My interview with Nigel Farage

Race, Islam and the limits of ambiguity

 

   We met in the aftermath of Hamilton by-election, where Reform had accused Anas Sarwar, Scottish Labour Leader, of saying he’d put Scottish Pakistanis first. I write elsewhere about how it was a case study in malicious misrepresentation, but when the new Reform MP asked about a burqa ban in parliament, Zia Yusuf, the (Muslim) party chairman, received so much racist abuse that he resigned. He has returned, although not as chairman. Farage saw this as a reflection not of his party’s politics but of Elon Musk’s digital sewer. 

   “If he made a big mistake on that day, it was to misread the torrent of abuse, which by the way only comes on one platform,” says Farage. “It's not coming on Facebook, it's not coming on Instagram, it’s not coming on TikTok, it’s all coming on X [née Twitter]. When you actually drill down and look at who was making the horrible comments - nearly all anonymous - I'll bet you all the tea in China that nearly all of them are overseas.”

   He may deplore the abuse hurled at Yusuf, but after that Hamilton advert, after playing the burqa card in parliament, can he really be surprised? And isn't this people’s concern: that they see Reform UK dabbling in this kind of politics, and conclude that, while not racist, they may be a bit divisive? This was a point raised by the focus group, but Farage responded as if the accusation came from me.

   “People like you, frankly, all your journalistic career, have thought there's no problem with this… [to] allow countless millions in [and thought] it's all going to be lovely. For the majority of the population, it is not lovely. It has lowered living standards, made the country poorer, and divided communities. Everyone knows that, including a very large chunk of ethnic minorities living in Britain. This is about numbers. And it is about scale.”

   Ethnic minority voters are certainly backing Reform in growing numbers, as they backed Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. The multi-racial working-class coalition that took Trump to power saw in him a defender of the national model they (or their parents) had signed up for: a point that is missed by those who see anti-establishment parties as fundamentally racist. The word blinds, rather than reveals. But it’s the tone that has put off some wavering voters. Can’t he get his message across in a less abrasive manner? He can be radical on immigration, surely, without taking a caustic tone on Muslims?

   “I've never done that,” he snaps back. It's hard to think of when he has mentioned Islam that was not in the context of there being some social problem. “That may be your view in Westminster, and you're a very narrow little sect here that controls the media, but you're not seeing it the way the country is seeing it. And I defy you to find language that I've used that could be shaped, in any way, in that direction.” He’s right, no such record exists (I once wasted a good chunk of my time looking for it), which is why it puzzles me that he allows the ambiguity.

   He then says something that intrigues me. “And by the way, if I'm not making these arguments rationally - in a non-racial way - you wait till what comes after me.” After him? “If I wasn't here, you probably would have an extreme right in this country. No one did more to deal with the BNP, twenty years ago, than me. No one. Not the left-wing hate mobs, not those that want to ban people. I've always fought very hard on these areas.”
   Patrolling the line between radical and racist, between frank debate and racism, has been a full-time job for Farage. And one he has discharged well, drawing the line with Tommy Robinson, setting up strict candidate vetting. Anyone found to have crossed the line on social media is booted out of Farage’s party. This, he says, speaks for itself. “Look at how I operate, who I work with, who rises to the top and takes positions in the party. You'll see we're a very meritocratic organisation.” It is certainly possible to go down a darker road, he says. “One of the members of parliament, elected last year on our ticket, has gone down that route. In quite a big way. Well - guess what? - he's not here.”

   Polls show that one of the biggest indicators for support of right-populist parties in Europe is the sentiment “Islam is a threat to my country’s way of life.” In the UK, some 45 per cent agree with this. Perhaps that’s what Farage is getting at: if he weren't discussing burqa bans, etc, then genuinely racist parties would be. (They’re banned in ten Muslim countries, he says: it’s not anti-Islamic). And that while he may be reviled by the globalist elite (like, he doesn’t mind suggesting, the likes of me), Reform UK defeated the BNP back then and is the dam holding back the sewage now.

