Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage sat down with Sky News host Peta Credlin to examine the state of Britain following Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party taking power in 2024.
The Reform UK leader discussed how the treatment of certain groups in the UK is creating a divide in society
“We’re going downhill,” Mr Farage said.
“This government is economically inept, culturally completely out of touch with society.
“A massive change is coming.”
The Reform UK leader discussed how the treatment of certain groups in the UK is creating a divide in society
“We’re going downhill,” Mr Farage said.
“This government is economically inept, culturally completely out of touch with society.
“A massive change is coming.”
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00:00Nigel, great to have your company. Good to be here. Great to share a meal with you.
00:04It's looking good. This is your favourite place, isn't it? It's very eccentric, it's a bit of a one-off.
00:10Yeah. I love it and, you know, we're an old country and you come to a place like
00:16this that's been here for a long, long time and you get a sense that history,
00:21where you come from, it's actually quite important. And legacy too. Well legacy is
00:27important, although I worry right now that the legacy we're going to lead to the
00:30next generations is going to be a bad one, which is why on the 3rd of June last
00:35year I came out of political retirement. I'd done my bit. I'd been a crusader for
00:40over a quarter of a century for us to leave the European Union because I
00:43wanted us to get back our sovereignty, our ability to run our own lives. And then
00:47I saw what a mess the establishment had made of it. And we're going downhill.
00:53We're in economic decline, you know, people are getting poorer. Oh, the super
00:58rich might be getting richer, but the average folk are getting poorer. We're in
01:03societal decline. You know, shoplifting now, you can shoplift now up to 200
01:08pounds, that's about 400 Aussie dollars, without being prosecuted. And no one
01:12comes after you. I've heard stories of people coming in, stuffing things in their bag.
01:15Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. Just accepted. Knife crime off the charts. You know,
01:22a teenager being stabbed and killed now doesn't really make the news. So the
01:27government changed here six months ago. It feels like it's now on the brink of
01:31collapse. What's gone wrong? So the last election was an anti-Tory vote. Yeah. You
01:36know, Boris had a massive 86 majority back in 2019, which by the way I helped
01:41him with. Absolutely. You know, I helped him with because I thought we've got to
01:45get this Brexit thing finalised after years of agony. Whilst I knew he was
01:51pretty liberal, I just couldn't have believed the level of betrayal on mass
01:56immigration, on some net zero policies that are literally de-industrialising
02:01Britain. Which then got infected all the way through to Australia because of the
02:04Glasgow conference and Scott Morrison signing up. Oh, the cop. We won't
02:09digress there. The cop event was quite remarkable in the way that you and
02:14Canada and many, many others followed. But it's a Labour one. But they got a
02:21third of the vote and two thirds of the seats. And the first past the post system
02:27is a very odd thing in terms of the way in which it can work. But it was a
02:31loveless win. Starmer, you know what, if he was sitting with us now, perfectly
02:37nice chap, nothing wrong with him. But he's a human rights lawyer. He's a
02:41globalist. He's an internationalist. He doesn't really believe in national
02:44sovereignty, doesn't really believe in borders or anything like that. And within
02:50six months, or seven now, their popularity has fallen at a rate the
02:56likes of which we've never ever seen. I thought the honeymoon might be short, but
03:01it appears it wasn't. I don't think the marriage was even consummated. I mean, it's
03:05just gone wrong from day one. And the negativity. Now you've got Rachel Reeves,
03:11the Chancellor, who looks like she's attending a family funeral every day. Not
03:16one of the 25 members of the cabinet has ever worked in private business. Can you
03:20believe that? Literally, can you believe that out of 25 men and women, not one of
03:24them. And they are literally talking us into recession. The economy is going
03:30down. The budget they introduced is a catastrophe. And everything from business
03:35to care homes to doctor's surgeries will, from the 1st of April, be laying people
03:41off. And then we've had the development of something called two-tier Britain.
03:46Two-tier policing, two-tier justice, two-tier care. Now it is true that people
03:53like me and Elon Musk have been pushing this narrative, but it's very interesting.
03:57So two young Muslim men assault, violently assault two police officers in Manchester
04:04airport. I mean, you know, broke one of the, one of them was a woman, her nose was
04:09broken. It was horrible. And don't get prosecuted. Nothing happens. And then we
04:14get the murder of those three little girls. Yes. An event that has, I mean,
04:18really shocked the nation. Went around the world. Horrific. And anybody that said
04:24something online in the wake of that. And by the way, some of it was very intolerant
04:29and very unpleasant, but it's kind of words, not actions. And they were in prison
04:34before you knew it. So you see this development of a perception, maybe a
04:38reality of two-tier justice and a feeling that somehow some groups in British
04:43society are being treated differently to other groups. And that has led to anger on
04:49the most astonishing scale. So this government is economically inept, culturally
04:56completely out of touch with the roots of society. And by the way, we are a very
05:02tolerant country. We always were a very tolerant country. And we accept people,
05:06whatever their color, religion, sexual preference, whatever it may be.
