Nigel Farage's explosive resignation: What's REALLY going on and where does it leave Clacton?

Coming up on Chopper's political podcast. I've got a problem with Calvin. You've been faced. Oh, yeah Welcome back to choppers political podcast where the heat in Westminster is very hot The temperature is rising and so is the political temperature for Nigel Farage and reform UK. It is absolutely Kicking off to go over this past week and understand where we are What this means for reform UK and Nigel Farage I've got with me Tom Harwood of course my colleague at UB news and our deputy political editor both wearing Respondent if you're watching this on YouTube our white suits Tom Harwood. Thank you for joining us Great to be here. First question is Nigel Farage still the MP for Clacton? No, right What's happened? In fact, he has been appointed as the steward and bailiff of the manor of North Sturt Right now this is a complicated Archaic procedure because turns out that if you're an MP, you're not actually allowed to resign your seat You've been put there by the people. It's only the people that can determine whether you're in a job, but there is a Constitutional quirk of history that allows MPs to technically resign. Okay, so he's holding a new office But no longer the MP for for Clacton was was triggered this of course We got very excited. I was on your show on Tuesday going through all this it was quite exciting We have a statement of a teasing tweet on on X at midday saying he's making a statement by his Time in public life and we geared up to this 2 p.m. Announcement right on your show What did he say or do you make of it? Well Nigel Farage said that he was under attack basically he was being Attacked by the media he was attacked by mobs in his car He revealed some pretty personal ways in which his knife has been made hell over the last decade or so Things that he hadn't spoken about before in public one particularly memorable point of the speech He spoke about a car that he was in with his family being Surrounded by a mob of protesters and actually being written off as a result of that I'm gonna put it there Tom because I actually knew about this it happened before the 2015 General election when I was following Farage throughout that entire period of the Telegraph and we were aware that a Pub had been stormed when he was having a family lunches family were there They tried to leave quickly in in his car and that was jumped on and he said in that this week written off The reason why we don't talk about this as journalists is we don't want to make any worse for Nigel Farage Yeah, and I don't think family ever fair game in politics. They shouldn't be and they aren't it's not their choice Who their parents are if they're in politics and we never talked about it and that's why we knew about it It's up to him to disclose it. He did that he was trying to make a point Why won't the state protect me from from people want to hurt me and maybe even the media and lots of politicians feel the same Way, it's actually notable how Nigel Farage doesn't ever talk about his children It would be very easy for Nigel Farage to say to talk about his daughter For instance when he's accused of all of the various things, you know His policy and the Equality Act people say that the anti-woman party he could very easily make a point about wanting to protect people Like his daughter he never mentions I think the average Brit wouldn't even know that he had children let alone how many or what gender they were and this is actually a really interesting point Gordon Brown also never showed his children's faces in public to Keir Starmer until until until he resigned until he resigned and Then there was that famous picture of him and Sarah and his children walking out holding hands and then down down They are revealed that we may have we know that the Starmer children may be revealed in the same way by the way when he quits Maybe I feel like it's unlikely just because of the age that they are and the fact that he has been so keen to protect them Particularly during this awkward teenage part of my life, of course because we're always around these people Tom I have seen the Burnham family. I've helped mrs Burnham reverse our car outside at a football club and we wait to see what Andy Burnham will disclose about his family Until that happens, of course, we went to about them and that is fair. I think fair enough, isn't it? Well, well exactly I think politicians think of themselves as fair game They're very often willing to have things thrown at them. But of course, they're dead children. They're there Spouses, I mean these people haven't volunteered to enter public life in the same way But that's what politicians have themselves and his concern for them appear to be triggered. He was away at the weekend Some journalists from the broadcasting pool knocked on his door one of his many houses. He has maybe it's it Well, we say it's his door. His daughter was living there, but it's one of his properties. I think it is He owns the property we think Not on the door and he's got back to him in America But he exploded didn't hear that Nigel Farage is known to us all as a reform UK leader He's also a grandfather a proud grandfather and a proud father And I think when you start he's away out the country when his