   It’s certainly fair to say that Farage has critics on the Tommy Robinson-sympathising, newly vocal nativist right - all of whom seem to prefer Rupert Lowe to him. Some even prefer Robert Jenrick to him. If Jenrick becomes Tory leader and follows the siren voices of the digital right, it’s possible to see a general election campaign where Farage positions himself as the more acceptable face of the right. But for now, the ambiguity, the flirtation, not the act, is a kind of vice-signalling: a wink, rather than a dog whistle. It’s a fine line. But treading it, he seems to think, is a net positive.

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Can Reform’s sums ever add up?

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   The first concern of the focus group was whether Reform could be trusted on its promises: to reindustrialise South Wales, raise the tax-free allowance to £20,000 a year, revoke the two-child benefit limit, and far more. The consensus has been estimated at up to £80 billion, with no published plans for accompanying cost savings. His opponents now say a Reform UK government would be Liz Truss on steroids.

   “It's funny,” he says. Cutting taxes is designed to get people off benefits. “What no one looks at is what it might save if it gets people off benefits.” Take stamp duty on housing, he continues. “The property market is now just literally ground to a standstill, which means government income on stamp duty is negligible. I think there's a strong argument that says reduce stamp duty, actually get a bigger turnover, more tax revenue.” His point: you need a dynamic model. To look at the proceeds of growth, not the cost of the tax cuts.

   But where’s his alternative model? Without one, isn’t it the case that his numbers don’t add up? “Rachel Reeves' figures don't add up,” he said. But if he’s attacking them for failed promises, shouldn’t he be holding Reform up to a higher standard? “I think giving us a little bit more time to get this right is pretty reasonable,” he says: the next election will be four years away. But he is accepting the challenge. “If I'm an undecided voter, this will be one of the issues that decides whether I vote Reform or not. I understand that and I respect that.”​

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​When a Pledge Isn’t a Pledge

 

   But what about the non-financial pledges? Earlier this month, Zia Yusuf was on BBC Radio 4 with another dramatic pledge: “I want to be crystal clear about what my position is, and Reform UK’s position is,” he announced. We will deport everybody who is here in this country illegally, which is roughly about 1.2 million people.” No country has ever managed to find and deport all of its illegal migrants: in the past, Farage has accepted that this is unattainable. Has he changed his mind?

   “Well, there's a hundred thousand in hotels that shouldn't be in the country at all. As you go back further in time, this issue gets harder. Of course it does. Donald Trump is finding that in Los Angeles. We have to aim high.” Is that what Yusuf is doing - aiming high? Is this an aspiration or a pledge? “In politics, there's a difference between aspiration and pledges,” he says. “Deporting all illegal immigrants is an aspiration”. Not quite what Yusuf has been saying: his ‘crystal clear’ pledge is now a far less clear (and, as I suspect Farage knows, an undeliverable) aspiration. Is that what Reform does: pass off aspirations as pledges?

   “All of politics is an aspiration,” he says. “Really. Think about it.” No, promises are promises. “Well, we're going to be careful about that. We're going to be careful because too many fixed promises have been made that haven't been delivered. We're going to tell people this is what we intend to do, and we will do our damnedest to get there. So you know: when you vote for us, and when we say it, we actually mean it.”

​​   There’s another aspect to his TV stats: financial. His parliamentary register of interests suggests he’s paid £300,000 by GB News, whose losses (some £40 million so far) are largely covered by Sir Paul Marshall and the Dubai-based Legatum Institute. Would it be fair to say this makes them his two biggest personal backers?

   He turns it straight back on me. “Who's funded your career?” Readers, I say: in my career as a political journalist, I’ve never worked for a loss-making publication. “You have an influence over national political debate. You work for publications owned by rich people. Look, that's the way the world is. That’s the way that the world works.”

