TRIGGERnometry - The Definitive Conversation on the UK Election with Matt Goodwin

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Matthew Goodwin is a political scientist and author of Values, Voice and Virtue: The New British Politics, among other brilliant books. Matt joins Francis and Konstantin in the Triggernometry studio to discuss the coming UK general election. For exclusive access to Matt's writing, polling, and videos check out his Substack. Click the link for a 25% subscription discount https://www.mattgoodwin.org/TRIGGER Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Constance and Kisson and with very, very few days left to go before the election, we of course bring in our favourite guest to talk about all things polling. Matt Goodman, welcome back to Trigonometry for the 178th time. What a time, what a time. This is great, a week out from the election. Yes, let's get into it. There's so much to talk about. A lot to talk about, not least because one of the things you've been covering,

you've been in Clacton with Farage, looking at reforms performance. Today's polls are suggesting that things may not be as good as some people have been predicting. We'll get to that. The first thing we wanted to talk about is the election itself.

We've got a clip here of Rishi Sunak announcing the election. Let's watch that before we get into all the analysis. In the last five years, our country has fought through the most challenging time since the Second World War.

As I stand here as your Prime Minister, I can't help but reflect that my first proper introduction to you was just over four years again. I stood behind one of the podiums, upstairs in the building behind me. I told you that we faced a generation-defining moment and that we as a society would not be judged by some government action, but by the small acts of kindness that we showed one another.

You met that challenge, and then some, and I have never been prouder to be British. And when I introduced the furlough scheme, I did so not because I saw a country simply in need of desperate help, albeit we were. but because I saw a country whose future hung in the balance. I could be bold and trust in the tens of millions of you at home that you would rise to the moment,

or I could accept the inevitable millions of job losses and pick up the pieces. In truth, it was no choice at all. I have never and will never leave the people of this country to face the darkest of days alone, and you know that because you've seen it. As I did then, I will forever, do everything. So he announced it at this time, you were rolling your eyes a little bit off camera while it was happening.

But let's talk first and foremost. I think the interesting thing to discuss initially is why was the election called now, Matt? Do you think it was an attempt to shoot the reform fox, as people have been saying, prevent reform from doing well, prevent Farage from running at all? Oh, absolutely. I mean, the calculation in number 10, firstly was you can neutralize Farage and reform. They were going to be the biggest threat to those 2019 conservative voters. So you kind of outflank Farage.

Secondly, they just got some reasonable economic news from the IMF, so they were thinking, okay, we can push this narrative, we're over the worst, let's just keep going, don't let Labor ruin it. And they had the Rwanda plan teed up, so it was the big, you know, the carrot for voters. If you vote for us, you get the planes taking off in the summer. But of course, as we now know, a lot of that really backfired. And I think this decision to go early, which, by the way, I predicted on the subset, but this decision will go down in history as one of the, one of the real.

really big political blunders of modern times. Is that really true, Matt? Is it not probably more true to say that the conservatives were screwed either way, and they could have called it earlier, they could have called it later. Ultimately, it was always going to end up like this. I think it was, but I think what's astonishing to me about this campaign is just how flat the conservative vote has stayed. So I mean, I was running the numbers on the polling just before I came in, just kind of exclusively

for your viewers. Here are the numbers right now, okay? on average across all polls, Labor 42%, okay? Conservatives 20%, 22 points behind, reform 15.3%. What that means, a labour majority of more than 300 seats, bigger majority than 97, Conservatives 47 seats, the Lib Dem's on about 12%, they'll be on 60 seats, reformed three seats. But the point here is Rishi Sunak actually has had no no tangible, visible impact on the Conservative Party vote share. It is basically where it was

at the beginning of this campaign. The only thing that's changed is Rishi Sunak has become more unpopular than he was at the beginning of this campaign. And we actually have a clip demonstrating why, Elliot. Let's pull that up. Which one is this? It's the one about D-Day. Good to see you. Very nice to see. Sorry to have kept you. No, not at all. I know. You've been in Norvind. Yeah, it all just ran over. It was incredible, but it just ran over everything. I'm sure it was a... So apologies for keeping you.

No, not at all. I'm sure it's a powerful trip. I mean, so pertinent as well this year, you know, considering what's happened in Ukraine. Yeah, which I haven't seen President Biden's remarks. So you've got Prime Minister apologize. This is like, I mean, the optics of this are not good because for people who don't know,

he's over in France commemorating D-Day on one of the last D-Day's that you can with veterans, and he's coming back and apologising to a journalist because the D-Day stuff overran. So this is what historians are going to run. remember about this election, right? They're going to write this election up in terms of that blunder. Why was the D-Day anniversary mistake so devastating for SUNAC? Well, you might say it reflected poor judgment about the campaign. I've argued it actually reflected something much deeper and more

existential that has run through the SUNAC premiership and actually run through the SUNAC team, which is one of the most important questions that people can ask. Does this guy actually believe in Britain. Does our leader actually believe in Britain? And the reason I say that is because around Sunac from the very beginning, this is a guy that has had no mandate to be Prime Minister. He was appointed. He wasn't elected by conservative members. He wasn't elected by voters. He was appointed. He's part of a global financial elite coming from banking financial services. We know he spent a lot of time in America. We know that he's sort of the optics of Sunac are much more about his association. with international elites than the country.

And so by leaving that ceremony at the anniversary early, what I think it conveyed to lots of voters, 68% of whom, by the way, told pollsters they thought his behavior on that day was unacceptable, what I think it really projected was this deeper suspicion about Sunac and actually much of the political elite. Do they really believe in Britain,

our collective memory, our history, our identity, our ways of life? And for Farage, at that time, that was an enormous gift So what you then saw in the week after D-Day is a conservative vote share on average actually fell further. Reform then started to pick up. They actually peaked at 19% on average in the polls. We'll get back to that later on. But the conservative vote share actually flatlined.

And here's the most remarkable statistic for me of this election. All those people who voted for Boris Johnson in 2019, all those people who gave the conservatives an 80-seat majority, all those people who took a punt on on Brexit and then Boris and they wanted to get Brexit done, they wanted to lower migration. What percentage of those people are now planning to vote conservative at the 2024 general election? Remember, when we had that discussion, we said these are the people driving the realignment,

37% just 37% of them are planning to vote conservative at the 24 election. So the realignment that we talked about ahead of the 2019 election, we predicted it all on this show, has completely blown apart. because Sunak and Co have really come fundamentally unstuck from those voters. Matt, so I'm listening to these stats, and I'm not being facetious here, and this isn't a joke,

I can't believe the Tory party is actually going to be able to win that many seats. If you actually look at what they've achieved of 14 years in government, they've been to put it bluntly, absolutely useless. They have failed to tackle all of the big issues, they've promised everything, completely failed to deliver, let down every single voter. I can't believe anybody would vote for them. Well, some people will.

They're tribal conservatives, but what we're witnessing at this election is the strange death of the Conservative Party in its current form. The Conservative Party will survive, but not in its current form. Why? Because philosophically, ideologically,

electorally, the Conservative Party is lost. It doesn't know what it is anymore. Is it a Southern Party? is it a Northern Party? Is it a party for the elite graduate class or is it a party for everybody? Is it a party for the Brexiteers? Is it a party for Remainers? Is it a party for social liberals? Is it a party for cultural conservatives? These are the questions that the Tory elite class have never really answered since the Brexit referendum, partly because they couldn't really relate to the Brexit referendum. So if you look at, for example, at who's going to be left after this election, let's say the polls are right.