family getting pressured by journalists It completely triggered him in a way. I haven't seen in that cross ever you could see Perhaps the phrase is white cold rage That was a line crossed in his world I think so, but also it was the culmination I think of a lot of questions that for the first time really have been asked About Nigel Farage. He also sees not just a line between himself and his family but also a line between himself as an elected member of Parliament and his private life before he was a member of Parliament and this is another line that I Think got across in this speech this week, which was which was him saying that actually what I did before I was a member of Parliament actually in the two-year interregnum Between being a member of the European Parliament and a member of the British for four-year interregnum. Oh, yeah No, it was a minute 19. He stood down 2020 is when that was when he left the European Union at the end of January 2020 So that four-year interregnum of not being elected to any Parliament he went off and made a lot of money He was also given a lot of money by very rich friends of his he sees that as his personal business as a private citizen when he was most known to people in the country as someone who went on I'm a celebrity rather Than elected politician and Tom that extends to his tax affairs. So when we had the tax Limited information but tax information published by the main party leaders before the election. I went to reform you can say well Where's your class of Farage? No, he will not pose anything when he's a private individual So he sees his public life starting in July 2024 anything before that can't be disclosed And that's why he's in this mess at the moment because he received what he received what well He received a gift of five million pounds from Christopher Harbourn now the difficulty here with Nigel Farage's rule That anything before the 4th of July 2024 is not fair game Is that it's different from the House of Commons rule? Which is that for the 12 months before you're a member of Parliament you have to declare political Donations now there is a get-out clause however and this is what reform will tell you every single time when you ask them about the five million pounds or any other gifts about Nigel Farage's security or his living arrangements or whatever that the House of Commons doesn't require you to Disclose personal gifts so there is a difference here between something that is deemed to be a political guess and a personal gift the Detractors of Nigel Farage says well this five million pounds was clearly a political gift George Cottrell Donated gifts in kind Well, they were clearly political. That's what the tractors say. But what Nigel Farage says is no, this is personal It's about my personal safety. It's about my personal living arrangements And that argument continues and that argument is the absolute nerve of the mess He's in at the moment over this because his critics don't believe him when it's not a personal gift He is a personal gift Why won't you believe me and that arguably is why you go to a third party and ask that third party to adjudicate? That's why you have third parties to decide is it a personal gift or a political gift because it wasn't they could declared he's now investigating the Standards Commissioner and We'll see how it plays out. You got is it more than 300 pound is the is the that's right The minimum de minimis threshold, which is not very much cleared. Where do you stop Nigel Farage? He's declared other things to like payments from a website when he's doing personal messages. I think he's declared some of that Is that right? Yes, and of course, he's declared everything off to becoming a member of part Yes, but other people have been in hot water over this before. I mean Sakhir Starmer was the single largest donated to MP of any MP in the last Parliament and was late with several donations and they got a bit of a slap on the wrist for Not clear. He would see fees when he was a barrister before became an MP and they often paid quite late several years late And they say I'll declare that true But there was also hospitality that was incorrectly or just late declared now, of course The the prime minister's office would say well, it was all declared. Yes, but he did get reprimanded by House of Commons for late So we'll come to his response in a second Somebody with critics said he was a hissy fit when he announced his his resonation as the MP for Clacton Do you think that was miss? It's like mistimed. He talked about his family threats to his life Murder threats about Nigel Farage. Is that a hissy fit or is that a fair enough thing to talk about? Well, I think you can split the speech into two parts because very much and you could see the emotion Yeah, actually in Nigel Farage when he was talking about his family in particularly It's so interesting when politicians talk about their family so often that sort of Steely face that they put onto the public can sometimes break. Let's just hear a clip of what he said. I Will not tolerate Intimidation of my family. I will not tolerate the location of where they live being revealed I will not tolerate any of my family being endangered because of what I choose to do in public life So, yes, you could ask am I angry but I've never been angrier in my life I'm joined now by the founder and CEO of tally money Cameron Parry So what is tally money and what does it do? 