This is the Guardian. Today, Nigel Farage thinks he could be Prime Minister by 2029. But should we take him seriously?
In May this year, Nigel Farage had allegedly retired from frontline politics. My life was going pretty well. I just had a big 60th birthday. I mean, not bad health, which is down to clean living. And I had not one but two grandchildren on the way.
The first of whom I'm delighted to say was born on June the 23rd Brexit day. How about that? Then Rishi Sunak called the general election, and Farage decided to come out of retirement and make his eighth attempts at running for Parliament, this time in the Essex-side town of Clackton. I therefore do hereby declare that Nigel Paul Farage is duly elected as the member of Parliament for the Clackton constituency.
Not only did he win the seat, but his reform party took four others, despite a rocky campaign that saw candidates and activists disowned for making racist and Islamophobic remarks.
Reforms five parliamentary seats were all one at the expense of the Conservative Party. But they came second in 98 others, mostly to Labour in the north of England and Wales. And they won a bigger share of the national vote than the Lib Dems. Now, Farage has his sights on a bigger prize. Do you honestly think you can be the next Prime Minister? It's possible, yeah. Do you honestly do? It may not be probable, but it's certainly possible.
He's been inspired by his friend Donald Trump. You have a man from Europe, what he is doing is sort of what we did a few years ago. He's doing a great job and he's shaking it up pretty good over there. He was the big winner of the last election, Nigel Farage.
Many people didn't believe Trump could become president once, let alone twice. And Farage is often underestimated too. Perhaps it's too far-fetched to suggest that Farage could reach the very top. But even if he doesn't, he's highly likely to have an outsized impact on British politics in the next five years.
At this autumn, I set out to discover how reform is professionalising and democratising, as it attempts to move from a one-man band to a true people's party, presenting itself as a mass movement of common sense, rather than one of a right-wing fringe.
From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in focus, the Reformation of Reform and the Return of Nigel Farage.
It's the end of September and I've come to the Birmingham NEC for Reform's first post-election jamboree. This is normally where Croft is held, but instead of the hall being filled with dogs, today Reforms say that 4,000 ordinary people are going to be here having paid for tickets.
I'm a veteran of many UKIP conferences in the past, and I still bear the scars of seeing the tattoo of Nigel Farage on the arm of a woman in Doncaster in 2014. Those were always a real collection of oddballs at the UKIP conferences. Hello Birmingham! Hello Birmingham!
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to our Reform Conference 2024!
The size of this conference dwarfs anything I've been to involving Farage in the past, and it's much better organised too, with giddy delegates waving placards saying, let's save Britain, and a turquoise double-decker bus bearing reforms new slogans, slash immigration, slash the cost of living, and boost wages. But there are some familiar elements that give me flashback to the UKIP days of old.
What a pleasure it is to be here today surrounded by so many light-minded people concerned about the state of our nation with a refreshing porosity of rainbow lanyards in evidence.
That's Rupert Lowe, a multi-millionaire and a former Brexit party MEP who became great Yarmouths MP in July. Ashfield MP Lee Anderson, who defected from the Tories earlier this year, is up next. And reminisces about standing on the pickets in the minor strike. Just imagine telling the police and the striking minds at that time that fast forward 40 years. And we'd see a load of undernourished vegans, gray-eyed
Armed with a just stop-oil hive his vest and a dangerous pair of Jesus sandals. Enter in London and bring in the whole capital city to a standstill. Whilst the Metropolitan Police stood by and did nothing, apart from Dancer Macarena,
He gives a shout out to his favourite comedian who's sitting in the VIP section on the top of the double decker bus. And the greatest cultural hero of our time, Jim Davidson. Where is he?
But there's something about this conference that feels different from those in the past, from the Brexit party days or you kit before it. I mean, firstly, just the size. On the day of the general election reform had 40,000 paying members. Going into this conference, that number has doubled. But what also strikes me in Birmingham is that there are actual young people in attendance.