Now, we're either heading into the biggest legal majority since 97, perhaps bigger, or we're heading into the biggest error in the history of the polling industry. It's going to be one of the two. Let's assume the pollsters are right and we are heading into the conservatives on somewhere between 50 and 150 seats, which by any measure would be a complete disaster for the Tories. Who is left? Well, if you look at the analysis of who's left in that situation, it's more Oxbridge-educated, southern, one-nation, moderate, liberal Tories who, who, are even more disconnected from the mood of the country on issues like illegal migration, legal migration, taking on woke ideology, countering radical Islam, all of the stuff that Farage is now talking about. So what I'm saying is this crisis, this identity crisis that's facing the Conservatives,

this is just the start. This is just the beginning, because what's going to happen now after this election is they are going to face a sustained attack, assuming Farage is elected and in Parliament. they are going to face a prolonged ideological civil war over the battle, sorry, over the nature, over the soul of conservatism. That is what is about to start with this election. Labor will win. We all know Labor will win. But what is also going to now commence

is this enormous conservative civil war over what is conservatism in modern day Britain. I find it very interesting the points that you're making because if we rewind back to 2019, we were making pretty much the exact same points about the Labour. party and saying it's impossible for them to hold this broad coalition of people, which makes me think, is this just a problem for the Conservative Party? Or have we reached the end of the

line for the two-party system? Well, Labour has certainly done a great job at sort of putting back together a coalition. But by the way, I do think Labour is still very vulnerable. I mean, the countercultural take on Labour is, you know, people are not voting for Labor, okay? They're voting against the Tories. We can all sense that. There is no mass public enthusiasm for Estama, his leadership ratings are actually not that great. He's on plus 10 in the leadership ratings, a net rating of plus 10. Rishi Sunak is coming up to minus 30. And if you want a reference point, Prince Andrew is minus 50. So broadly speaking, you've got a very unpopular conservative leader and you've got a not really very popular labor leader. Everybody is still suspicious

about labor on the economy. Everybody is still suspicious about labor on immigration. And if you ask people, who do you think is best to manage the big issues facing Britain, they're not saying Labor. Typically, they're saying none of them. I don't think anybody can solve the big issues, low growth, mass immigration, the lack of leveling up, productivity, all of that housing crisis. Housing crisis, all of that. Housing crisis is enormous. So Labor don't have the big wave of enthusiasm that Blair had in 97. But secondly, their coalition, and they know this, because I've talked to them about it, is much more structurally unsound than it was during the new labor years because they've got a radical cultural left, radical progressives, who are basically pretty woke on a lot of issues,

very aggressively socially liberal, and then they've got a very large block of votes coming from minority voters, from British Muslims and so forth. Those camps have very different views on these issues, and the professional middle class and the working class also have very different views on these issues. So my prediction is, were we to catch up at Christmas, my prediction is this Labour government that's incoming will quickly become one of the most unpopular governments that we've had in modern times because not only are there all these internal tensions, but when you look at the economy, there's a widespread consensus, labor are going to have very little room for maneuver.

We've got high debt, low growth. They're going to have to raise taxes. They are lying to the British people. They are going to have to raise taxes. I would bet my house on taxes going. up during this incoming parliament. And as we know, by overturning the Rwanda plan, by refusing to give us detail on legal migration,

migration is going to increase, would be my working assumption. The woke ideology is going to be mainstreamed. We've seen that during this campaign around gender and the easing of the gender transition process. And all of these issues are going to be an enormous gift to somebody like Farage who will spend the next next five years, assuming he is elected, attacking the Labour Party in a way that the established Tory elite class are simply going to be unable to attack later.

Not least because, based on your analysis, I think the fascinating thing that has been underappreciated and under commented on is the fact that there is this narrative on the right, certainly. You know, we've got to punish the conservatives for not being right-wing enough, which is totally understandable. But what you're going to end up with is having punished the Conservative Party. so to speak, a much more left-leaning conservative party of fewer MPs. That's what you're basically saying. That's what's going to happen. Yeah, what I'm saying is we now need to have this fight over the soul of conservatism.

We have to have a serious battle over what conservatism is in this country. And it's very clear to a lot of people in the country, the Conservative Party is no longer reflecting the values and the voice of many people, working-class voters, People who haven't gone to university, older voters, cultural conservatives. The Tory elite class has completely lost touch with the country. It's presided over, you know, a string of foreign policy disasters, the liberal internationalists, the Rory Stuarts of the world, they've consistently got things wrong.

They failed to address inequality, both regional and individual inequalities. They've put mass immigration on steroids. They've lost control of the borders. They said we've become a self-governing independent nation, and they refused to leave international courts and treaties that would have allowed us to take control of our borders. They mainstream gender ideology. They allow critical race theory into the schools.

I've charted all of this in detail. And then they wonder why Nigel Farage is back. Well, Farage is back because the conservatives created him. The conservatives have created enormous space for somebody like Farage to come in and say, this is not the brand of conservatism that is now in touch with millions of people. Look at Trump in the US, look at Le Pen in France, look at what's happening in Europe.

It is the Tory elite class that are now falling over themselves to attack Farage, who are out of touch actually with their own voters. And what I'm hearing out of what you're saying, if the polling numbers remain as they are over the course on next week and it translates into the seat numbers and the seat types that we expect, the Tory party is going to be more liberal, not less liberal, less conservative, not more conservative as a result of the cult that's about to happen. So you put that together, and then, you know,

let's play the clip of Nigel Farage, basically coming through, you know, going back a couple of weeks now and saying, I'm not like all these people, which is what you're talking about. Unlike the other six. I don't need an auto-cue. I mean, because I believe in what I believe him.

Our politics isn't working. You've heard these pathetic arguments tonight between the two big parties. Really, there isn't much difference. But electorally, Labor are going to win. The debate is who forms the opposition in the next part? Who fights for the rights of ordinary British people?

Who fights to control our borders? Who fights for men and women running small businesses? Reform UK is about to become a political phenomenon, an historic one. So I urge you, join the revolt. And when this happened, when he had made the announcement, I mean, there was a big wave of enthusiasm. You were one of the people, frankly, leading it, talking about, you know, reform are going to make a big impact. And certainly, in terms of damaging conservatives and, to a lesser extent, labor, you they are going to have that impact.

How do you assess their trajectory from that moment to where we sit today, where in one of your polls, you had the reform on 24%. That was an outlier of a poll compared to other companies, admittedly. Today, the average is 15%. Some polling companies have reform as low as 13. So chart that journey for us. So the first thing to say is,

Farage is probably the best campaigner of British politics today. He's the most authentic campaigner. He is literally on the streets with ordinary voters. None of it is professional. None of it is slick. None of it is focus grouped. And he is, I've known him for 15 years. He's a better campaigner today than he was in the UKIP days and the Brexit referendum days.

When the campaign started, he went on a walk by himself and he made his decision alone that he wanted to give this a go. not because of personal gain or financial interest, but because he was being approached constantly by people who have been with him for 20, 30 years through that UKIP journey, the Brexit journey, the Brexit party journey, and they were saying, look, Nigel, you've got to do something, there is no alternative to the big parties.

And it was a sense of loyalty that led him into the general election campaign. And when he did announce, it quickly became apparent amid a sort of none of the above election where basically everybody was disillusioned with the options, that he still had enormous cut through. So reform then go from an average of 12% to the peak of 19%. Now, a couple of pollsters, one had them on 20, we had them on 24.

