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Nigel Farage is back in politics.
On Monday he held a press conference to announce that he’d be running for MP of Clacton in Essex in this year’s election, as leader of Reform UK.
He promised to lead a ‘political revolt’ on the political status quo saying ‘it doesn’t work’ and said his party was ‘very much on the side’ of creating economic growth, helping ‘the little guy and the little woman’, and ending what he called ‘the poisoning’ of the education system.
Home Secretary James Cleverly vowed to fight to defeat Mr Farage in the Clacton seat, and argued that voting for Reform would make it easier for Labour to win the election.
So will Farage’s campaign really shake up July’s election? And how concerned are the Conservatives about his return?
Our Political Editor Nicholas Cecil tells The Standard podcast how worried the Tories will be about his return.
Nic also explains the latest poll which suggests that the Tories face near wipeout in London
Plus, in part two of this episode, our Diary Editor Ethan Croft discusses Nigel Farage adopting an Eminem song for his campaign video, and the other key songs of this year’s general election.
Listen above, find us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you stream your podcasts.
Here’s an automated transcript:
From London, I'm Jon Weeks and this is The Standard.
Coming up on today's show, we examine the various soundtracks of this year's general election with our diary editor, Ethan Croft.
But before that.
Now we put out the operations notice for today under the title Emergency Election Announcement.
And we did that because we think this election needs a bit of gingering up.
Nigel Farage is back.
At 4pm yesterday on Monday, he held a press conference to announce that he'd be running for MP of Clacton in Essex in this year's election as Leader of Reform UK.
So I have decided I've changed my mind.
It's allowed, you know, it's not always a sign of weakness.
It could potentially be a sign of strength.
So I am gonna stand in this election.
He promised to lead a political revolt on the political status quo, saying it doesn't work.
He also said his party was very much on the side of creating economic growth, helping the little guy and little woman, and ending what he called the poisoning of the education system.
Home Secretary James Cleverley vowed to fight to defeat Mr. Farage in the Clacton seat, and argued that voting for reform would make it easier for Labour to win the election.
So, will Farage's campaign really shake up July's election, and how concerned are the conservatives about his return?
Our political editor, Nicholas Cecil, joins me now.
So, Nic, yesterday we saw the return of Farage, this time as leader of Reform UK.
First of all, was it a dramatic return, or something we all saw coming?
No, it was definitely a dramatic return, and Nigel Farage does show his politics very well.
That's one of his strengths.
Often he's less good on the detail, and less good on the actual detailed policy if you press him on it.
But certainly it was a shock.
It was a big moment in the election so far.
Just think back, kind of really about 10 days ago, and Mr.
Farage was saying, well, he'd do his bit to help Richard Tice, the Reform leader, or the then Reform leader, but he made clear that his eyes were really set on America and going out to help Donald Trump get elected in the presidential race there.
And I understand his return has got the conservatives a bit worried.
How concerning is it for the party?
Oh, it's far more than a bit worried.
There'll be a number of MPs, former Tory MPs, because obviously there are no current MPs, but there'll be a number of Tory candidates who will be alarmed, if not panicked, by Mr. Farage's intervention.
Because what it does is that if reforms stand in a seat, it will tend to peel off a number of right-leaning voters away from the Conservatives.
There'll be some Labour ones as well, who may well go and join reform or back reform, but it's widely seen that the party hardest hit by reform standing in constituencies will be the Conservatives.
And it's been strange with Nigel Farage, hasn't it?
Because he's been out of politics for a while, but he's always been on the periphery.
Do you think he still has a strong support base?
That's a very good question, because obviously during the Brexit campaign in 2016, he and other Leave campaigners promised millions of Britons that immigration would come under control, there'd be lots more money for the NHS and many other things, some which very clearly had not materialised and others which are debatable to say the least.
So I suspect there'll be some voters who will look at Mr. Farage and say, well, you promised this all in 2016, where is it?
So why should I believe you now?
But he is a great showman and he will definitely connect with other voters far better.
And that's why he's such a potential danger to the Conservatives.
And if he and Reform UK do take support from the Conservatives, what are the issues or policies that will win over Tory voters?
I think the very clear cut issue will be immigration.
So, Nigel Farage will try to make this an election about immigration.
And the Conservatives are on a very sticky wicket here because we've had record net legal migration in 2022.
And numbers have come down since then, but they're still very high in the eyes of many voters.
And also, if you look at what is now illegal immigration, according to the government's Rwanda Bill, the government has its flagship policy was to get flights, deportation flights after Rwanda.
And now, which is that has admitted that this is not going to happen before election day.
