration politician Nigel Farage called a last-minute press conference
00:38 to announce that he would indeed be running in the UK's July 4th election.
00:43 This less than two weeks after having said he would not be a candidate and was instead
00:47 focusing on helping his ally Donald Trump get elected in the US.
00:51 But the 60-year-old said he'd changed his mind after speaking to voters.
00:56 What I'm really calling for, and what I intend to lead, is a political revolt.
01:02 Yes, a revolt.
01:05 A turning of our backs on the political status quo.
01:10 It doesn't work.
01:12 Nothing in this country works anymore.
01:15 Running for a seat in Clacton-on-Sea, this is Farage's eighth attempt at being elected
01:19 to the House of Commons.
01:21 He's failed seven times before.
01:23 But this time he does have a chance at upseating the seaside town's Conservative incumbent.
01:28 Taking over as the leader of the far-right revolt party, Farage says he wants to lead
01:31 what he calls the "real opposition" against the Labour Party if it does indeed win next
01:37 month.
01:38 Farage's return to politics is a further blow to the Conservative Party and Prime Minister
01:43 Rishi Sunak.
01:44 A YouGov poll on Monday said the Labour Party could win over 420 of the 650 seats in Parliament,
01:51 putting the Tories potentially on track for their worst results since 1906.
01:58 So Nigel Farage, before he declared as the candidate for Clacton, said that he wouldn't
02:02 go there.
02:03 Basically was very disparaging about the place.
02:05 Now when he went, he was greeted by people angry at what he said.
02:09 And we can perhaps show you the images of Nigel Farage decorated, I'll get straight
02:14 to the point, hit with the milkshake thrown at him at Clacton-on-Sea.
02:17 This is what happened.
02:19 That smile set to become a frown as the milkshake hits him smack in the chops, as we say.
02:24 Let's bring in now for more comment Tim Bale, who's Professor of Politics at Queen Mary
02:28 University in London.
02:29 Tim, a very good evening to you.
02:30 Thanks for joining us.
02:31 Were you shocked when Farage declared as the candidate for Clacton?
02:36 I think most people were caught on the hop, to be honest.
02:39 He had said a week or so before that he wasn't going to stand because he was going to go
02:43 and be Donald Trump's new best friend in America.
02:47 And then he suddenly has decided to shake things up by becoming not only the candidate
02:53 for Clacton, but also the leader of Reform UK, something he was able to do because this
02:59 isn't a party like other parties.
03:01 It doesn't have a membership structure.
03:03 It's a company and he is the majority shareholder.
03:06 So basically what he says goes.
03:09 Aptly point and well, well said and very precise.
03:13 Some might be watching this thinking it will this be eighth time lucky in inverted commas
03:18 because he's run seven times to be an MP and never succeeded.
03:21 Will he win the eighth time?
03:22 But in many ways, that's not the point here, is it with Farage?
03:25 He's about getting publicity and getting his voice heard and basically creating a kind
03:30 of disruption or chaos.
03:31 Yes, I mean, he does see himself as the disruptor in chief, if you like.
03:36 He is the quintessential populist running a campaign against the political class, the
03:42 elite, as he would say, on behalf of the people.
03:45 And like many populists, he chooses to focus very much on migration.
03:49 He says he wants this to be an immigration election.
03:53 And he doesn't really have much else to say to people, apart perhaps from a criticism
04:00 of woke, as he would say, and also some criticism increasingly from Reform UK of progress towards
04:08 net zero, which they feel is a) unnecessary and b) perhaps too expensive for ordinary
04:13 people.
04:14 But I think it does make a difference.
04:15 If he wins a seat in Clacton, that will mean he becomes, if you like, a permanent feature
04:20 of the Westminster scene.
04:22 It will mean that the newspapers and the media will pay even more attention to him than they
04:27 do already.
04:28 So I think winning in Clacton would be important.
04:30 And I think he has a very decent chance of doing that.
04:33 A rich man, stockbroker, likes to have a pint and smoke a fag, as he's famous for saying.
04:39 With this, he's managed to project himself somehow as the man of the people.
04:42 Are voters so easily taken in in the UK?
04:44 Well, I mean, they are fairly easily taken in, if that's the way you want to put it,
04:50 in mainland Europe.
04:52 There are many politicians posing as the kind of tribune of the people who don't necessarily
04:57 have a particularly ordinary background, but just simply have the kind of communicative
05:01 ability that they share with Nigel Farage to somehow connect with ordinary folk.
05:08 And whatever you think of Nigel Farage, love him or hate him, and he is what we call in
05:12 the UK a Marmite politician after a spread that people either love or hate.
05:17 Love or hate it, Marmite, yes.
05:19 He is a superb communicator and certainly has a lot more charisma and media appeal than
05:27 the leaders of the two main parties at the moment.
05:29 Indeed, that parallel that you brought quite aptly with certain populist politicians over
05:36 here in Europe, the parallels with the Le Pen's, isn't it, surely, between Farage and
05:40 Le Pen.
05:41 That's the parallel, isn't it?
05:42 Yeah, I mean, that's one parallel.
05:45 Another parallel would be with Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, a man who also completely
05:49 controls his party without any need really for democratic structures within it.
05:55 But you can point to a whole host of populists right the way across Europe, including, of
05:59 course, some who are in government.
06:01 So Viktor Orbán is the example there.
06:04 You can look at Italy and Giorgio Maloney.
06:07 There are plenty of them around.