What basically happened is Farage realized, and he's always known this, why people were moving to reform. And I've surveyed 3,000 reform voters. Top issue, stop the small boats. Stop the illegal migration invasion. Second issue, lower legal migration. So it's really about migration as the issue. He zoomed in on that big time, went all in, chose Clacton because long history of UKIP voting,

had elected Douglas Carr as well as a UKIP MP, and Farage's team know Clacton back to front. They know it intimately, right? So if he doesn't win in Clacton, like he's got big problems. I mean, if you can't win in Clacton, you can't win anywhere, right, if you're Nigel Farage. What then happened is on Friday, June of 24, First, Nick Robinson then asked him about Ukraine and Farage basically suggested that the West had provoked Russia into that invasion. And he would then receive three or four days of sustained media criticism, much of which was

in the mail, which is typically a Tory line paper and much of which was pushed on by lots of prominent conservative columnists who obviously have an interest in undermining reform and promoting the conservatives. In the aftermath of that, as we're talking today, if you look at all the opinion polls that have been conducted since those comments on Ukraine, the average level of support for reform is actually 13%, not 50. So there has been clearly a drop of some sort. Now, whether that's because of undecided voters moving to Conservative Labor, whether it's because

of voters becoming more uncertain about where Farage stands on these geopolitical issues, we don't know. But what is clear, there is a legitimate question about, if you know, if you're going to be a legitimate question about if your core vote is immigration and that's your your battering ram to take on the big parties, then why feed the Ukraine story, right? Why keep it going? You kind of want to neutralize that, at least get the conversation back to, you know, reform wants to slash overseas aid by 50%. Very popular in the country. They want a patriotic curriculum for kids, so they're not given woke dogma. Very popular in the country. They want an immediate freeze on all non-essential immigration.

very popular in the country. They want to leave the ECHR, very popular among conservatives. So, you know, they've got these policies that have cut through, which begs the question, you know, why keep the story going? Whether Farage now in the final week of the campaign can get back to those court issues, I think will determine whether they end up in the kind of 10 to 13% range, which is what UKIP got in 2015 when they won one seat in Clacton, or whether he can keep it in that 15 to 20%

range, which is going to be hard for him to do in the final days. But look, I mean, even despite all of that, with a new party, small party in the first pass-the-post system, I mean, I would argue he's done pretty well to get this far and to be in a position where the constituency polling suggests he's going to win Clacton. And look, if you're being ruthlessly pragmatic about this, right, as long as he is elected to the House of Commons, that's all that matters. So my working assumption is a seat in Clacton, maybe two or three, a couple of surprises, but certainly a seat in Clacton, five to six, seven million votes nationally, somewhere

between 50 and 120 second places, most of which, by the way, will be in Labour-held seats. That will allow for our John July the 5th to say, okay, this revolt, that was step one. I'm in Parliament. I'm now inviting Conservatives to join our crusade. We're now the main opposition to Labor across the red wall in the northern heartlands. The Tories are finished. He's going to hope and pray they elect a Penny Morden or they elect to Tom Tuganhat or they elect somebody from that kind of liberal one nation wing of the party.

And if they do, then he's got an enormous open goal for the next five years. A likely very unpopular Labor government, a sort of liberal conservative party and he'll have the pitch to himself. That's what he will be hoping. And that's stage two in this revolt. So attack the Tory. at this election and then pivot and attack Labor and try and finish off the Tories after the election. That's reformed strategy.

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Going back to the question, stage one, attack the Conservative Party. Stage two, get into Parliament, then attack Labor. Stage three, possibly go for the leadership of the Conservative Party? I think Farage is genuinely torn on that. I think it depends, firstly, on who becomes leader of the Conservative. So this is unlikely, but let's imagine you have a Suella Braverman type figure who potentially opens up and says, look, okay, it's time to unify the conservative family. Under that situation, you could maybe see it happening. I don't for a second think the Tory parliamentary party would ever allow Suella to become leader, but nonetheless, you could see it possibly happening under that situation. But never forget, look, there is a misconception about Farage. He instinctively is now an anti-Tory politician. Ideologically, he's a conservative. I mean, he came. of age during the 1980s. He, in many respects, is a Thatcherite, he was close to prominent conservatives. But he really dislikes the way the Tories have consistently treated him.

And I think today, partly shaped by his experience in America, I think he genuinely believes that he can outflank the conservatives, that he can take over the whole thing without having to ask for their invitation to enter the party. Now, whether or not he can, we'll have to wait and see. But one of the interesting things when he announced he was running in this election, which very few people picked up on, but I thought it was interesting, having watched him a long time, is he said two things.

He said, firstly, he acknowledged that if he's to build a people's revolt, it has to be broader than him. So he needs other people around him. And the second thing is he said he acknowledges, I mean, he's 60, which is not, It's not old in politics, especially if you look at the US. He's got a lot of time left, but he acknowledged for the first time that he needs to start thinking about handing the baton down to a new generation.

And if you look at his team, his team are all in the 20s, early 30s. If you look at the ecosystem that's emerging in Britain, in British politics, it's countercultural. It's very young. It's very clever. It's very sophisticated. It's aware of what's happening in other countries. And Farage may actually become a useful bridge into something else that isn't really consumed by Brexit, that is more about, you know, the ideological threat to Western states that is about, you know, taking on identity politics, the housing crisis, that is genuinely about giving Gen Z and millennials a sense that they're now in the discussion. If you look at, for example, at France, you know, Badella is 28.

If you look at some of the people in the Republicans around the Trump team, these young people And I think probably that is where it could get quite interesting as if he becomes a springboard Because just to be clear, I mean, I don't think Nigel Farage has the answers to all of the problems facing Britain But I do think Nigel Farage is asking the right questions He's the only one during this campaign who has talked about the threat from radical Islam, which has become obvious to everybody after October 7th, but not Nobody in the mainstream parties has really been willing to talk about that. He's the only one who's really gone outside the Overton window in terms of how to deal with the small boats, how to deal with the illegal migration crisis.

He's the only one who's zoomed in seriously on legal migration. And if you look at the reform manifesto or the contract document, it is the only one saying, basically, it wants to completely strip out diversity, equity and inclusion from public institutions. It wants to remove woke ideology from schools. It wants to remove the politicization of public institutions. It wants to adapt the Equalities Act and protect sex-based rights for women and kids. So on all of those issues, whenever I go on social media and I see so many people say, Wyatt the Tories doing this, why aren't the Tories doing that?

Actually, if you sit down and you read that reform document, they are actually setting out those issues. So Farage is no longer really a sort of single-issue pro-Brexit politician. If you actually take that document seriously, he's now talking about a cluster of issues that I think reflect his ideological and intellectual evolution. Matt, we look at the Brexit party and before that UKIP and now reform. It seems to me that we're in the midst of a political revolution. And the reason for that is our political parties, both Labour and Conservative, are no longer fit for purpose. Do we need revolution right across the border?

Do these parties need breaking up because they just don't work for the ordinary person? What we need is an alternative, because if you look at the post-Brexit consensus in this country that is supported by both left and right, Labour and Conservatives, what is that consensus? Big state, big regulation, big tax, big immigration, big on woke or at least woke adjacent, low growth, no real willingness or appetite to step outside of the elite consensus on any of those issues. So just if you're a Democrat, you don't have to agree with Nigel Farage and reform. But as a Democrat, right, I would say we need an alternative to that consensus. Because if the Brexit referendum in the last 10 years showed us anything,

it's that there is enormous appetite in the country outside of London and the university towns for a genuine alternative to the elite consensus. You look at Europe, at the European Parliament elections just gone, or you look at the direction of America. We have the first big debate coming up with Donald Trump and Joe Biden. There is a serious political discussion going on about the future Western societies. The UK general election, I found, to be utterly woeful.

I mean, think about the things we haven't talked about. We haven't had a serious debate about Ukraine. We haven't had a serious debate about Israel, Gaza. We haven't had a serious debate about the long-term growth strategy in this country. Most serious economic analysts, including those on the left, like the Institute for Fiscal Studies, are saying both of the main parties are lying to voters about the state of public finances. Paul Johnson, who I respect is saying they are not being honest with voters about their taxation and spending commitments. I actually think this campaign has been really grotesque in many ways.

I mean, the politicians are not being honest with voters, nor are they being honest about the population explosion. I mean, you talk about the housing crisis, very few people out there know what is going to happen over the next 12 years. And if you look at the government's own estimates, 6.5 million more people coming into the country over the next 12 years, 6.1 million because of migration. 92% of our population growth will now be driven by immigration. So we're going to basically need another London in order to accommodate that kind of population change. That is not me being an alarmist or scaremongering. That is the government's own forecast. Nobody during this election campaign has mentioned that.