So again, why should the voters believe the Conservatives on immigration if they can't deliver their flagship policy?
There's a belief that at Westminster that actually the Tories might in the final run up to the election, succeed in getting a deportation flight or couple off to Rwanda.
But that's still not clear whether that will happen.
And I also wanted to ask you, Nic, about this second poll really in a matter of weeks that suggested a real lack of Tory support in London in the capital.
What are those figures from the poll suggesting?
Yes, there was this shock poll by YouGov which showed the number of Tory MPs in London plummeting from 21 to just four, which is astonishing.
So there'd be a total wipeout of Conservative MPs in inner London.
Currently, the Conservatives hold three seats in this area, the central area of the city, the cities of London and Westminster, Chelsea and Fulham and the new seat of Kensington and Bayswater.
But they would lose all three of those seats and they'd only have four seats in outer London.
That would be very much on the fringes of the capital.
So you're talking about Hornchurch and Upminster, Orpington, Old Bexley and Sidcup and Romford.
And even the last two would look like there'd be pretty close contests with the Tories just holding on there.
And do you think, Nic, that they will give up on London now, considering this latest poll at least suggests that they'd only be left with four seats?
Well, some political experts think that the government or the Tories have almost in a way given up on London already because some of the rhetoric from ministers, anti-London rhetoric, which seems to have been kind of adopted to try to appeal to voters in the Red Wall who kind of might feel not particularly enthusiastic towards London.
So a number of senior Tories have indulged in this anti-London rhetoric.
And I think what we're seeing here is very much part of the results of that.
Let's take a quick break.
In part two, our diary editor, Ethan Croft, talks us through the soundtracks of this year's general election.
In recent days, he's been driving around on the Reform Battle Bus with a playlist on Spotify called Nigel Farage's Brexit Classics.
Joining me now is our diary editor, Ethan Croft, who's been looking at this year's election anthems.
So Ethan, we heard Tony Blair's famous election song, Things Can Only Get Better, being played aloud during Rishi Sunak's Downing Street speech when he announced the general election.
But I understand Nigel Farage may have a song of his own this year.
Yeah, so songs and sort of political anthems can be quite important for motivating the voter base as it was in 1997 with Things Can Only Get Better, which everybody remembers.
But this time around, Farage sort of seems to have his own kind of soundtrack going.
So yesterday after he announced he was returning to Reform UK, he released a video with a soundtrack by Eminem.
It was Without Me, a sort of rap song, which is maybe quite surprising.
But Farage actually seems to have pretty broad musical taste.
So in recent days, he's been driving around on the Reform battle bus with a playlist on Spotify called Nigel Farage's Brexit Classics, which is quite interesting.
I've been having a look through and listening to some of the various tunes on there, and it certainly makes interesting listening.
And what are some of the top picks from that playlist then, Ethan?
There's Kylie, you've got Gwen Stefani, Hall & Oates, Fatboy Slim, sort of a mix of 80s pop and sort of 90s, more sort of 90s club stuff.
It wasn't actually made by Farage, I should clarify, it was made by a fan of his, but he's adopted it and he's decided that he really likes it.
It's about six hours long in total.
So it's quite useful for sort of having a soundtrack where you're out campaigning in Rainey, Rainey Clackton, where he's standing to be an MP.
So do you think this year we'll see this become a sort of trend?
Will young voters, for example, be ticking the box based on who has the best song?
I think probably not, to be honest.
Political anthems tend to be quite cringe.
And you'll notice that a large number of artists now actually try to ban political parties and political candidates from using their songs.
One that springs to mind is Neil Young, who told Donald Trump that he wasn't allowed to use rocking in the free world.
Katy Tunstall, who her song, Suddenly I See, was used by Hillary Clinton.
She's now asked politicians not to use that.
Dee Reem, who had the new Labour anthem, Things Can Only Get Better, they've said to Labour that they don't want them to use it again, so they're gonna have to come up with a new song now.
So it kind of, I don't know, I think the associations can sometimes be quite negative.
Politicians aren't exactly trendy.
Keir Starmer said he put up with a new song.
He sort of teased it in an interview that he might develop a new sort of iconic Labour song if they win this election in a big way like they did in 1997.
We thought actually it could be, oh to joy, the European Union's national anthem, or sort of not national, but the European Union anthem.
Because he said a few months ago that he thought that song was brilliant.
It had a great sense of driving purpose and togetherness.
So yeah, perhaps that could be the new Labour song.
Pick up The Evening Standard newspaper for more news, interviews and analysis, or head to standards.co.uk.
Thanks for listening.
We're back tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock.