I'm here today because if I say what I believe anywhere where I go to uni or where I went to work I probably get sacked so it's quite nice to be able to meet like many people and have a decent conversation.
This is Sam Reed, a Christian YouTuber with a channel called Worship With Sam. So I'm a Christian and I think that's also part of the reason why I voted reform because it seemed like although when I looked at, when I moved from being quite liberal for Labour in 2019, I saw that actually the Conservatives who I probably aligned with more didn't say anything about faith, didn't say anything about Christianity, but for Raj and a lot of people who were in this party really believed that Judah Christian values of what this country was built on.
We spot a very dapper young man who's wearing a three-piece suit with a polka dot pocket square. It's David Kerr, who runs a glazing company. He stood for reform at the general election in Brentford and Eiselworth, coming forth. Previously, before you were in reform, which political party did you vote for or were you a member of? Labour. Really? OK. And what made you turn your back on Labour? The announcing of Jeremy Corbyn.
I didn't expect you to say that. So you were on the left of the Labour Party. Yes, when I was about 1819, yes. Right, OK. And how have you made that journey then to reform UK? Some people would see those things as on different ends of the spectrum. Absolutely. But I mean, I would say it's a transition from the Labour Party, being a party of the working class, the working man, the tradesman. I come from a family of gas engineers and electrician.
people who go on the floorboards, I'm not afraid to get dirty. And this is what Labor used to represent, and many of my family are still ardent Labor supporters, but they're all switching over to reform, slowly but surely. I mean, simply because Labor has become a party for the Metropolitan Graduate Class. But if you are from the more working class areas of the country, Labor doesn't care about you one bit.
I did not expect to find a former Corbinista at reform conference. It was less surprising to find people with very strong views on immigration, like these students from Exeter University.
Well, we're against immigration. That's the main thing. We've had so much immigration in the last 20 years. We've had more immigration in the last 20 years, 25 years, than in the previous 1000 years. We want the status quo, which is zero immigration, zero people coming in. And if people want to leave, that's up to them. But yeah, zero people coming in. We've had enough people coming in more than enough. I ask how the NHS would cope with our immigrant doctors' nurses.
And the NHS worked before immigration, you know, so, and it worked well for 40 years. The native population, actually, they're disproportionately high in the workforce in the NHS. If you look at the working age population, the natives are about 70% of it, yet they're about 85% of the workforce at the NHS, so... I ask what he means by natives.
You know when you talked about the natives in this country, what did you mean by that? Because it's a bit of an ambiguous word. The natives, the people who have always been here. The people who were here 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago. If I said the natives of Africa, you'd know what I was talking about. So yeah, it's quite obvious what the native, who the native population are. But what about Rishi Sunak born in this country? Is he native to you? No, because he wasn't here. Five generations ago. There's nothing wrong necessarily. It doesn't mean you're less than if you're not native.
There's something about his wording that makes me feel really uncomfortable. He's going way beyond official reform positioning. In the main hall, Reform's new chairman, Zia Youssef, is talking. His parents came to the UK from Sri Lanka. We meet Evelina, who's from Lithuania.
How long have you been living in the UK? For about nine years now. What do you make of the reform party grew out of the Brexit party? It's obviously made it harder for people from the European Union to come and live and work here. What do you think about that? I think it's fair. I don't know. I'm certainly not against it. I think it's fair that British people want to have
British culture and I can see myself that there's too much immigration. When we first moved to UK, I saw what I'd not expected to see. I imagined England in very different state than it actually is in what way.
All of these people, these reformed voters, have really come to Birmingham for one thing. And it's not until right at the end of the day that he arrives.
