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00:00 We can speak now to Sir John Curtis, who is a Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde,
00:04 who's been providing coverage of British elections since 1979.
00:08 Thank you so much for joining us, Sir John.
00:10 And just tell us, first of all, this announcement by Nigel Farage,
00:14 how potentially damaging do you think this is going to be to Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party?
00:20 Well, it's potentially substantially damaging.
00:24 The Reform Party's vote, which is running at about 11% in the opinion polls,
00:29 and crucially has so far not fallen away during this election campaign.
00:34 That vote is coming primarily from people who voted Conservative in 2019.
00:39 While the results of the local elections in England at the beginning of May,
00:42 where Reform stood in some of the contests but not in others,
00:47 the difference in the result between those two contests suggests very strongly
00:50 that where Reform were on the ballot paper, it was indeed the Conservatives that suffered.
00:55 So both pieces of evidence point in the same direction.
00:59 Now, whether or not Mr Farage is going to succeed in substantially increasing Reform support
01:05 above that 11% figure, we'll have to wait and see.
01:08 There's been some polling done, which asked people what they would do if Farage were leader,
01:13 and it suggested he might add two or three points to that 11%.
01:16 But if all that Mr Farage simply does is to keep that 11% more or less intact,
01:24 that is bad news for the Conservatives.
01:26 They're more than 20 points behind in the opinion polls.
01:29 Squeezing back, winning back the many voters they've lost to Reform was, as it were,
01:34 the move that would get them to base camp in this very substantial challenge that they face.
01:41 And if Reform is to keep on winning 11% of the campaign,
01:44 that vote is primarily going to, A, take place in Conservative-held constituencies,
01:51 and B, because Reform's predecessor, the Brexit Party,
01:54 did not fight Conservative-held constituencies in 2019,
01:57 it's going to do particular damage in those seats.
02:00 So all ways round, certainly unless Mr Farage fluffs his challenge,
02:07 it's going to make life more difficult for the Conservatives.
02:10 I wonder how voters are going to feel about that,
02:13 essentially handing, therefore, a considerable gift to the Labour Party,
02:18 which is what Nigel Farage has done.
02:19 I mean, that's going to be the way I'd imagine the mainstream right wing will spin this, isn't it?
02:25 Well, yeah, there is no doubt that is the argument that the Conservative Party is using.
02:29 It's been using it throughout this campaign so far without a great deal of effect.
02:35 The problem the Conservatives potentially face is that the disenchantment
02:40 that those who have switched to Reform feel,
02:42 like, frankly, the many 2019 Conservative voters who switched to Labour,
02:46 the disenchantment they feel is such that they would rather vote for a party
02:51 that they feel truly believes in Brexit.
02:54 Many of them feel that the Conservative Party is not taking advantage of Brexit,
02:58 a party that really would manage to reduce immigration.
03:00 Whereas, of course, in the wake of Brexit, immigration has actually risen in the UK.
03:06 That as a result, and they're also unhappy about the Conservatives on the economy,
03:10 on the health service, which are the two big issues that are pushing the Conservative vote down.
03:15 In the end, they may just decide that expressing their protest is more important
03:22 than trying to save the Conservatives, perhaps particularly so,
03:25 given that at the moment, at least, there doesn't seem much chance of Sir Keir Starmer being stopped anyway.
03:30 You mentioned the economy, usually the most important thing in people's minds when they cast their ballots.
03:35 But actually, there have been some quite encouraging figures coming out of the UK.
03:38 And Rishi Sunak could, perhaps tonight, will claim some credit for bringing inflation back right under control,
03:46 all the way down from 11% down to about 2% where it is now.
03:50 The housing market having some surprising uptick in certain parts of the country.
03:56 The jobless situation, not too bad. I mean, it isn't that bad, is it?
03:59 The economic picture in the UK right now?
04:02 Well, as compared with the fairly dismal four and a half years that we've had throughout this parliament,
04:07 it's been the parliament in which the public have been more pessimistic about the economy than any other.
04:12 Not for reason, it's not entirely the government's fault.
04:15 The Covid pandemic, the Russian-Ukraine war bear a lot of responsibility.
04:19 But it's a relatively recent turnaround in the public mood.
04:23 But the question that hangs over the Conservatives is this,
04:26 is if indeed the public are beginning to feel a bit more optimistic, and there are some signs of that,
04:33 will they be willing to give the Conservative Party the credit,
04:37 given that they are widely regarded as having a heavy hand of responsibility for what happened
04:44 in the wake of Liz Truss's so-called fiscal event, which caused a market crisis?
04:49 And we have to remember that no post-war British government that's presided over a market crisis
04:54 has subsequently survived at the ballot box.
04:56 Even John Major, who after Black Wednesday in September 1992,
05:00 when the pound was forced out of the European exchange rate mechanism by the markets,
05:04 we had four and a half years of the best economic growth Britain had experienced since 1945 at that time.
05:11 The electorate still weren't willing to give the credit for the government
05:16 because they remembered the market crisis.
05:18 And the Labour Party are certainly constantly reminding the public of Liz Truss
05:23 and the market crisis around her fiscal event throughout this election campaign.
05:28 OK, so unlikely you're saying that the electorate will forgive the Conservative Party,
05:34 as they didn't for John Major either.
05:36 Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us.
05:37 I'm afraid we're out of time.
05:38 That's Sir John Curtis, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde.
05:42 Thank you.
05:43 [BLANK_AUDIO]