And also, while they've talked about housing, they've not talked about what is driving the housing crisis, which is mass migration. Again, Farage is the only person who's actually saying that, which is even the Migration Advisory Committee, which is an expert-led independent body that monitors migration in this country, which is fairly independent, if not.

liberal centrist. I mean, even they are saying migration is driving up rents, driving up house prices. So throughout this election campaign, I just see mainstream politicians not being honest with the British people about these issues. And one of the interesting points on that is you mentioned reforms contract. There's lots of in there that I disagree with. And I think there's genuine questions about how, how, you know, manageable it is to do all those things at once. I think even Farage himself is sort of indicating that, you know, this is a genuine questions about how, you know, this is manageable. is kind of a wish list of the stuff we'd like to do. But what I really liked about it is reform I-35 rules, make business easier, you know, cutting taxes for businesses. And, you know, I just, speaking from small, you know, small limited personal experience, we started the show in a room

above a comedy club. Now we have people that we employ. I know that a small business, when you get a tax break, you don't put it in your pocket, you hire another person because you want to expand. That's how you build an economy. It's not by taxing people up to the eyeball. Scrapping net zero. I mean, we don't you talk about the big things that we don't talk about That's a conversation that we should absolutely be having in this country. We're not But one of the things I think is a really under discussed in terms of the politics of this And it kind of got slipped into our analysis and skipped over a little bit is Lib Dems with a fairly small vote share Could be the could be the opposition and we could end up being in a position where you've got a left of center Labor Party that is a

to some extent attempting to fight off its woke fringe. And the opposition, the biggest other party in Parliament, is the Lib Dems. I'm leaving. Lib Dems somewhere on between 40 and 60 seats, something like that. And people often ask me, why are the Lib Dems going to do so much better than reform, if reform are above them in the national polling shares? We'll never forget the reason is because the Lib Dems are a lot more competitive. Even though they did very badly at the last election,

they're still in a more competitive position in many of the seats where they're kind of contesting, but also they've spent years building up that local concentrated support that reform will now have to do if they're serious about delivering on a revolt. But I agree with you, the Lib Dems will likely have a decent election. The SMP will have, I think, on balance, a disappointing election, but that in itself is significant because Labour will regain Scotland if the polls are correct. And if Labour regained Scotland, the Union is stronger. Scotland won't be having another independence referendum any time soon. But that too will more. make it much harder for the Tories going forward.

So let's say we wake up in the morning of July 5th. What's the nightmare scenario for the Tories? The nightmare scenario is that the polls are right. Labor's dominant in Scotland. Labor's even more dominant in Wales. Labor's even more dominant in London and the big cities. Labor is even more dominant with the Lib Dems in the University towns. Labor is extending out into the commuter belt in southern England.

Labor has taken back every single seat in the red wall. So then you're left with a really interesting question for CCHQ and conservative strategists. Where's the future space for the Conservative Party? So the future space is non-London, England. That's the only place they'll have, which means going back into or trying to get back into the Midlands, the northern areas, all of those places that took a punt on Boris Johnson. Well, how are you going to do that if you're a southern Oxbridge Liberal Party that is already saying through its friends in the media,

Well, the real reason we're experiencing this defeat is because of Brexit, Boris Johnson, Suella Braverman, Rwanda, etc., etc. There's a Rory Stewart view of the world or the George Osborne view of the world, which is very much a 10% view of the world. But nonetheless, they will now convince themselves that actually the answer to this complex dilemma is more Rory Stewart's, more Oliver Letwins, more Ken Clarks, when actually that's exactly what voters rejected through the Brexit referendum and the 2019 landslide. So what I'm trying to say is the only path forward for the conservatives is complete renewal around national conservatism, around a conservatism that understands what voters really want in a way that they expressed in 2019, but in a way that the conservatives really now fully apprehend and respond to. Because if they don't, if they go back to establishment, Tory liberalism, they will be blown apart. There will be no future for the Conservative Party in that front. form, lower migration, defend the borders, push back on woke, deliver one nation prosperity,

accept that you can have affordable available housing, but you can't have mass immigration at the same time. It's one or the other, right, unless you want to say goodbye to the Greenbelt and much of southern England, and be realistic with people about how you're going to drive prosperity and defend the things that you say you're interested in conserving. collective memory history and identity. Let's stick with the Lib Dems for a second. Never thought I would utter those words in my life. But I feel like given how well we're expecting them to do,

actually they deserve a little bit more analysis. What do we know about their view of the various things that we often talk about in the show? Where are they on immigration? Where are they on borders? Where are they on public finances? Where are they on all these different issues that people who would be watching this would care about?

Well, the Lib Dems are mainly prospering because the anti-Torri mood is so strong. What they're prospering from is tactical voting in lots of seats where they are the only competitors to the Conservatives or they're the main competitors. What are they standing for? I would argue hyper-social liberalism. Ed Davy has said he wants to push the pedal down on the gender stuff in a way that Labor are sort of trying to hold back on.

They're instinctively very comfortable with migration, legal. They certainly wouldn't want to leave the ECHR. They are broadly content with the current tax and spending commitments. They worship at the altar of the NHS like everybody else. But I don't think they're a serious political party. I don't think Ed Davy is a serious political leader. I think the strategy through the campaign has been to use stunts to attract attention. But there's no niche issue that they are really able to benefit from because that big call they had at the last election of let's rejoin the EU,

Well, that's not going to be an issue really for another 10 years, 15 years. It may come back, but not currently. So I think the Lib Dems are mainly prospering, like the Greens and Labor, from an anti-Torri mood because there is no mass public enthusiasm for this alternative, because that alternative doesn't really exist. Matt, do you not think that we're being a little bit overly optimistic about Labor's chances in the Red Wall? I mean, let's look at their behaviour historically.

They have alienated this voter base over generations, generations to the point where the unthinkable happened, and Labour were wiped out in these traditional strongholds. Do you really think the pendulum is going to swing back that quickly? But just be very specific, what do you mean by swing, right? So what I'm saying is, if you look at those by-elections, the Labour vote has often actually stayed pretty static. What's happened is the conservative vote has collapsed. Okay, much of it has gone over to reform. They're eating about 28% of the conservative vote. Some of it has gone to labor, but a lot of it has gone into apathy. Lots of conservatives are saying, I'm not going to vote at all. I'm sick of this party, not going to vote at all. So the reason labor is going to win back a lot of those seats is not because there's an upsurge of support for labor,

but simply because labor support is staying pretty static and the conservatives are collapsing. So that in itself tells you a lot, okay? I agree Labor have treated a lot of their voters historically with complete contempt. I think Kirstama is very vulnerable. And my personal politics on the table, I'm very concerned about where the country is going under a strong labor government. Not just because of the things that we usually talk about, migration borders woke, but also because labor are now going to rewire the Constitution to be pro-labor. Votes for 16-year-olds, reform the House of Lords, devolve more power, strengthen, Scotland, Wales, devolved assemblies and parliaments, extend the quangos, extend the unelected,

unaccountable government bodies. It's going to be harder for the Conservatives in the future to compete with that. And if the polls are wrong, if we're sat watching the exit poll next week by my friend John Curtis and we find that there's a hung parliament, I haven't completely ruled out proportional representation coming into the mix in British politics. over the next five years because the Lib Dems want it, Farage wants it, the Greens want it, a big part of Labor's base wants it, the SMP would support it. I don't think we're done with that debate over electoral reform. By the way, if the Tories get 40 seats, some of them are going to want it. I mean, like I say, the numbers this morning, you're looking at 40 to 50 seats for the conservatives.

My gut instinct is they're not going to do anywhere near that badly. So give us your gut instinct on all the parties. you think that just going by party by party what do you think they're actually going to get very solid labor majority bigger than 97 um comparable which was like overwhelming at the time to be fair right it wasn't like an accident it was like a huge majority i think you know on these numbers as i say we're either heading into a polling error on the scale that the polling industry would have to pack up shop and basically go like It would be devastating if there was anything other than a labor majority at this point for the polling industry. So I think there will be a labor majority, a significant, stable labor majority, at least above 75, 100 seats, at least. The Conservatives got instinct somewhere between 100 and 150 seats.

I'd be amazed if they went down to 50. That's an extinction level event. 100 and 150 very weak divided then going into a long leadership contest during the summer you'll have about 15 people going for the leadership lots of those people will be unknown the reform party one to three seats lots of second places farage will win clacton the lib Dems 40 to 60 seats they'll say they're back but everyone will know it's just because basically people wanted the tories out smp disappointed campaign, they'll struggle with labor re-emerging in Scotland. That's where I think we will... A green's going to get any seats? They'll get somewhere between one and three. Because this is one of the things that we wanted to talk about.