05:10But not to the point that you lose your way and you lose your values.
05:12Not to the point where those ideas that are separate to our identity start to take
05:18us over. So this is an interesting point then, because you're in a situation now,
05:23six months into a change of government, where that government's on the nose. But I
05:28suspect, and I've had conversations with cabbies today, the residual anger at the
05:33old government's still there. And here you are coming up through the middle. Now,
05:38political parties lose members. They don't gain members. You are gaining them at a
05:43rate of not. I mean, you are not the third force now. I think you're supplanting the
05:49Tories as the opposition.
05:50When I came back to the leadership, and by the way, you know, I'd walked away. I'd
05:54left. I was the Brexit party. I'd rebranded it reform. It was kept on care and
06:00maintenance. When I came back on June the 3rd, we had about 30,000 members. Today,
06:05we've gone through 210,000 paid up members. And they're all paying £25 to be
06:10members. And we're growing 1,000 a day, 500 another day. There's a real energy, a
06:15real enthusiasm. Why? Well, part of it is a failure of the Labour government to give
06:23us any sense of hope or optimism. Another part of it is the Conservative Party just
06:27isn't fit for purpose. It has no message that resonates at all. And frankly, half
06:33the Tory party should be with me. The other half should be with the, you know,
06:36Liberal left, Liberal Democrats.
06:38Same thing in Australia. You mentioned First Past the Post. You're First Past the Post
06:43system here. History sort of says that a divided right can't win against a united
06:50left. What do you think about that?
06:51So let me just finish the last point very quickly, if I can. Why are we doing so? Well,
06:55vibe. Vibe. Positivity. Our members, our supporters, you come to an event that I do,
07:04they're nearly all sold out within 24 hours. Book a thousand seaters, gone. In some ways,
07:10we're the most pessimistic people in the country because we fear that within a decade, all
07:14of our values would have been trashed and trounced. But on the other, we're the most
07:20optimistic group of people because we believe with the right leadership, we can turn this
07:23country around. So it's very, very interesting. The vibe is positive. We're talking about
07:27what we can do, not what we can't do.
07:31Now, First Past the Post, you are looking at somebody who won two national elections
07:36in 2014 and 2019, under proportional representation, won two European national parliamentary elections.
07:43But in general elections, I've not made the breakthroughs that were commensurate with
07:48the votes we got. For every reform MP right now, there are 820,000 votes. For every Labour
07:56MP, there are 34,000 votes. I mean, the numbers are stark. However, First Past the Post can
08:03be your enemy, but there comes an inversion point at which it becomes your friend.
08:09Are you there now?
08:12On the numbers, looking at not just one poll, but dozens of polls over the last few weeks,
08:21we are literally, literally at that inflection point.
08:25So serious people I've spoken to here that I know and trust inside politics say you genuinely
08:30could be the next Prime Minister. So if you were in Downing Street, how is Britain better
08:39and stronger in a Farage government than it is now?
08:43Well, the first thing is we'd have people in government who actually have done stuff
08:46in life. And you have to recognise that without wealth creation, you have nothing. It's all
08:52well and good having a wonderful health system or whatever else it may be. You have to pay
08:57for it. And without wealth creation, none of that can happen. So the first point is
09:01to have people who have more competence, more understanding of what wealth creation is actually
09:06about. The second point is to be more honest and to level with people about just how much
09:11trouble we're in. But no one talks about the national debt. I mean, our debt interest repayments
09:18are now 100 billion pounds a year. That's 200 billion Aussie dollars a year. Our defence
09:24budgets, only 50 billion a year, just to give you some sense of context of how much poorer,
09:29how much more indebted we're becoming. So honest conversations about how badly we're
09:33doing, honest conversations about the welfare state. You know, another million people since
09:41the start of the pandemic are on disability benefit because they've had a 10 minute Zoom
09:46consultation with a doctor saying, Doc, I'm feeling a bit down and depressed. Oh, well,
09:50that's fine. Go on disability benefits and stay there for the rest of your life. We can't
09:54go on like this. No. But everyone's been too cowardly to take these things on for fear
09:59of the onslaught they'll get on X, Twitter, whatever you want to call it these days. And
10:05you think that's changing? I do. The ability to have these honest conversations is changing.
