Coffee House Shots
Is Nigel Farage drawing from the Trump playbook?
You can get three months of the spectator if you subscribe before the election for just £3 plus a free election mug. Just go to spectator.co.uk/mug. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Hill and I'm joined today by Katie Pauls and Fraser Nelson. And this morning, for us, he's given his first big speech since the whole weekend row about what was happening. He said an interview about Vladimir Putin and his comments on Russia and Ukraine. In that speech, in May's turn, he was talking and he suggested that actually it was the establishment's foreign policy and defence policy that was discredited. Do you think there's perhaps a chance, Fraser, that he's actually going to lean into this role and doubling down because it's a way of discrediting the wider establishment? Nigel Farage needs to have something to say that makes a difference. So he will enlighten any debating point he can. That means that we will lead this podcast talking about him. He was on the front pages of all Sunday newspapers by saying something that nobody else will say, that the West provoked this war. Now, what he said, of course, was to my mind, repugnant. But this is the Donald Trump trick straight out of Trump's play bag. You say something that's going to get everybody denouncing you and in doing so, they're talking about you. So it's like a kind of political jiddoo here. You're using the weight of everybody else against them. So they end up putting your picture, your arguments debating whether you are right or wrong. Now, on this particular thing, it doesn't really matter if his point resonates. It resonates a lot more in America than it might hear. The idea that basically the Putin might have a point, you've a Tucker Carlson argument. And that argument is certainly has got some traction in some of the far right in Europe when Zelensky was at the German Parliament a couple of weeks ago. I noticed that the AFD didn't turn up in order the far left. So we can see on both the far left and the far right. I think George Galloway, for example, is right behind Nigel Farage on this. Again, if you're a populist, the main tool in a populist's verbal playbook is to draw a dividing line between yourself representing the people and everybody else resenting the corrupt establishment. So they're encouraging you to see the world through this lens. You say you say that I, the populist leader, I'm the only real genuine representative of the people. They are all just a cabal run by Davos, etc. There was not that many areas you can try to do this vaccination, perhaps, I don't know, basic free market economics can be seen as a Davos cabal. But the idea of seeing Putin's invasion of Ukraine as something which the West brought on itself works for Farage because it gets people talking about a subject of his choice. And you'll probably find 10 to 15% of the population broadly speaking agreeing with him. I mean, that's to how much it works because you have a situation whereby the Tories are pretty delighted that he's made these comments. Now, I agree with Fraser, it will speak to a portion of the population. I think the question is the Tory hope and to be further looking for any reason for hope at the moment is effectively that you will have some figures who are always going to vote reform, some who will perhaps be skeptical of the UK line on Ukraine. But there are a bulk of former Tory voters who at the moment undecided in thinking about voting reform. And they think anecdotally when Tory candidates around the doorstep mentioning what Farage has said about Putin, and yes, Farage would say, I'm not a Putin apologist and so forth, but they're saying that is a good way to kind of make people waver about actually making the transition to reform. So it is, of course, getting everyone talking. But I think when you are a downbeat CCHQ, trying to work out what you can do to try and get this reform vote back, they feel as, you know, it's actually harder than getting the Labour vote down because lots of these reform voters or would be reform voters are just furious with the Tory party. They're really angry with the Tory government and they don't really relate to Rishi Sunak as a politician. And they're trying to find a way to say, please just hold your nose and vote for us again. It's pretty difficult at the moment. I think for some in that group, perhaps, you know, patriotic Brits who hear about, you know, he and I for ours has worked and take from it something which is not not along those lines. And as much more, again, he would deny this but can be accused as being sympathetic with Putin or more a line of Russia than perhaps our natural allies traditionally is, you know, a sore from which they might be able to get something. It's certainly true that for Asian till now has all of his positions have basically been conservative positions. He might be coming up with implausible deadlines or targets saying he wants net zero immigration, for example. But here is an aspect where he does break significantly, not just from what the Conservatives think, but from pretty much every established party from the Scottish Nationalists right through to everyone in the House of Parliament. So I suppose the Tories would be able to say, look, behold, this guy isn't the patriot he's standing up to be. He's one of these guys who admire the Thoritarians. He wants to frame the Ukraine calamity as something which is Britain getting its just desserts and the same way that you might imagine Jeremy Corbyn doing the same kind of thing. When I saw this, when I saw that he'd done this, I thought it reminded me of when he was saying that Sinek wasn't wasn't one of us. When he turned in good with Normandy beaches and Farage came up with this quite a to my mind again disgusting attack saying he doesn't share our values, he doesn't share our history. And there was lots of ways you could have said that without the racial overtones, but you know he chose to make that kind of dog whistle point. Now I think that was a moment where I think he was reminding people this is not your average politician. Ultimately I don't think that works in the British tradition. I think again he's copying too