   Except that it doesn’t. Nowhere in the world - the democratic world, at any rate - does the leader of a political party present his own TV show. The very idea would be precluded by principles of journalistic impartiality: you can have ex-politicians (Brian Walden, Michael Portillo) as pundits, but should serving politicians moonlight as journalists and use their platform to push the party line? At a vast expense to their sponsors? If so, then it should count as a payment-in-kind to a political party, far above the value of any declared salary.

   He disagrees. “I have a platform on GB News. I have many other interests, many other things that I do. I came back into this a year ago: I have a company that employs people, and we do a variety of functions. I can't see what's wrong with that.”

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Nigel’s People Problem

 

   I put to him another concern of the Solihull focus group: that he can’t hold down a team. Zia Yusuf’s resignation as chairman was fresh in their minds, reminiscent of the departure of energetic Rupert Lowe MP. And that, back in the day, of Robert Kilroy Silk (who quit Ukip to set up his own party). Part of this is the risk of running a team of rebels: they like to keep rebelling. As Prime Minister, he’d need to manage such people and keep them holding a line. Is it fair to say he struggles?

   “That is absolutely baloney,” he says. “You're in an office here with many people who have been with me for over 10 years.” But he’s talking about office staff: government is about a public-facing team. “My most senior people have been with me for over ten years... People I employed 30 years ago in the city are still close personal friends. It's very simple, you get fallouts in politics because people come along and think they're better than they are.” But isn’t that the point? Politics attracts mercurial people, and he may struggle to keep them together.

   “In terms of teams and running things, unlike virtually the whole of the Labour frontbench and Tory frontbench, I've done stuff. I've set companies up. I've borrowed money. I have taken a risk. I've employed people. I've paid tax. I've seen the ups and downs. I've been creative, I've spent my whole life in private business, most of it running my own companies. I've got more life experience, more idea of what's going on in the real world than they will ever have.”

   This City Slicker persona is rather different to the story Farage used to tell about himself (“I used to work very hard,” I once heard him say, “Right up until lunchtime.”) But the challenge in government is very different. Reform’s local government experience will help, he says - but he’s also getting a secret cadre of Whitehall experts. “Here is the good news,” he says. “People with real experience of this  - who know how it works or more significantly, how it doesn't - will work with us behind the scenes between now and the next election to get us ready for this.” Dominic Cummings, he says, is not one of them. At least, “not directly.”

   Farage may insist that Reform is still forming, still staffing up, still writing its manifesto — and that judgement should be deferred until the councils are tested, the policies finalised, the spats ironed out. But the outlines are already clear. This is no longer just a man with a message, but a political operation with ground troops, broadcast platforms and a growing list of promises (or ‘aspirations’). For years, he was dismissed as being all noise and no programme. Now he has both — and must prove the two are compatible.

   He talks of readiness, recruiting technocrats and building a local government test-bed. He claims to be assembling a secret cadre of Whitehall veterans to help plot the transition. He may still talk like a revolutionary, but in this phase of his career, Nigel Farage is attempting something far more conventional: to turn protest into policy, insurgency into infrastructure and grievance into governance.

   The risk? That the style which built his movement - those moments of performative shock - may also limit its appeal. He claims that Donald Trump learned from him and not vice versa, but as he knows, the MAGA tactics will only take him so far. To govern in a four-party system, he just needs 30pc of the vote, a lower bar than any modern Prime Minister has had to pass. But to win it at an actual election, he’ll have to earn trust. Voters will have to take him both literally and seriously.

   There’s a risk in reading too much into him personally. Reform’s rise is not primarily about trust in Farage - it’s about exhaustion with everyone else. And while he has made his own luck, he draws his strength from the weakness of his opponents. He is the break-glass-in-case-of emergency option, the last resort.  Whether or not Britain reaches for that depends not on him, but on whether Keir Starmer, or anyone else, gives the country a reason not to.