10:10Absolutely. And a lot of this is coming from America. You know, a friend of mine just won
10:13an election in America. Might have heard of him. He's doing quite well. And the DEI agenda
10:20and all this madness. It's washed across Australia in the same way as well. He's got our corporates
10:27who are locked into this stuff to take it out of their boardroom papers in a way that
10:32if we'd been knocking on the door in government, they would never have done it. So on that
10:35point, have we reached peak woke? Oh, I think so. Yes. I mean, there's clearly further to
10:42go. Our health service is still full of it. Our financial services industry is still full
10:46of it. But the change is coming. And generally what happens in America happens here. We generally
10:52follow all the social trends from America. They gave us woke. We gave him Prince Harry
10:57back at least trying to get even. But no, it's coming. There is a massive change coming
11:04in the corporate world which will feed through to the public sector. But the other issue
11:08that we've got to get right is immigration. And of course, all through my career, you
11:15talk about this. You're called nasty names. So everybody backs away and runs away. The
11:19numbers are extraordinary. I mean, from the 1940s until the turn of the century, net migration
11:26into Britain averaged about 30,000 a year. Net migration in 2023 is a million. Just get
11:34some sense of perspective of what the last conservative government did. We can blame
11:39Labor for opening the doors. But actually, it's the conservative government that opened
11:44the doors in a way that's astonishing. I know that. And do you know who they are? This is
11:48the thing too. Oh, we know who they are. With all the security challenges, these people
11:52are coming in in a peaceful invasion. Well, you, of course, I mean, slightly separate
11:57but linked. You, of course, had the problem going back 15 years of the boats coming from
12:01Indonesia. Some of them, Mr. Abbott, I think, helped to turn around rather successfully.
12:06I mean, since Keir Starmer came to power, 25,000 young men have crossed the English
12:12Channel. 25,000 men, mostly from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, or Iran, all undocumented. All
12:24of whom throw their iPhones in the sea when they get to 12 miles from our shores, chuck
12:29their passports in the sea. I've actually been out and filmed this. But this is an issue
12:33about values too. So there's a huge security threat. There's a numerical problem with schooling,
12:40housing, et cetera. There's a community cohesion problem. But perhaps above all, there's a
12:46national security problem. And it's real. And we are beginning to see, in Europe particularly,
12:56more and more of these young men committing crimes of the most heinous, most astonishing
13:02nature. You've seen motor cars. I mean, what's the point of banning knives if people drive
13:07cars into crowds? So I want to ask you, because this will be a feature of our campaign, which
13:12is about to start in Australia, when the Prime Minister calls it, that we have never had
13:16before, parties that identify as Muslim only, that are trying to harvest Muslim votes, to
13:24not, at this stage, run candidates, but to influence, particularly the Labor left. So
13:29they run very heavily on Gaza issues. Now, it's been a feature here for some time. No,
13:36it's quite recent actually. Is it here? Mm, it's quite recent. From the councils, it's
13:39now, though, in the Commons. How do you tackle it here? Sectarian voting. I've grown up seeing
13:46Northern Ireland with sectarian politics. And everyone forgets how awful Northern Ireland
13:53was in the 70s, 80s, and through the 90s. You know, three and a half thousand people
13:56killed, thousands more maimed, wounded. This was sectarianism, between Catholic and Protestant,
14:04in Northern Ireland. I never thought I'd see sectarian policies on the mainland. I never
14:10thought we'd see it in England, Scotland, and Wales, and now we are. And yes, they call
14:14themselves the Gaza Independents. But I've heard them in the House of Commons, because
14:18there were four of them got elected on that ticket, and a fifth, Jeremy Corbyn, the former
14:22Labour leader, who's kind of on that ticket as well. And I listen to them in debates.
14:28There are apologies for blasphemy laws. There are apologies for first cousin marriages.
14:34You can see where this is going. And it's very interesting, but the left in British
14:42politics is becoming more divided than any commentators realise. There are two factors.
14:49One is the pro-Gaza Independents. And if you look at the demography, the sheer number
14:54of young Muslim teenagers living in northern cities and towns, who will be eligible to
15:01vote at the time of the next general election. Gaza Independents next time won't win four
15:05seats, they'll win 30, maybe 40, all coming straight from the Labour Party. Labour will
15:13rue the day. They welcomed all of this stuff and encouraged all this stuff. And the other
15:18element is the Green vote. And the Green vote now is a solid 7% to 8% in this country.