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There's no hidden fees There's no effect spreads depending on the amount you put in and you just get to go Go ahead and be productive in your daily life build up your savings again because it's useful to do it now I was gonna say so you're not you don't necessarily people are what is going or it sounds a bit scary You can open a tally money account Transfer is there a minimum amount you have to transfer so you might think I'm just gonna play with this I'm gonna put 100 quid in it that I've got this month and I'm either gonna spend it and see if I feel like I'm Getting more value for money from my sale from the things that I'm buying or I'm gonna save it and watch how that Compares to maybe a hundred quid in your current account To find out more and to get an exclusive GB news offer simply scan the QR code or click the link in the description So you heard that emotion there in Nigel Farage's voice Tom? He clearly is cross that wasn't a hissy fit that is that is downplaying the anger of a father and a grandfather surely But there are two different issues here And I think this is what some of the critics of Nigel Farage have not been particularly clear about Farage is clearly very very annoyed that his family have been targeted in this way He's also frankly fearful Legitimately fearful for all of the threats that he has received against his own personal safety Only a fraction of which have ever been known about publicly and many many of which of course are known about privately He has 24-7 private security as a result of many of these threats. That's one thing but then what people talk about in terms of a hissy fit or a Attention-grabbing stunt is the very final element of that speech and he left the best for the last It was bombshell for the very last point of that speech which was he was resigning as a member of Parliament he has now resigned of course and Calling a by-election that he himself will be a candidate in okay He did that now you would normally expect in a by-election for the other parties to Line up strong candidates to try and kick their nemesis in this case Nigel Farage out of politics that hasn't happened Tom Harwood it's a mark of how strong Nigel Farage sees his position as Politically and frankly how strong the other parties think Nigel Farage's position is in Clacton itself and we might talk about the specifics of Clacton a little bit later But this is a mark of other other other parties simply knowing that they cannot win Against Nigel Farage and Clacton if they knew they could win they would stand I think that's clear if Labour thought it could win and Labour did used to hold the seat of Clacton they could Put forward a candidate if they thought they would win the Conservatives also used to hold the seat of Clacton until 2024 the Conservatives hold held the seat of Clacton and surely Farage knows that himself too That's why he resigned knowing he'll come back Well, he knows he will will and I've got a theory that actually in the world in which the other parties stood against Nigel Farage even in that world He would actually improve on his vote share in that seat compared to 2024 in 2024 reform polled 14% nationally Yeah And Nigel Farage got under 50% in the seat of Clacton now reform is pulling double that Nationally now and Clacton is the most demographically favorable seats to the Reform Party in the country Yes This is why Nigel Farage chose to stand there in 2024 and he knows that he would get a higher share of the vote now than he does in 2024 and the reason why I said in 2024 is the fact there's some polling done by our own banks in January 2024 of people in Clacton and it found if he was a candidate he would beat the Conservatives and did so didn't he? It was Giles Watling. Giles Watling was the MP there at the time So there we are then he's going to he's now Call this by-election, but all the other all the other main parties don't stand the candidate They so-called a vanity project. Although Rupert Laird was and was going to stand and didn't stand But he has now said that he will stand in Clacton, but not in this by-election He will stand if there is a second by-election And the same has been said I think by the other major parties that they will do the same That's because the investigation into his affairs carries on when he's restored as the MP presumably Right Mid next month So we're spending two hundred fifty thousand pounds of our tax money on a by-election that needn't happen and will restore Farage to his position. Well reform would of course say that they have Offered to pay the full amount and even though that's never before that has it It's never happened. He's a candidate and even though the Chancellor has said we will not accept this money You can't pay for your own by-election Interesting to note that one Andy Burnham MP back in 2008 Said that David Davis should pay for the cost of his own by-election. It's pulled the same stunt. Yes indeed So that's a difficult line for Andy Burnham to hold and of course as we all know HMRC accepts voluntary donations from any individual if you wanted to write a check if you didn't think you were taxed enough