It's a more serious speech than usual. The infant, the reform UK was, has been grabbing up. We have the teenage tantrums.
which were those that caused us harm in the general election. But we're now at a different point. The party is an adult. And this weekend, this weekend is when Reform UK comes of age. For us, it has clearly come to Birmingham with a mission. Unless the People's Army of supporters are organised.
unless the people's army of supporters are helped to professionalize, unless that people arm is fight elections, not just as a paper name on the ballot, but with the intention of winning as many seats as we can. This party will succeed or fail in its historic mission, according to what you 4,000 good folk are able to do and to impart over the course of the next few years.
It's up to you. It really is up to you. For Raj says he's going to model reform on the Liberal Democrats, who won 72 parliamentary seats in July with fewer votes than his party. And the Lib Dems strategy involves embedding in target areas, blanketing with leaflets and winning council seats. Now, the Lib Dems might be the model, but they're not reform's targets.
The fireworks are back. Blue streamers have exploded all over the audience. He's getting his standing abation. If I was in the Labour Party or the Conservative Party watching that and watching this today, I would be pretty worried. I would say Raj is very clearly planting his tank, as he would say, on both of their lawns.
Amid the fireworks and the oddballs and the rejection of political correctness is a serious objective. To turn reform from a limited company controlled primarily by him into a proper democratic political party. What he calls the people's army.
I'm keen to meet some of the foot soldiers in this army and start chatting to a 27-year-old software developer called Jamie Gregory who's wearing a lanyard bearing the name of his greater Manchester constituency.
Well, we've not actually formed yet, but we're looking to form the branch at Staley Bridge and Hyde within the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned. What made you get involved and take Friday off work to be here? I think it kind of goes back to the general election, and when Nigel said there's something happening out there, there's a sort of aura about the reform party that I feel, and I think probably everybody else in the room has given that off today.
you know there's a real kind of feeling that something needs to change within the country and it really does motivate people and I mean you can see from like the sort of atmosphere here it really's kind of gone to show that so that's kind of why I felt I should be here today to kind of show my support for the party and to do my bet to kind of reform
We're interested in watching what happens now with reform. How realistic is it, the vision that he's presented? So we want to follow a few people as they're setting up branches and trying to kind of win hearts and minds. Absolutely. Can I just get your number? Hi, Emily. Yes. Yeah, each straight through. Yeah. All right, thanks. Helen. Helen. Hi.
It's two weeks after conference and Jamie has invited me to a busy pub in Staley Bridge in Tameside in Greater Manchester where he's launching his local reform branch. Jamie, for the Guardian, how's it going? Yeah, no worries. There's a busy room in here. They've got a buffet laid out with a reform UK cake with lots of Union Jacks. Union Jack flags on it. They've really laid on quite a spread. There's Haribo, there's mini brownies, there's sandwiches,
There's a life-size cut-out with Nigel Farage. Hi guys, I want to thank you all for coming. It's not an absolutely amazing turn now, but we've asked for it today. I really love the expectiveness last night. So you may not know who I am, but I just recognise a lot of houses that you are already in. Anyway, my name is Jamie. I'm going to be the branch chair of this Constituent City Superloser.
On the bar are questionnaires asking for views on certain issues, such as building on the Green Belt and saving British farming. The speech is start and I begin to get a sense of the sort of campaigns they might run locally. Wendy, the new branch secretary, is particularly concerned about who's going to move into a new housing development. We need to know if you are going into the houses here. That might be a search for local people.
Everyone in this room is white, but they're a mixture of ages and many tell me that they used to vote Labour.
In the election just gone, Reform came second here, with Labor's now business secretary Jonathan Reynolds winning his seat for the fifth time. Reform's candidate was Barbara Kaya, an accountant and carer, who believes that with proper resourcing Reynolds could be toppled the next time round. I ask her how it felt coming second in July.
I was pleasantly surprised. It was a lovely, lovely feeling. And how much resources did you have to come second? How big was your team? And how big was your budget? Well, we did on the shoestring. So basically, I couldn't afford to put any of my money in.