15:25It's not going anywhere, because there are people out there who, through the indoctrination
15:30of the university system in particular, think we're all going to be dead by next Thursday,
15:33and we should all never fly again, never own motor cars. I mean, sad, miserable life.
15:38It is, it is.
15:39I mean, God, we can't even approve of a drink this long. I mean, they're not going anywhere
15:44either. And they're getting cleverer at targeting their resources at winnable seats. So everyone
15:51talks about the split on the right.
15:52Yes, so you're going back to my point before about 2pp, yeah?
15:55Yeah, no, no, coming back to it. I'm sorry.
15:57No, no, you're right, you're right.
15:58But the left is split, and that split's getting worse.
16:01So I shouldn't assume that the left is united.
16:04And to say the right is split is to misunderstand something quite fundamental. A lot of my supporters
16:10and voters actually come from traditional, old labour, patriotic backgrounds. They may
16:15have had different attitudes towards taxation, to me, in the 80s and 90s. But on the big
16:21stuff about British identity, about believing in who we are, about hard work, about apprenticeships,
16:29about the importance of family, community, and country, we're absolutely at one.
16:35And to many, many, many of the people, given we're now polling 27%, if I was to say tomorrow,
16:42I'm going to do a deal with the old Etonians in the Conservative Party, I mean, they'd
16:48be appalled by it. So what's happening here, a little bit like the way that Trump has totally
16:55redefined what left and right means in American politics.
17:00The Brexit vote did that in 2016, and now it's taken a few years for the aftershocks
17:06of that earthquake to reveal themselves politically. And that's the support base that I've got.
17:13So we shouldn't think of reform as a new manifestation on the right. We should think of it as a new
17:20manifestation.
17:21It's a new phenomenon. It's a new phenomenon that brings together a coalition of people
17:26who in the past may have been separated. And the day that I came out of this, came
17:33back to this rather, 3rd of June, I'm sitting in the car coming up from the country to London
17:40to do a press conference, which nobody expected to say I'm coming back. I thought in the car,
17:47why am I doing this? Why am I giving up a good life? Why am I giving up the chance to
17:55pop back and forth to America? And I turned 60 last year and two grandkids born last year.
18:00So kind of that point in life where you might start thinking about maybe.
18:05And I've worked in politics. A lot of people don't know the drudgery that's involved. So
18:10it's a big call to come back.
18:11Well, it's not drudgery so much, but it's never drudgery with me, I can assure you,
18:15because it's always fun. But no, massive life commitment and probably the last big decision
18:20professionally I'll ever make in my life. I'm sitting in the car thinking, why am I
18:25doing this? And that was where it came to me. I'm doing it because I care about the
18:29future of my family and I'm worried about the decline we're in. I'm doing it because
18:34I believe in community. I grew up in a village where everyone knew everyone. Didn't mean
18:39they all loved each other, but we all had a common shared goals, interests and culture.
18:43And I'm doing it because this is a country that has been a great country, a world leader.
18:50And that's why I stood up on that stage on that day and I said, I'm here for family,
18:55community and country. And you will now see on every reform conference, those three words
19:00up on the screen. And that's what brings people in the past who were on the left or on the
19:05right together. These things matter far more than what we think about individual micro
19:10issues or monetary policy or whatever else it may be. These are fundamental core issues
19:16about who we are as human beings. And I hope that what I do is to impart to people a feeling
19:24that I'm unafraid of whatever criticism I may get for standing up and fighting for these
19:29things. I hope what I impart to these people is a feeling that actually this is the once
19:34in a hundred year opportunity. This is the first time since 1918 when the Labour Party
19:39began to get rid of the old Liberal Party in this country as it was. This is the first
19:44time for a hundred years we can actually genuinely change politics. And we're not going to make
19:48any false promises to anybody about what we can do. We can turn this country around. I'm
19:55old enough to remember the mid-70s. We had to go to the IMF to get a loan because we
19:59were bankrupt. But by the end of the 1980s, London was booming.
20:03Yeah, full Britannia.
20:05It was amazing. And we had Japanese car firms investing in the northeast of England, American
20:10banks piling in here, all the Australian banks opening up bigger and bigger offices here.
20:15So I've seen in the past how when things are very, very bad, they can be turned around.
20:20And it's my intention between now and when I die to do that again.
20:24Well, you're resonating with Australians. A lot of what you said would resonate in terms
20:28of our politics as much as your personality does. So we wish you all the best Nigel for
20:32us.