many of Trump's playbooks, but he certainly made you look. And one of Farage's weaker comments today was he said eight years after the Brexit referendum, the new Tory campaign was going to be to leave the gambling commission and sort of weak joker sort of at the Tory expense. Katie, where are we currently involving the allegations around betting and the conservative leadership? But it's dragging on. You had on Sunday the fourth Tory figure to be officially investigated that we know of by the gambling commission. And this is the head of data for CCHQ. So we no longer you know the head of campaign and gone on a leave. I think that data is also now on a leave of absence. And then also you have two Tory candidates, one who served as a prime minister's PPS, one who was married to the head of campaign in CCHQ. And therefore I think it is becoming an open source for the Tory party. And if you think about all the problems they've had so far, you know, we're going into the last full week of campaigning. And the weekend, you know, politics shows, the weekend papers and today in the morning round for the Tories is being dominated by why hasn't Richard seen it taking a stronger stance on these in terms of, couldn't he just ask these people as candidates will sack them on the spot? Now line Chris Heated Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary is pushing is innocent or proven guilty and you need to let the commission do their work. But speaking to Tory candidates, I think their concern is a very easy story to understand. And they think is being cut through and also it plays into the idea that Richard Siena is weak and not in control of his party. And if you think back to that sky election special, one of the questions, you know, just speaking to figures, not really in politics, he had seen that saying, you know, the best question was when Befrigby asked Richard Siena, look, how do we know if you're elected, your party are going to keep you? As prime minister, you know, look at all the chaos the Tories have got up to in the past, you know, a couple of years. And therefore, I think the risk on the scamming story is yes, Tory sleeves, etc, etc. But also does it just look like Richard Siena, because once again, not in control of his party, even though I think it is arguable that it's hard to, you know, sack someone as a Tory candidate when the gambling commission have not, you know, decided to do them again, we don't have the statements on what they're saying. But it's a bit opaque from where we're sitting to know exactly what's happened. Now, you can think the worst of people, but that doesn't tend to have to be our justice system works. So I think that is becoming an issue. And it just makes the job for the Tories harder as we are now, you know, under two weeks until polling day. What do the Tories need to do? I think any hope of substantially narrowing the gap has gone really. But they see as kind of a two-prong task, which is first to kind of reduce the Labour vote. Now, the Labour vote is falling. Different people can take credit for that. I'm not sure we're going to say that. It's all the fantastic Tory campaign so far, but it is falling. And I think they think the tax attacks are a part of that. And then the trickier thing, which goes back to what we were talking at the beginning of the podcast, is what to do about the reform vote. And that is trying to land the message of, yes, we know you're really angry with us. Yes, we've let you down. But please, just one more time, give us your vote because I'll turn to the Labour supermajority. And that's going to bring up lots of stuff you don't like even more. But I think that's seen as the more the trickier argument. And then I think really just looking ahead, I mean, Wednesday, we'll have the head-to-head, the final head-to-head. There's only been two of this election campaign so far. And that's probably we're thinking about last big moments, which in the diary are the ones that take us by surprise. The last one, which has a chance to meet the diary. Fraser, I mean, Katie wrote in her election insider email that candidates are hearing this come up on the doorstep. Minister is saying it's something they're hearing from voters. I mean, how damaging is this whole route for the Conservative Party? Oh, it's incredibly damaging. I mean, when the MPs' expenses scandal came along, what caught the headlines wasn't necessarily the biggest financial amount of transfer. It was like the person who put a porn film on expenses or a duck house on expenses. These little things, which make you visually imagine that Suneck is surrounded by a whole bunch of people who are thinking of lining their own pocket rather than serving the country. And I'm afraid to save this tactic of his, let's wait till the commission reports. It might work in other investigations. It doesn't work in here. Trevor Phillips, I think, but brilliantly on his show in Skye, where he basically asked James Cleverly, look, Rishi Suneck could get them all into his room and said, "How many of you put a bit on the election date? If you did, you're fired. You could do it in 10 minutes. You don't have to wait for a commission." By the way, that's not to say they're necessarily a brookful law in doing so, but they certainly behaved dishonorably. And so in trying to hide behind an investigation, he does risk looking indecisive. Now, I kind of feel sorry for him in one regard. Nobody would have thought they'd get busted doing this. In politics, people are always putting bets. Nobody has really got caught until now. And even now, it was a question as to how a private bet can be leaked. There's a theory that the gambling commissions got people used to work for the Labour Party inside it. They're releasing the names. So this is a scandal that you haven't quite seen before, and they're not quite sure how to respond to. But as the Tory sort of dither, then the public is getting the message that the message is of disarray and basically collapse. The Conservative Party HQ is in decay. It was never fit to fight this general election, and we're seeing almost every day fresh examples of this point. Thank you, Fraser. Thank you, Katie. And thank you for listening to Coffee House shots. [Music]