Christopher Hope yeah, you could write a check today to HMRC In fact any of us could which is why I just why I think it's a little bit odd when very rich people say I'm Not taxed enough Stopping you. Would you expect him to waver be waving a check around when he gets their sex as a candidate? I actually made this suggestion on Twitter and a couple of reform MPs liked this tweeze So I mean watch this space if Nigel Farage turns up at number 11 Downing Street with an enormous comedy check For a quarter of a million pounds to cover the cost They were there for the by-election because it'd be a political intervention rather than but you know, I might wave it outside the trench Yeah, yeah So that's yes, that's so he won't sign other candidates are standing. Someone is standing in this by-election Well, two people are as things stand and we're talking to you on Wednesday afternoon Who are the candidates in it in the capital by-election hoping to dethrone Nigel Farage Tom Harwood? well someone who refers to himself as count bin face who's become a staple of our politics for the last decade is Indeed standing in this in this by-election and has been doing the media rounds He's been interviewed by just about everyone under the sun. Okay, and and and has become a point of Fun to poke at Nigel Farage with the Chancellor and many others saying if Nigel Farage wants to spend the summer arguing with a bucket. Well, he can but But some arguing with a bin So I'm getting confused because count bin face used to be known as Lord Buckethead until there was until there was a copyright infringement Allegation against him because there's some sort of comic book character in some sort of parallel galactic world I think we're getting down into the real Properly Podcast for GB news. I've got a problem with Calvin who've been faced. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he can't stand for House of Commons He's a count. Oh very good. So he have to renounce his countship. However, I'm Tom Harwood there How do we announce it? He would have to like like Tony Bennett Tony Bennett, although Tony Bennett, of course wasn't a count It was a mere barrel, but he can't stand for the lower chamber. He can only go into the House of Lords Recommended perhaps though if he loses this the labor may say we can make will make him Lord bin face I see my position in the House of Lords Tom Harwood I suppose he could and of course he could choose to be called Lord bin face. Um a bit behind-the-scenes knowledge here He's not actually called Counts. No, he's not. That's a role. He plays. He was he called he's called Jonathan David Harvey according to Wikipedia, that's exactly right. It's read about by the way But a bit serious too, so Let's part the humor and I can ask you why is it that people can stand in by elections? Not as themselves that is an interesting point Um, it doesn't matter until they have a chance of winning but if he has a chance of winning and let me tell you he has a chance of winning because odds are falling in bin Face because if he's the only candidate there was one more boy Can I have a minute if he's the only candidate and all parties unite behind bin face and bin face? Gets more votes in the Farage bin faces the MP, but I'm being reminded by my producer Rebecca to call him counts. Let's give him his proper title So if count bin face does beat Nigel Farage Who are we who is the MP for Clacton is he called count bin face or is he called Barney Jonathan David Harvey? Which is the name on Wikipedia? Yeah. Well, it would be the the man Jonathan David Harvey Yeah, you take a box next to be faces name Tom Howard who this is the this underlies all democracy I'm so but I'm sure choppers, you know Many counts you will hear many counts many was the one count many election counts you will hear a name also commonly known as So for example, there will be many MPs who go by a shortened. My name isn't actually top Explaining you are called Tom Howard. Are you called bin faces? No, my name's Thomas I was christened Thomas, but I go by Tom and in the same way There will be many members of Parliament who who go by or to show you but it's a Joseph Exactly, I mean, I mean, I'm Liz truss. Her first name is Mary. Yeah, Mary trust. Yeah, Mary Elizabeth truss Yeah, and there are many many politicians. No, we've gone way down a rabbit hole Completely down a rabbit hole, but why don't we go to a foxhole next because there is another declared And that is Lawrence Fox, yes, he's still kicking around he stood for the London mayoralty a few years Came Almost last I think there was a there was a number of comedy characters for me She really is presenter of course back in the day former GB news presenter. He leads a party called reclaim. That's right Now this is a party that is well funded but not well electorally represent. No, it's it's it's fair to say There are a lot of parties on the right of politics that begin with an R. You've got reform restore and reclaim Yes, it gets incredibly confusing. He sits around the kind of freedom of speech space doesn't he? That's his big thing We launched it and he made an invention on question time I think that Meghan Markle and so forth that was before we had really restored the same way and we didn't certainly have restore Britain or Reform UK. So anyway, he may stand