You mentioned the threat of radical Islam, and one of the things that's been boggling people's minds all around the country is you have seen Green Party. So the Greens traditionally are these, like, hippie, you know, whatever they stand for. But nobody ever thought that they would have candidates like this. We will not be silent. We will raise the voice of Ghazdha. We will raise the voice of Palestine. Hello!

No, I've never seen Caroline Lucas chanting Allah Akbar on being elected. So what's going on there, man? Well, that doesn't surprise me at all. Green parties are notorious for being a watermelon party. Green on the outside, red on the inside. But they've embraced woke identity politics. They've embraced radical progressivism. So you have an awkward alliance between...

That guy didn't look very progressive to me. progressive white graduate liberals like Lucas and minority radical minority activists like that guy who are given a free pass by the woke less identity politics because they're a minority group and they're seen as being the oppressed and being seen as victims we don't need to rehash a lot of the identity politics stuff but that's why I've become increasingly nervous since October 7th because it's that alliance between the radical progressive left and radical Islam

which are really feeding off one another. So the Greens are enabling a sectarianism in politics. And what do we mean by that? Politics being organized along the lines of race and religion in a way we've not really seen since Northern Ireland. And it's becoming embedded in lots of communities, particularly outside of London. So we have a campaign group that's now actively organising Muslim votes,

trying to get British Muslims to vote along the lines of Gaza rather than on the lines of domestic. domestic issues. We don't want that in British politics. We want, you know, one nation politics. We want people to focus on national issues. We reject, I reject, divisive, crude, race-based identity politics. We don't want that in this country. The Greens are enabling that. The radical left are enabling that because it fits with their identity politics worldview. I wish we'd had more mainstream leaders, including Kirstama, calling that out, but we know that He too is enabling that.

We've seen the footage of Angela Rainer going to meetings in Northern England, the only woman in attendance, long skirts, falling over herself to placate the grievances of British Muslims. This is where we're headed, right, in terms of British politics, this alliance between radical left activists who are consumed by the binary matrix of identity politics and, on the other hand, minority activists, radical Islamists who are being given a free pass. Is that criticism of Kirst Stama Fair Matt? Because he's come under a lot of pressure from people within his own party because they perceive him to have a pro-Israel stance. Well, I think this is what's going to be really interesting over the next five years. Stama is going to come under enormous pressure from left-wing activists and British Muslims, 90% of whom until recently were voting Labour.

He is going to come under enormous pressure to change his stance on Israel. that is especially the case if a second front opens up in the north, which I suspect it will with Hezbollah and a growing conflict with Iran. Prime Minister Stama will, I suspect, have to go much further than any other prime minister in being hostile towards Israel, being pushed into some kind of formal recognition of Palestine and a two-state solution. And it's going to get very messy. And the people I feel most strongly about are British Jews because next week there will be lots of people in this country watching the election of a strong Labour government led by a man who wanted to put Jeremy Corbyn into number 10 twice

with a great degree of apprehension and concern. There will be lots of Jews in Britain who will feel very worried about the direction of travel in British politics next week and it is on all of us to make sure their voice as well as heard in this national debate. And the thing that's worrying

is that I look at Stama and I don't think even his wife would describe him as a particularly strong character. Is he really going to have the moral backbone to face down his own party when he can't even say what a woman is? Well, I think the thing that concerns me

about his Stama is the inconsistency. So on the one hand, he's speaking for the common people, the working man and woman. On the other hand, he was the guy who campaigned, was very open and campaigning for a second referendum on Brexit. So when the ordinary man and woman voted for Brexit, he didn't want to know.

He wanted another referendum until people made the right decision. He has been very inconsistent on issues around the economy, around immigration, around Jeremy Corbyn. I just don't think we really know who Kiyosthama is. I don't buy the media narrative that this guy is a return to moderate, responsible, sensible leadership. I don't think anybody that wanted to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister who really put himself that far out in the debate to say that, who was happy to campaign and serve in high office

alongside Jeremy Corbyn. I can't take that person seriously because it shows such a lack of judgment. He knew what Corbyn was. He knew all about what Corbyn was. He knew what Corbyn said. He knew what Corby believed. And the idea now that he's saying, well, he didn't think Labor were going to win the general election, having gone through 2017, having known how close it was that Labor and Corbyn were, how close they were to power, I do not believe for a second that Stama thought, well, he won't become Prime Minister anyway, so I might as well campaign for this. It's a terrible post-top rationale for what he did. And it's also as well, when you look at the economic crisis that we're facing, do we really want someone who describes themselves as a socialist handling the economy?

I'll be honest with you, as someone who has come from a socialist country, which isn't doing too well, the answer is none. Well, I do think there's a case now. The kind of settlement I wanted to see after Brexit is the opposite of what we got, right? And I think Constantine was just referencing this. We should have got into an economy that was business friendly, that was cutting corporation tax, cutting regulation, that was being responsible in the way it was doing that. I'm not saying slash and burn deregulation across the board, but I'm saying you have to, you have to make, make it clear to business, there's a competitive advantage for coming to Brexit, Britain, over the European Union. That should have been step one on day one. It didn't happen.

And instead, now we've got stuck in this low-growth, high-depth, big state, very sluggish, slow, overloaded economy that isn't working. So in response to that, we've then thrown bodies at the economy. So we've used mass migration to plug the holes. So let's bring in, In the last parliament, four million people into the country to basically try and keep the whole thing going. Keep consumption going. Keep people spending. Give business lots of low-wage labour, low-skill labour. And of course, the problem then is our GDP per capita, GDP per head is going backwards.

We're not actually building a productive, dynamic, innovative economy. What we're building is a deliver-ro economy. Lots of people doing low-wage work, low-skill work. It isn't dynamic. It isn't contributing to the economy. I had this guy over recently to our think tank, a Dutch academic, Jan Bandabeeke. He's done the study on the impact of the kind of migration we have in Britain, but he's looked at the Netherlands and he's looked at a few other European countries.

And what he's shown is contrary to what the elite class tell us, that actually it's driving economic growth and vibrancy and so on. shown conclusively that it's weakening Western economies, that the more you rely on masses of non-European migration, low-scale migration, what you're doing is you're basically hollering out your economy. And by the way, you're also helping global corporates because they love this, right? Because it's feeding their profit margins. And it's also making the elite class in Westminster feel wonderful and lovely because they can

go on Twitter and X and they can say, look at me, I'm a progressive and they win lots of applause from other members of the elite class. But what it's actually doing to the economy is it's costing in the Netherlands, he's estimated about 80 billion euros, it's costing Western economies an enormous amount. And again, during the selection campaign, we've not had that conversation. We've not even talked about it at all. Nobody has raised that issue except Farage. Again, I'm not here to make the case for Farage, but I am saying Farage and Reform are a very

useful vehicle. If you want to have that debate, I want to have that debate in this country. I think lots of people out there want to have this debate. And if it wasn't for Farajan reform, we wouldn't even be allowed to have this debate. We wouldn't even be having this discussion. Well, one of the things he said fairly early on that I wanted to ask you about very directly, Matt, is he suggested that by the time of the next election, there will be a Muslim party of Britain. Do you think that's likely?