So what we had to do, I did a Gold Fund Me page and that saved the day. I was able to get leaflets printed and that was it. That's all we had. So we just was social media, leaflets, we had this brigade of people, we were out on the street, we only had six weeks and off we just went and put it with a camaraderie for support.
the positiveness. Even when I was walking around the streets, that's when I knew that there was something special going on. So if we'd have had more time, I think things would have been different again.
The speeches are over and people are queuing up to take selfies with the cardboard Nigel Farage while a collection goes round for the local food bank. I grabbed Jamie for a quick chat outside the function room where it's a bit quieter. He is cock-a-hoop about how it's gone.
I think it went amazing. I was very nervous because I wasn't expecting the turnout we got and I'm not a fantastic public spake myself anyway. But I think it went really really good. And what's the goal now? What are you hoping that the people who are here tonight are going to go away and do after this?
We want to get everybody who's here tonight. We want to get everybody signed up and we want everybody to kind of register their interest to help out with local campaigning. That's what tonight has been all about. Get existing supporters really, really geared up to want to help drive the party and the branch campaigning forward. So as a party, what we want to do now is we want to focus on local issues and campaigning locally for the upcoming council elections.
People have already started putting their names in the ring to be councillors, as well as Staley Bridge's next parliamentary candidate. But all applications bypass Jamie and go straight to an external vetting firm employed by Reform Central Command in London. It is a big issue. Reform had to disown various parliamentary candidates in the election for saying things such as, black people should get off their lazy arses and stop acting like savages.
I think Nigel Farage was on the record saying that he thought reform would have done even better if they hadn't, if they'd been able to vet candidates better. You know, in the sort of, in the final few weeks of the campaign, there were some unsavory characters, weren't they, who were standing for reform. What did you make of that at the time?
I think they've learned the lesson from that, and they're taking things much more seriously now. And I think that's probably where the sort of centralized vetting process sort of comes in. Because you are going to get people that want to, you know, people quite unsavory characters really, that want to stand in and run as reform candidates. And that's what we kind of want to break. We want to break this sort of idea that we sort of BMP light, if you like. Because we've got so many fantastic policies.
policy proposals that we want to put forward. It's not just the anti-immigration party because that's not what we are. We're just for common sense party of the people.
I'll leave the pub and drive home thinking about what I've seen. There was undeniable energy in the room, but what really struck me is their insistence that they're going to be a locally rooted party, a community party. Think of them giving out those questionnaires to find out what people care about, organising petitions, campaigning against new housing developments. It feels very libdem, and it's exactly the kind of work that if done well, could win reform seats on the local council.
It's already happening elsewhere. Since the general election, reform candidates have won by-elections in places like Blackpool or Wolverhampton, as well as attracting defectors from the Conservatives. But I do wonder how much this gritty, nuts and bolts politics interests the man at the top of reform. Coming up, we head to Clackton to see what Nigel Farage has and hasn't been up to since he became the town's MP.
It's a Friday in early November and I'm in a taxi heading for the seaside. Parliament doesn't sit on Fridays and so MPs normally spend the day in their constituencies holding surgeries and meeting residents. I don't know if Nigel Farage will actually be in collecting today but I'm intrigued to find out what he's been up to in his first four months as MP. We're journalists from the Guardian and later on we're going to go in
meet people from the Reform Party, you know, Nigel Farage's party. They're doing some sort of drop-in. Well, I don't think he's here. That's the trouble he says. He's never here. We're on our way to Jaywick, often described as the most deprived ward in England, to meet a local independent councillor called Bradley Thompson.
So we're just standing by the seawall, looking out over the sea. You can hear seagulls. Just in the distance. I can see a wind farm right on the horizon. This could be... Well, this is a lovely beach. There's like little sandy coves. I can see people walking their dogs. Hello. Have you ever been upstairs at all, mate? This is my name's Councillor Thompson for West Clapton and Joe McSans. And you've got a new MP in July, Nigel Farage. We use a prize that he won.