06:09 And in some ways, the whole of the story of politics over the last couple of decades is
06:14 the fact that these parties have crashed into the system and obviously disrupt them in ways
06:21 that perhaps Nigel Farage is hoping to do in the UK.
06:25 Your excellent book, Tim, The Conservative Party After Brexit, leads me to my next question.
06:30 If Farage is considered to be the godfather of Brexit, and Brexit, let's face it, doesn't
06:34 seem to work for anybody, is that likely to count against him?
06:39 Not with the people who are inclined to vote for him, actually.
06:42 There are still very many people who voted Leave in 2016 who don't think that Brexit
06:47 has been done properly.
06:50 They don't think that it has given us control of our borders because they are particularly
06:53 obsessed with immigration.
06:56 And I think what he will argue is that if you elect Nigel Farage and you elect reform
07:01 MPs, I don't think they'll get many other MPs, if any other MPs apart from him, then
07:05 there'll be more pressure on the government to actually properly Brexit, as he would see
07:09 it, and take us even further from the EU market than we already are.
07:15 So I'm just looking at him coughing a pint, and the pint looks good.
07:17 I'll give him that.
07:20 In a sense, then, he's Teflon, to coin a phrase.
07:22 Coughing sticks on this man.
07:24 Well, there is the comparison with Donald Trump.
07:28 He can, to some extent, say things that other politicians, I think, would find it very difficult
07:33 to escape the consequences of.
07:36 And this is particularly the case, and again, this is a parallel with some of the populist
07:40 politicians we see in Europe about people from a Muslim background.
07:46 You can see increasingly, actually, over the last few months, he's tended to turn his attention
07:51 to Britain's Muslim population and say some pretty disparaging things about them, as far
07:58 as some commentators are concerned.
08:00 But of course, that will go down well with some of the voters that he is aiming to pick
08:04 up.
08:05 It's very depressing to hear that that kind of racism is finally on market.
08:08 But it's inevitable that in the elections it does happen, because racism is part of
08:12 our everyday reality.
08:14 The Conservative Party, Tim, just turning back to your book and how Brexit affected
08:19 the Conservative Party.
08:20 Is this election and what we're about to see, could this be, I mean, clearly a redefining
08:26 moment for the Conservative Party?
08:27 Farage now in the equation, splitting the vote.
08:31 The fact that the Tories are trailing the Labour Party by, it's more than double digit,
08:36 it's 20 percent, it's whichever poll you look at, it looks dire.
08:40 There's a prediction of a landslide for the Labour Party bigger than when Tony Blair was
08:44 first elected.
08:45 An amazing, amazing event could happen.
08:48 What does it mean for the Conservative Party right now?
08:50 Well, it has turned what was a headache for the Conservative Party into a full blown migraine,
08:55 it has to be said, because Reform UK under Nigel Farage will probably actually manage
09:01 something between, say, 10, 15 percent in the election.
09:05 If that is the case, then that means that the Conservatives will lose probably dozens
09:10 more seats than might otherwise be the case.
09:12 Not because they will lose them to Reform UK candidates, but because Reform UK candidates
09:17 will drain support that otherwise would have gone to Conservative candidates and therefore
09:22 allow Liberal Democrat and especially Labour candidates to come through and beat the Conservatives.
09:28 So it is a real problem for the Conservatives.
09:30 And, you know, not to put too fine a point on that, if Nigel Farage has the kind of election
09:35 that many people expect him to do, and Rishi Sunak has the kind of election that many expect
09:39 him to do, then I would have thought that, you know, Reform and Nigel Farage will bang
09:44 yet another nail into the Conservatives' coffin.
09:46 UK media makes much, or has made much in the past about splits within the Labour Party,
09:50 parties within parties, and thinking back as far as militant tendency, you can think
09:54 about momentum during the Jeremy Corbyn campaign.
09:57 They make very little about the fact that the Tory party has its little factions, Conservative,
10:01 Home, One Nation Tory.
10:04 You can name them all, I'm sure.
10:06 Is this an indication, a further indication, that we're going to see a big split in the
10:10 Conservative party coming up?
10:12 Well, I think what you could see is a kind of takeover either from within or without
10:16 the Conservative party, pushing it further along this road from the kind of mainstream,
10:22 if you like, towards the populist radical right.
10:25 There are some people within the Conservative party who want to move it in that direction
10:28 anyway.
10:29 If Nigel Farage gets into Parliament, maybe a few of them will defect to Reform.
10:34 Maybe in the end there will be some sort of Unite the Right campaign.
10:38 And perhaps Nigel Farage will one day end up as the leader of the Conservative party.
10:42 It's certainly an ambition that I think he has.
10:45 And I think there are some Conservatives, many of them at the grassroots, who will be
10:49 perfectly happy to see that.
10:50 Indeed, if you ask Conservative party voters whether they prefer Rishi Sunak or Nigel Farage,
10:57 they prefer Nigel Farage.
10:59 Tim Bale, we'll leave it there with that one hanging in the air.
11:03 As Farage declares as the candidate for Clacton-on-Sea, a place that he said not so long ago
11:08 that he couldn't bear going to, but now there he is campaigning to get elected there.
11:11 He's had a milkshake thrown all over his Farage, as they say.
11:14 And we'll see how that campaign develops.
11:16 But Tim, thank you for your analysis, which was enlightening to say the very least.
11:20 Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University and author of The Conservative
11:24 Party After Brexit.

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