Well, we know it's likely because people have surveyed British Muslims over the last two months, and they found that 40% of British Muslims say they would like a Muslim-only political party in Britain. written about this extensively, it's not only that, half of British Muslims express sympathy for Hamas. A third of them openly say they've got very positive, warm views of Hamas fighters. Younger British Muslims are more radical than older British Muslims. I find that deeply concerning. Liberals tell us over time they'll integrate, they'll absorb, you know, they'll be absorbed into the wider culture and society. That is clearly not happening. A large number of British Muslims deny that there was rape and murder on October 7th. They exhibit a conspiracy

mindset that is not shared by the vast majority of British people. I'm very concerned about all of that. And that too speaks to this issue that we can see with the Greens, which is a sort of sectarian-type politics that George Galloway and others are trying to encourage. We don't want that in our politics. We don't want segregation in our communities. I mean, look, if you want to read one book on this, Ed Hussein's book, among the mosques. We've had him on to talk about it. Ed Hussein, great, interesting guy, countercultural, brave, right? In that book, he turned up unannounced that I think it was a hundred or so mosques across the country. And he makes a very powerful point in that book. He says, if you are young

and British and Muslim, you can spend your life completely immersed in Islamic culture, in schools that are overwhelmingly dominated and filled with British Muslims in your local mosques, in shops, You can live in segregated neighborhoods. You can basically live your entire life without any meaningful interaction with the non-Muslim majority. Now when I read that, I found it deeply alarming because you know, this guy turned up unannounced was just reporting what he was seeing. When I looked at the evidence at the number of British Muslims who tell pollsters they would like to live a partly or fully separate life independent from wider British society. You're You're looking at about 20 to 30%, which is a significant number.

And then when you look at the projections of where we're going between today in 2050, I'll give you one stats so people can think about this. Go online, look at the Pew Research Center, which is an independent, you know, centrist think tank. Nobody can say Pew is a kind of like right-wing crazy think tank. I think they can, mate. Sure they will. They've done some pretty credible forecasts looking at where all European nations are going

to be by 2050. And they make the point that Britain is going to see the largest overall increase in the absolute number of Muslims compared to other European states. And that by 2050, about 20 to 25% of Britain's population will be Muslim. It'd be 30% in Sweden, about 25 to 30% in France. So I'm not saying that to be provocative or to be, you know, alarmist. I'm saying that because if we don't actually start to have a mature conversation about what we're talking about, now, that integration, how to make young British Muslim kids feel British, share our culture, share our values, share our ways of life, how are we going to push back against radical Islamism,

how are we going to stop sectarianism in our politics? If we're going to start figuring that out now, we are going to have very big problems down the line where we can already see, we can see those problems in France, we can see those problems in Germany, they're beginning to experience what happens when you don't, well, when you run mass immigration, you're with no serious effort being devoted to integration. Some of my friends, Eric Kaufman, who's been on the show, Eric would say you can't even have integration when you run mass immigration anyway.

It's an unsustainable policy. You have to stop inward migration, let the country absorb the demographic trends, wait a significant period of time, and then if you want to continue with some high-skill migration, that's probably the way that you can just about manage it. But running what we're doing, doing now, the net migration of 700,000 with no real effort at integration and then calling anybody who raises these questions a racist or an Islamophobe. I mean, that's a policy for idiots.

And unfortunately, you know, the idiots seem to be in charge. Matt, we've got lots more questions for you, but more importantly, our audience do. So we're going to take a quick break and then our audience will read you some questions from our locals. And also people are welcome it to send in superchats. And we will get to some of your superchats and locals questions after the break. See you very shortly. is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis, a once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema.

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10% off when you buy in bulk. Plus, save $180 on a DeWalk 12-inch dual bevel sliding compound mitersaw. Now just $449. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Vela through 5'6, wall supplies last. Selection varies by location. Matt, coming back to the breaking down of all things, British, election. We've got questions from our local supporters. The first one from Amy Vowse, who says,

what is the first policy the most likely incoming Labour Party will implement and how detrimental will it be? Do they have policies that would be helpful? I think they're going to go hard and fast on votes for 16. I think Labor are going to do what they've always done well, which is use power to cement their power. Conservatives historically are terrible at that. So they'll do probably something like votes for 16, try and get that in. Maybe House of Lords reform, let's see. Oh, overturned Rwanda as well. That would be a priority, a big symbolic gesture to their activist base.

I think Starm has said he'll do that on day one, or at least sign it. So what are they going to do about immigration? Well, that's a funny thing, right? So Labor's immigration policy, like you really need to look at it. It's kind of insane. So they're saying on illegal migration, they're going to smash the gangs. Okay, like no one's been trying to smash the gangs and the criminal gangs were smuggling people in They're gonna smash the gangs who are bringing people to the dinghies right and they're gonna say right

We're gonna smash the gangs, but we're not going to have a deterrent So we're gonna we're not gonna have the Rwanda plan and we're gonna overturn the illegal migration bill which Rishish Sunak brought in and what that does is it allows the government to immediately detain Illegal migrants and then over over time deport them back to their countries of origin So labor are basically gonna remove all of those things but they're gonna to smash the gangs with a new border control command post, which already exists, they're just going to give it a new name. Why is that nonsense, right? It's nonsense because if you're just smashing the gangs, you're playing whack-a-mole.

Because the only thing you need to cross the channel is a boat, a torch, and like a life jacket, but sometimes they don't even have those. So if you smash one gang, there's going to be another. You smash that one, there's going to be another. And then they said they're going to clear the backlog in the home office system of the people who have already made it into the country. And we've got about 127,000. So what does that mean?

Well, they're going to process the applications for asylum as quickly as possible. And we know chances are they're going to grant approval to like 90% plus. Well, that's what the stories did? It's all the stories is. So they're just going to do the same thing. And what's that going to do? So you've got two big messages to would-be migrants and people smugglers that basically labors are soft touch.

There is no longer a deterrent. And if you make it over, chances are you're going to have your application approved. All of this means that illegal migration crisis in this country is going to get worse, not better. I put my house on it. Numbers are going to keep going up. That's going to be a massive problem for labor. Illegal migration, they said they would like to bring it down, but basically, as we know, labor are pretty comfortable with mass migration. Most of the official economic forecasts in this country are assuming net migration will stay at least 250,000 a year,

which is basically where it was just before the Brexit referendum. So the elite class is assuming mass inward net migration is going to remain at at least 250,000 every year for the foreseeable future, which is not what voters want. That is depressing to put it mildly. Thank you, Matt. The next question is, is there any political party out there that has a serious detailed policy proposal on how to deal with the UK's underlying domestic issues? Can you scroll up, which made us so reliant?

On migrant labor. government labor. The Reform Party, but the Reform Party is basically the only alternative to the mainstream party consensus on mass immigration. I'm not saying that because I'm campaigning for reform. I'm just saying the only alternative if you don't think mass migration is a good beneficial policy is reform. That is basically it. If you trust the Tories after the last 14 years to lower legal migration, good on you. Like, good on you. Like, good luck with that. If you trust Labor, who started mass migration with Tony Blair in 2004, good luck. I hope it goes well. But if you want an alternative, the only alternative is reform

and fratge. I mean, that is it. They're not a perfect vessel, but they are the ones saying freeze all non-essential, non-NHS migration, leave the ECHR so we can control the borders, and push back on woke ideology, which I would argue underpins the elite commitment to mass migration. Keep the questions coming in, especially if you're not on locals, send in your superchance. and we will read them out after we've done the locals once. How many terms will Stama serve in number 10, given his age and ministerial lack of experiences? Pomi won Oz.

My prediction is Sama will serve one term and he will be ousted by some kind of internal labor revolt that he will come under sustained pressure from within and he'll either lose the next election or he'll be ousted. I don't think he will be serving more than one term. Well, based on what you were saying earlier about the state of the British economy, which all of us can see with our own eyes, as you said, I think very, very quickly people will realize that the thing that was ruining the country was not the Conservative Party. It was the elite consensus. So they're going to be saddled with all the same problems, many of which they will make worse. The question is what is going to be your protest about at the next election against Labor, right?

And also briefly on that, I mean, again, I'll go back to the IFS. You can't say the IFS are a right-wing thing to me. You know, they're sort of centre-left. But even they have said, pointed out, Labour have committed to £20 billion worth of public spending cuts that have been factored into the budgets by the Conservatives. So it's not only that we don't have much growth, it's not only that we've got this insane pile of debt that nobody wants to talk about, partly because of COVID and the lockdowns, which we all know were pretty disastrous. It's that they are also already committed to public spending cuts.