Not really, B.O. and Nigel come along, had seen him on TV. He talks a good game, probably a bit like myself. But you've got to be out of back it up really. And unfortunately, I've not seen or heard from him since he's been elected. I've asked him eat fraud three times, I believe.
I was told various stories. One, he's in high demand. Two, there's a security threat against him. I said, I'm a local cancer. I'm not Joe public and he should be supporting me a bit more with issues like my local area and I still get to see him. How often do you think Fred has been here since the general election?
I've definitely seen him on Facebook in the local pub for three days, five or six times, now watching the football, engaging with residents then. I couldn't speak for how many times he actually has been there, but what I've seen, probably 10, 12 times in total. Have you heard of him holding any surgeries in the constituency?
Yeah, held a surgery a little while ago where they were announced in their Essex County Councils and what Nigel's been up to since been elected. I think it was at the Royal Hotel, the Royal Greek Hotel on the seafront. But you had to become a reformed member, which cost you £25. Then you was offered a free ticket.
So anyone like me, I'm independent, I can't be associated with political party. So that ruled me out going and many other people. Just because we don't vote reformed, you still want to know what your MP is doing. Yeah, totally disrespectful to all the residents really. We contacted Reform UK to ask Faraj about this and he didn't respond. Surely if an MP's duty is to help his constituents regardless of whether they voted for him or not, let alone making them be reform members, that really surprises me.
Yeah, and that's the way it looks like to me, unless you tow their line and do what they want to do, they don't want to work with anyone. And he has said, hasn't he, that he can't run drop-in surgeries because is this security risk that people might try to attack him? Do you have any sympathy for that?
No, not at all. I mean, he was happy enough to walk around with all bodyguards when he was getting elected, having milkshakes thrown in. But yeah, since he's been elected, he's just dropped off. That's no excuse, really. You can hold meetings, you can get people in one by one. You can have your security around you. There's no excuse for it at all.
It's not just Bradley who mentions this in Clackton, this feeling that Farage wasn't really getting his hands dirty. A time I've seen photos that Farage has posted of himself online, taken all over the constituency. And he has been to Clackton a few times because he's posted pictures of himself at various events. But you've not seen him personally, is he?
No, so I've seen pictures go up in pubs, clubs, golf courses. Yeah, so every time I've seen him come down there, it's just for a photo opportunity. It's all well and good looking like you're doing something. I think it's going to come on top of him in another year when residents realise what he's actually all about if he carries on going down that path.
To illustrate the point, Bradley takes me to the seafronts where there was a devastating fire at the start of August. So that's where the fire is now? No. Oh my word. So we can see there's fridges, sofa, everything I guess in the house must have been absolutely destroyed. Is that what we're looking at? All of Claire's belongings. Yep.
Bradley knew the family whose home was destroyed. Claire Fitzpatrick, her partner, their five children and pets, including a collection of miniature pigs. Yeah, so they lost everything in there. The only thing that we did try and salvage was her mum's ashes and her daughter was here when I was rushing back from the council.
and she managed to spot them in the actual debris and the construction workers stopped and pulled them out and harmed. I don't know, I was just coming down, pulled over on the main road over there and started getting the dogs out of the house and the fellow out of the house and the wind direction changed and just took out all the houses and yeah it was actually carnage.
Where the children did in the house? Everyone got out. They was here when it happened. And obviously everyone was evacuated. The power lines come down on fire. The whole road was evacuated. We evacuated them. Yeah, it was awful. Yeah, absolutely terrible. So on the night of the fire, where was Frosh?
Oh, he was a near. He was a near two days later. And he come down and they took a picture of him looking over the embers. Yeah, and that was the last we see of him. Obviously, Claire's partner handed over a number and said, could he phone her? And yeah, he was nowhere to be seen or heard from since.
Claire said she's never heard from Farage himself. After two months of emailing his office, she finally got a response from one of his caseworkers. But by that point, she'd found herself emergency accommodation.