to He's declared that he will whether he gets the tin Signatures required to become a candidate from local people in the local area that remains he's is locally I think cabin face doesn't live in the area He's been saying though that nor in the night fire is barely there, too This is the first political attack Farage, of course would deny that were he here So yes, we may get this was extraordinary and it will be fun I we are speaking on Wednesday the rich should move on Thursday We're expecting the bilex to be held probably August the 13th of Thursday. That'd be a fun time there It's silly season gone wild, isn't it? What does it mean for? The Nigel Farage there's expression in politics. If you if you wrestle with a pig you get covered in mud He's learned himself to the level of a bin. He's fighting it against a bin now as critics would say Well, this is a bad look for Nigel Farage But I put it to you that Nigel Farage can probably say when he goes on stage at his party conference Which is now less than two months away. He will say I even tried to fight this divestment and they all ran away Yeah, he will win that one. I mean, so I think I always think with Farage he seems to win whatever he does, right? Yeah, I mean, of course two schools of thought here one It's gonna be a silly summer of farce where Nigel Farage is talking to himself and everyone's getting on with their business Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister Nigel Farage is off talking to people of tract and Burnham can probably just completely ignore it and appear Presidential over the top of it. That's there are half because of Ofcom rules So we can't really cover much of this because of Ofcom rules can that's right I mean we do both TV on the regular TV channels ours and others. You won't see this being played out It'll be a social media thing. Anyway, yeah, you won't you won't be able to see it being freely debated Yeah, there can be constituency reports where equal time is given to each candidate So if we if we have an interview with Farage we have to give count bin face the same time and Lawrence Fox the same Time as well now the wider point here is that yes A lot of the political establishment thinks that look Nigel Farage is going to make himself look very very silly and and he'll he'll win This but he'll but the turnout will probably be not particularly high He'll be standing on that stage alongside all these comedy characters and he'll look daft But there's the there's another point here, which is that they Were they did not stand against him because they didn't think they would win. That is incontrovertibly true There is another point here, which is that if the Standards Committee finds against Nigel Farage for his donations Yes, there isn't an automatic by-election there is the right of the people of Clacton to Petition for a by-election if recommended by the MPs if recommended by the MPs now the MPs will probably recommend that right But the people of Clacton might have just said hang on we've just had a by-election Now you need 10% of the entire electorate That's around 80,000 people and so 10% of that around 8,000 people need to sign that petition to have another By-election and they were just had a by-election. So there is a school of thought that actually goes does this Petition recall petition as it's known recommend if recommended by MPs Does that actually pass the 10% threshold if the people of Clacton are so tired of having voted and voted voted? Perhaps we don't actually have this second by-election after all. Well, I recall the 2008 Halterposen-Howden by-election and David Davies the MP Tory MP who quit the seat in protest of a big brother politics of the Labour government and no one stood Against him, but as it was a bit embarrassing for him I'm looking now at the list of candidates in Halterposen-Howden by-election Miss Great Britain party stood the Monserrate of East Luton party. The candidate was mad cowgirl The Socialist Equality Party stood Chris Talbot. These are all the names literally people used to the 25 candidates That was there an Elvis party was well, there was an Elvis So it was one called make British politicians history that was Ronnie Carroll a lot of independent candidates But there was the Church of the militant Elvis party David Bishop. They all got tens. Maybe a few hundred votes It was a whole kind of cavalcade again 25 26 candidates David Davis won it The view was in Westminster. He was brought down to their level and that was embarrassing And it took a long time for him to return to a cabinet level position because he was shadow home secretary He gave away that role. He would have been the home secretary. He went to his one two years later The Conservatives came into government. He could have been home secretary. He could have had a great office of state He could have been there for the long time instead He was relegated to the back benches until 2016 when Theresa May got in and he was given this role of Brexit secretary, which a lot of people have said subsequently He wasn't actually the real Brexit secretary He was the face of the project and he didn't really have any real power over how Brexit was going Which was evidenced by the fact he resigned because he couldn't Steer the position of Brexit at all But the point there by David