So if you want the NHS to get better, your local GP to get better, your schools to get better, I mean, it ain't going to happen under Labor unless they break their manifesto commitment, which I think they will, which is having to raise taxes considerably. And we've already got the highest tax burden in this country since the 1950s. But I wanted to ask you a question. Can I quickly ask you a question? Yeah, of course. Because you've written a lot on Ukraine and Russia, what's your interpretation of Farage's comments?

Do you think we should have had an alternative to the mainstream view on that issue? Do you think they were ill-judged, mistimed? I think what happened is he actually made comments, which I don't regard as being anything like Beyond the Pale. I don't agree with Nigel, and we've had him on the show. There's a clip on our channel. I think that the title is Faraz versus Russian or something on Ukraine. And we disagree about NATO expansion. There's a big, long conversation to be had about that.

What I think he said in that interview was quite reasonable. I didn't have that much of an issue with it. But that's my personal opinion. But what I also then said on Twitter the subsequent day and got lots of pushback for was that was the first time the media got him on something that his own demographic, his own voters disagree with him on. Because I would say the model, the median reform voter,

is in their 50s or 60s, 40s to 60s, I'm guessing, probably sees Russia in a kind of Cold War kind of haze, so to speak. You know, we saw the level of support for supporting the Ukrainians after the war started in this country. I'm not saying it's at the same level, but I think the vast majority of British people that I speak to, including people who are interested in voting for reform,

they're not that keen in sort of pretending this was some kind of, you know, the West made Russia invade, which is not what he said. said, actually. But that is kind of how it landed after all the media reporting of it, et cetera. And so I think he's actually been very consistent on this over a long period of time. As I say, I don't personally agree with his view.

But what I think the mistake has been, and I think you alluded to earlier, is that story should not have been allowed to keep going. He shouldn't have been trying to say, oh, Boris Johnson said this. And, you know, getting them to all of these arguments, I just think it's derailing to the main message of of the reform. And, you know, actually in the break, I checked my Twitter, and I tweeted that we were having this conversation saying, is reform sliding back?

And someone said, oh, you only say it because you want them to. I don't. I agree with you. I think reform are an essential vessel for expanding the conversation. It doesn't mean I agree with every single policy that they're advocating. I don't.

But when I look at that manifesto, I look at what they're saying about net zero. I look at what they're saying about cutting taxes. I look about what they're saying about getting the country actually creating wealth. We're losing 10,000 millionaires a year. Now, people in this country hate wealth and they hate, you know, successful people.

I think that's really stupid because they're the ones that pay a lot of the taxes that we then use to look after everybody else. So I like a lot of the stuff that they're putting out. Don't agree with Nigel on this particular thing, but I do think letting it run this long was not a smart move

just on a purely tactical basis. What do you make of that? No, I agree with much of what you say. I think the only thing I would pick up on is the media, there was clearly a coordinated effort to undermine reform and Farage over the last five days. And that is not conspiratorial. You can go and read the original article saying that Putin's people had said, no, sorry, Zelensky had said that it was, the virus of Putinism had infected, you know, people.

And the implication in the newspaper, the original newspaper front page was that Zelensky said, that about Farage. And actually, he didn't say that about Farage. They were just talking in very vague terms. I think Mary Harrington has actually written a very nice piece on this and unheard, which he makes the point that actually, you know, if you look at the realist school of geopolitics that says, you know, on balance, you know, kind of NATO, EU probably did irritate Russia through expansion and so on versus the liberal internationalists who are saying, you know, actually it's on us to defeat Russia and so on. I think Farage was kind of expressing one side of that debate. I think it's a legitimate

I think it's an acceptable view. I think we have to have a discussion about how this ends because we seem incapable of talking about where this conflict ends. My gut instinct is simply saying, well, we're going to beat Russia is not a realistic view, but that's my personal political view. I understand why people say it. But the way in which there was very clearly a coordinated effort among, you know, the sort of the telegraph and, you know, Tory supporting papers, I thought was pretty transparent. Yeah, no, I agree. I do think, though, that allowing himself to focus on it for that long was probably not the smart move. That's all I'm saying.

But, yeah, look, people should be able to have these conversations. We live in a democratic country. We're supposed to. And what that means is that people's views about really major geopolitical British involvement should be ventilated and should be heard. And like I said, I think unlike some of his supporters, Nigel has actually thought about this very carefully and has been talking about it for a very long time. There is a kind of... He predicted the invasion. There is a kind of reactive fringe online that is different about that.

They're just anti-Ukrainian. I think that's a separate conversation. But I think more broadly what it speaks to is I see this election as a kind of test of, you know, the online echo chamber versus reality. And I think a lot of people across different sides of the political spectrum may be in for a little wake-up call, including people in our space too. Yeah, I agree. I agree. I mean, I did a Twitter poll yesterday. Said, yeah, how are you going to vote?

Labor conservative reform. Reform's like 70%. Which says more about my Twitter following than it does about the mood of the country. And also it says a lot about, I think, reform has a great online presence. They do well online. It has a great. In fact, the data shows this. Sky have just published the things looking at.

which of the parties has had more social media impressions and engagements than reformer number one. Why is that? Well, I would suggest it's because the guy running and Farage's stuff is 23. Like, they're very in touch with the zeitgeist. But I agree with you. If I'm right and reform end up with one, two or three seats, six million boats, a bunch of second places, I would personally say, for a new small party, that's a good outcome. But there will be lots of people who will see that and say, oh, what happened to the revolution?

What happened to 100 seats? Why? Because they're not quite in tune with how difficult it is to actually impose yourself on this political system. I think the point you made earlier about that is 100% valid though, which is if Farage wins in Clacton, he gets into Parliament

and then he has got the opportunity he had before that he has demonstrated he's capable of seizing, which is you're standing in the heart of the liberal establishment that right there, in their space, and you can punch at them all day long and talk about how they look like low-grade bank. But let me play Dillow's advocate on that because there are three things he needs to do simultaneously. One, he needs to run a Clacton constituency office and deal with the everyday humdrum of life as an MP.

Nobody's picking up the dog poop. Nobody's delivering the newspapers or the GP isn't working. That's not fun stuff, right? It doesn't pay very well either, by the way. The second thing he needs to do is while doing that is maintain. his national brand, maintain his brand in broadcasting media, print media, continue to drive the revolution in British politics. That ain't going to be easy.

And third, he's got his international dimension, you know, helping Trump in November, being active on the campaign circuit in the US, doing all of the things Nigel, as an Atlantisist, loves to do. He loves to be in America. So what does all of that say? I'm not being saying he can't do it. I'm saying he's going to need to completely rethink. who he has around him.

He's going to need to have professional, experienced, serious operators who understand what urgent questions and ministers' questions takes to kind of how you table questions in Parliament, how you develop policy, how you lobby, how you influence the committees. He's going to need a whole new operation. Because in a way, Farage, if he is elected, is going to reach a level in a way, it's strange to say it, but he's not actually operated at that level yet.

Yes, he's been in the European Parliament. It's a very different kettle of fish compared to the House of Commons. He's going to need to really up the game. While also, PS, building a national infrastructure. I mean, this is a thing people don't understand about reform. This isn't like UKIP, right? UKIP had branches in every seat. UKIP had garden parties, summer parties.

I used to go to UKIP conferences when I was writing books on the party. And they would have their own little kind of microculture in these branches, where you turn up and, you know, they'd be selling fruit. cakes because they took the insult that they were cranks and fruit cakes from David Cameron. They embraced that, you know, and they had this whole UKIP culture going on. Reform doesn't have that. Reform doesn't have an apparatus. It doesn't have branches. It doesn't have a national organization. Somebody said to me during this campaign, they're building the plane while it's flying. And that is actually what's happening with reform. So he's also going to need to come out of this election

and say, right, we're going to need, you know, 600 constituency offices. We're going to need, you know, You need branches, regional chairman. We're going to need national conferences. We're going to need to encourage Conservative MPs to defect. I mean, this is a serious operation. So the work for Farage, if he's elected next week, is only just beginning. It's a great answer. Thank you very much.