Bradley is clearly frustrated at Farage's lack of action in Clackton. But plenty of people in the constituency remain big fans. We find one running the local food bank in J-WIC. We're generous from the Guardian for making a podcast about reform UK and Nigel Farage, just asking people what he's like as an MP. Wonderful. We love it. Do you? Do you? Yes, I do. Do you? Yes. He's one of us. Yes.
Yes, he is. He's been in business. He knows how to converse with the man on the street. Right? He's at our level. Yeah. And that's what we want. Yeah. And have you seen much of him since he became the MP? No, we saw him afterwards, yes. But not since then. Right. And does that bother you? Not really. Because we keep in touch via email? Right. Yeah. You keep in touch with Frage? Yes. What do you email him? He loves us. Does he? Of course he does.
This is Roz. She says Farage has promised that he'll help the food bank. Amazing work. So Farage has promised you some funding. Yeah. And has he come up with anything yet? Not as yet. No, we're wasting. How long will he keep the faith?
Oh, always. I've kept the faith since 2015. Oh, really? Yes, I have. Yes. And do you think that he says he's going to be Prime Minister in 2029? Oh, I'd love that. Would you? Oh, yes, I would volunteer for him, I'm telling you. Yes, I would love it. And is it realistic, do you think? Could be. And in Clackton, there are some signs of what we saw in Staley Bridge, too, of a local party beginning to organise. Do you know where the reform you pay people are?
At a local pump, the three J's. Reform are holding a drop in session to help people fill in the paperwork to apply for the means tested winter fuel payment. Maybe it doesn't really matter what Faraj personally does in Clackton, as long as he has a crack team locally doing the casework. Besides, a lot of people do genuinely seem to like having a big name MP.
The very next day for Raj turns up in Clackton, visiting Jaywick just before jetting off to Pennsylvania to support his great friend Donald Trump in the final days of campaigning in the US election.
Well, I think Nigel is great. I mean, I've known him for a long time. He had a great election too. He picked up a lot of seats. Farage's peerless ability to be in the headlines is always going to help a party like Reform UK make headway at home. And his relationship with Trump has given him added power on the international stage with Peter Mandelson, that Machiavelli and former Blairite minister, suggesting that Farage should be used as a bridgehead to build relations with Trump's incoming administration.
There are ways in which I think I can help smooth the relationship between Trump, the people he's going to appoint into senior roles in the administration, most of whom I also know. If I could be helpful as a bridge between MeToo, I would do it. But is he really behaving like an international statesman? Or is he a dangerous rabble rouser? Does the Prime Minister understand?
There is a growing feeling of anger in this country that we are living through two-tier policing and a two-tier justice system. The tax in Southport this summer have hung over the whole period that we've been reporting this episode, not just the horrific act itself, but the racist riots that came after it, which many people believe Farage fueled by spreading misinformation that he continues to repeat today. We are witnessing
One of the biggest cover-ups we've ever seen in our lives. And I won't say any more than that. But all the while reform continues to grow. The party now has almost 100,000 members, more than the Liberal Democrats. There are now over 300 local branches organizing all around the country. And the party says that more than 2,000 people have applied to run in the local elections next May.
For our said, it was not probable that he would be PM, though he hasn't ruled it out. But with his people's army growing and a friend in the White House, he's sure to play a big role in British politics in the next five years. Underestimate him at your peril.
And that's all for today. This episode is the culmination of three months of reporting. A decade really, if you include all the years I spent following Nigel Farage in his UKIP and Brexit party days. The Guardian is committed to this kind of long-range, in-depth reporting, but it doesn't come cheap. If you want to help us make more episodes like this, perhaps you'd consider supporting the Guardian. Follow the link in the episode description to find out how. And if you enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review.
Today's show was produced by Natalie Katenna, who I'm very sad to say is leaving today in focus. Natalie, we are going to miss you so much. It was presented by me, Helen Pitt. Sound Design was by Joel Cox, and the executive producer was Sammy Kent. We'll be back on Monday. This is The Guardian.