Davis is he was brought down to the level of novelty candidates now Or would he just say We laugh it off. I mean, how do you approach a bin? I think if anyone can laugh How do you fight a bin in a debate? There was a doctor who episode where people had to fight bins at one point Anyway, um, I think if anyone can laugh this off, it'll be Nigel Farage But there's a deeper political point here, which will be he will say they're all in it together All these other parties the uniparty as reform has called it Have colluded to try and engineer this in this way to try to make me look silly all the other parties are really Too afraid to fight me. That's the line that he'll say which one will win in the country I think is yet to be done. I can't fight count bin face on policies. I've got some of them here Number one, I will cut your taxes and raise everyone else. I mean, that's just every politician Yeah corners to be refereed properly in football people to use peace speakerphone on public transport to be conscripted Well, I mean banned is enough but conscripted is a new I think that's a good idea I like number six Wi-Fi Wi-Fi on trains that works also trains that work My favorite one is he promises to build at least one affordable house So I think it's a bit more than this government's managed to do You love this one Tom number eight pensions to be double locked with an extra chain on the side Cyclists who break the highway code to be forced to ride unicycles instead good idea Elected mayors to be ineligible for Parliament until after their term of office That's quite good about Andy Burnham, of course, and so it goes and indeed previous prime ministers as well I remember I was I was actually at school at the time of the 2010 general election and We had a mock election in our school and I was very excited and entertained by the monster raving loony party and their Manifesto, which at the time I think my favorite policy of was in order to combat global warming will put air conditioning units on the outside of buildings to cool down the streets a Little Alan Hope howling Lord Hope who I will say is my cousin when I meet him at accounts is one of their is They're leader. I think great fun. There's a lot of fun behind Politics only in Britain can we have count bin face standing against a man? It could be prime minister in two and a half years time Don't guess in the United States of America before you go Tom Howard will will this be regretted by Nigel Farage? Yes, or no I think that depends what happens in the second by election if the second by election happens This will be a bit of a circus this summer, but I think it's yet to be certain how this will play out There are two different schools of thought Nigel Farage could use this as a springboard to say they're all the same They're all in it together. It's the uniparty or us versus the establishment on the other hand He could just end up with all of those Photographs of him standing next to a man with a bucket on his head No doubt someone in a chicken costume and no doubt someone else as well I've my final thought to you is this could help Nigel Farage It could give him time away from the TV cameras. No one can cover him because he's a candidate by election He can go to Clacton be at home a bit perhaps reboot Recalibrate because he's a man under pressure was seen up this week and then come back in September this party conference Having had a break from politics because I think he will win this by election and it'll just be around local people in Clacton It may be good for him. This is a actually a funny quirk of by election rules and restrictions for broadcasters You just cannot give time to the proper issues. You can't have a free-flowing discussion a debate we can on this point He knows the rules. He's all part of an off-camera. You check to the channel It has been exactly but on broadcast television and broadcast radio. You're incredibly restricted in what you can say around a by-election Or local election or any kind of thing like that and Strangely more and more people are now getting their news from podcasts from the internet from conversations like these this because it goes out Online, yeah, it's unregulated so we can talk about we will Attempt here we will and this this is a called choppers political podcast and we thank you for listening to us Tom Harwood been brilliant as ever. Thank you for coming on and thank you to all this isn't viewers wherever you are I tweet at Christopher Hope on X. I can never remember Tom Harwood's Twitter handle Which is Tom H F H. That's it. Thank you. I tweet at chopper at GB news dot UK I email rather than you can email Tom Harwood. He is Tom Don't Harwood at GB news dot UK So let us know what you think of our podcast if you enjoy the podcast Tell your friends if you really enjoyed it leave a five-star rating and review an Apple podcast Spotify they have other people to find it using the algorithm which works on these things Thanks the great team of colleagues behind the podcast at GB news Mick Booker and the podcast worker bees racking news and George McMillan, but most importantly of all Thank you again for listening and watching wherever you are. Keep supporting our work We are very very grateful, but until next time we won't be this mad next time, but until next time cheerio