The next question is, Matt, your astute analysis about statistical... Sorry, I'll start that again. Matt, your astute analysis and statistical data about immigration has opened many of our eyes to the situation. situation we are facing and has brought most understanding to what needs to be done. However, what about the NHS? Is this a subject that will continue to be ignored as it is a reality too unpalatable for voters and will undermine a leader that tries to tackle it?

Claudia. It's a very good question. We need an open and honest debate about the instability of the NHS and how unsustainable the current NHS model is. Unfortunately, the NHS is the closest thing we have to a national religion. We cannot challenge it. We cannot question it. We cannot criticize it. We have to stand in our gardens banging pots and pans and saying how wonderful this organisation is, even though we're giving 190 billion a year to the NHS and social care, but we are getting diminishing returns for that money. We need a frank and open conversation. I think that's starting to come through. I think with the

strikes and with some of the policies and ideas, interestingly, Labor have been putting forward, saying we're going to have to reform the NHS. In some way, Farage is saying we're going to need to move to a French-based model, an insurance-based model. I think he's right to at least be starting that debate. But absolutely, I completely agree. I think there are some really big taboos that need to be broken in British politics. The immigration one is one. The NHS is another. We have to be able to criticized and change the NHS, or at least say, look, if you can afford it, you should be buying, you should be opting out of the NHS, buying out of the NHS, and then, you know, you shouldn't be paying as much in a way of financial support for the NHS. I think we're going to have to

come up with some kind of alternative solution. Let's go to the next question, which is, given the general trend towards right-wing parties across Europe, does Matt really believe this could be reforms moment, or does our electoral system doom them to few, if any, seeds, despite a good chunk of the vote. If you look at it through a five, six year strategy, yes, Nigel Farage, if he surrounds himself with the right people, if he gets money and manpower, yes, we could do Canada 1993 over the course of two general elections. It starts next week. Farage has to win election. You then need a five-year strategy for buy elections, local elections, building a party infrastructure. You need to get good people around, famous people, celebrities, people that make

the voters look up and say, oh, hang on a minute, that guy's joining reform. That's in You need to do a whole strategy. Yes, it could happen, especially if I'm right with where we're going under Labor and also the hopelessness of the Tories. And if those two things come together, I can't think of another time where Farage has had an opening as big as a potential opening he's about to have. Do you think, because I was thinking about this the other day, we all talk about the shy Tory phenomenon.

Do you think the shy reform phenomenon would be even strong? stronger than that. Because it's one thing saying to people, look, I'm going to go vote conservative. It's quite another saying, I'm going to go and vote for Nigel Farage. So I'm glad you mentioned that because I've been saying, you know, my gut instinct has genuinely been torn, right? I think maybe 60% of me is saying reform, one to three seats, five to seven million votes, a bunch of second places. But there is part of me that thinks I might actually be underestimating the anti-establishment sentiment in the country and reform end up actually outperforming expectations.

I am quite conflicted on that. But I think you're right. Morris DuVosier was a French writer in the 50s, and he said, if you want to disrupt a two-party system, the biggest obstacle you face is the credibility gap. You have to be seen to be a credible alternative. If you're not seen as credible, you're not going to go anywhere. Now, what does that mean?

It means to get the shy Tories to go reform, they have to believe you're going to win seats. They have to believe you can become prime minister. They have to see you as a credible alternative. To do that, Farage needs to do all the things we've talked about during this interview in order for him to position himself in 28, 29 and say, look, I am it. I am the alternative, surrounded by other people, competent people, experienced people. Where are all the MPs going to go who are going to lose their seats next week? All those talented conservative MPs, where are they?

they're going to go. I suspect some of them will be hoovered up by reform. If you can get good strategists, if you can get good donors. I know some of the money men are coming back into the mix, by the way. A few people notice this, but during reforms press releases, there are press conferences, there are serious people in the room with Farage when he's making those announcements. So he is getting people around him that could make a difference, but he's going to need to demonstrate credibility. I can win seats. This party can win seats. Buy elections will be key. Watch by-elections over the next year. If those by-elections start being held in red wool seats, pro-Brexit seats,

and reform are winning them like UKIP used to win by-elections, this thing will take on momentum of its own. Very interesting. Let's do a few superchats before we wrap up. Someone says, just read Matt's latest substack. I am so annoyed with Farage. To me, he's shot himself in the foot with his Ukraine comments and his chance to take over the Conservative Party.

He's greatly damaged. This is from someone called Goose Springsteak. So what do you make of that, Matt? I think it's an interesting point. I think we're going to come back and potentially look at Ukraine as one thing that may have made a tangible difference on reform support. Averaging 13% is not good for reform given that they were averaging 19% a week ago. Now, the polls may be off. Let's see.

I don't want to play into any narrative that might or might not be going on in British politics. All I can say is a pollster is there's been a significant shift. Matt, you published a list of Brexit benefits at the weekend with 10 specifically highlighted that you felt were important in this election. Why aren't these being highlighted better by the media? And this is from Steve Wright. Because I think much of the media class is invested in talking down Brexit. I think being anti-Brexit is now a.

source of status among the elite class. And I think there is a minority there who are also suffering from BDS, a Brexit derangement syndrome. And I think, you know, if you actually look at Brexit objectively, of course there are benefits. I mean, we don't pay into the EU budget. There's one. We're saving ourselves billions of pounds.

We're not part of the EU migration pact. We would have had another 120,000 asylum seekers over the last few years. We're an independent sovereign nation. We can control our destiny. Yes, the Tories have made a hash of it. But we are in control. We're holding the levers. We can build whatever kind of economy we want to build, right?

It's up to us. No EU member state can say the same thing because they are not operating within a genuine democracy. What makes a genuine democracy meaningful competition over executive office? There is none of that in the EU. We have that. They don't. Those are the differences.

We should be able to say that loudly and proudly that we are, once again, in a democracy, not a perfect democracy, right? There are problems. We can see that with a betting scandal at the moment. We saw it with the appointment of Rishi Sunak. But we do live in a democracy. That's one of the biggest benefits for Brexit voters. Matt, I want to squeeze a few more questions in before we wrap up.

In the medium to long term, is there a likelihood of the far right gaining traction because of Islamization in the UK? By the far right, just to be clear, we don't mean what the media call far right, which is anyone to the right of Jeremy Corbyn, actually far right parties, which do exist. How do you see that playing out as hello thrill seekers? In Britain, I don't think the far right will go anywhere. Our culture is just not open to it.

Other European countries maybe, but then it depends on what parties we're referring to. I think the term far right has become quite meaningless. But yeah, I mean, it's possible in other European countries. Another question is, anecdotally, I know many unexpected people voting reform who normally just don't bother to vote. How likely is it that the polls haven't picked this up? And this is from sussie memes. Great, great question.

Because if you go back to the Brexit referendum, one of the reasons leave went over the line was because of lots of previously apathetic voters who came out to vote. If the polls are off, that will be one reason why. They're underestimating people who didn't vote previously. Now, when I run a poll, I'm filtering people out in a number of ways. I'm saying on a scale of zero to 10,

how likely are you to vote? And if you give me a six or a poll, six or above, I'm including you in my final sample, but if you're one to five, I'm thinking you're not really likely to vote and you're going to be excluded. If you say to me, Matt, I don't know how I'm going to vote or I refuse to tell you how I'm going to vote or I'm not going to vote. In the end, I'll exclude you from my headline numbers, right? So you can see through that process how actually the polls could be off because maybe you, in the end, you're like, oh, to hell with it. I'm going to go and vote reform or whatever, right? And I haven't picked

you up. So that's where you might see some variation on July the 4th that we haven't picked up in the polls currently. Matt, thank you so much for coming in. It's been great. I recommend everybody check out your substack as well as mine, of course. I recommend yours. We recommend each other as we all do. Thank you for all your questions. We were able to get in as many as we could as you saw, but we've got to wrap up. So thank you for being here. Thanks for watching. Make sure you share this conversation with others and we'll see you again very soon with another brilliant interview take care