Racism, misogyny, Islamophobia - Is this the real Reform? | The News Agents

Is what we saw on ITV last night a few bad apples, or is what we saw the party itself? Undercover reporters were in various places embedded with reform councillors expressing views that were offensive. Drag them at their homes, stick them on planes and **** them off to Pakistan. Bigoted. If it's an Asian name I'm not even knocking the door. Racist. Parasites, absolute parasites. this is the beginning of what could be an extraordinarily painful weekend for reform if the worst is yet to come the News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK opening up a world of opportunity this is a global production the muslim thing that is going to be that thing that takes over everything and then everyone just has one religion because apparently king Charles is a ******* Muslim. Have you ever heard of that one? What's that? Say it, Adam. Charles is a ******* Muslim. Yeah. Someone from the inside saw a ******* prayer mat and all that in one of his ******* rooms. Yeah. I think that's ******* traitorous. That was Reform Party councillor Dean Miller from Bromley opining that the king is a ******* Muslim. That is, the king who is also the supreme governor of the Church of England. There are claims facing the party of racism, misogyny, bigotry and a whole lot more. Reform is in bunker mode today. But how long can they stay there if things are about to get a whole lot worse? Welcome to the News Agents. It's John. It's Maitlis. And just a few weeks after the Channel 4 investigation, which showed the leadership of reform apparently willing to take backhanders and all sorts of ways of raising money for the party that were not entirely in line with electoral law so ITV last night broadcast a bit of a documentary that is coming on sunday where undercover reporters were in various places embedded with reform councillors so elected officials from the Reform Party not just kind of ordinary people who are out canvassing but the part of the party's representatives in you know governments around uh and councils around the country expressing views that were offensive bigoted sexist misogynist racist and as you say Emily potentially with a whole lot more to come Yeah, to put this in context, ITV has spent a year going undercover with parts of the Reform Party, councillors in Solihull, councillors in Bromley, and we are led to believe within the Reform Party HQ, within the press office, which we think is coming on Sunday. So we've just had, if you like, a sample taste of some of those first clips, but they're pretty jaw-dropping frankly the stuff about the king being a Muslim was explained lastly by the councillor who's now resigned as I think he said I was heavily medicated at the time you know I'm not sure I was in my right mind but it doesn't sound out of kilter with some of the other pronouncements that Reform councillors have been making Alan Feeney another one deputy mayor of Solihull since May. I mean, this only goes back to the election in May. So it's the freshest iteration, if you like, of the Reform Party. He was calling Asian homeowners parasites. He states in the clip that we've seen so far that he thinks no more than 1% of the British population can be non-white. And he then goes on to insist on Birmingham City Council and in Solihull. And what we understand from the film is that he draws a line between the stuff that he says out loud and the stuff that he says to his mates in the pub in other words there is an understanding that what he says would not be tolerated tolerable by most people who heard it but he says it anyway i mean we can have the chat about what where the you know where the British public is on some of this um language but i think it's significant that Nigel Farage who normally runs towards the gunfire quite enjoys taking on whatever he calls the establishment last night cancelled a major announcement that was due to take place a sort of media appearance of a press um call in Essex which would have gone on this morning so on some level uh the party have heard what these men have said and realized not just that they have to be collateral damage and go but that this is the beginning of what could be an extraordinarily painful weekend for reform if the worst is yet to come yeah and Reform have put out a sort of sort of slightly trenchant petulant statement they've you know accusing ITV of having infiltrated our workplace including commissioning an undercover reporter to provide altered identification documents a false address and false credentials so they could be given access to Reform's headquarters computer systems and spy on its employees it said the report the party said that this came at a time when Farage and other members of Reform were being targeted by individuals who wished them harm i mean look i'm sorry yeah you're going to go undercover because frankly if you go undercover that's where you find out some stuff that you might not find out otherwise and it has been a legitimate source of journalistic inquiry for years the hidden camera going undercover because that is the way you find stuff out and you there are very strict editorial controls normally associated with that which ITV says it has followed they said it was Ofcom compliant from start to finish in other words i don't think they'd be going to this without having it heavily lawyered right the way through exactly and so you know what and you find out stuff where i what's so interesting about the reform statement is they're shooting the messenger rather than the message you know it's the problem is what the documentary reveals not the way they got the information i think we should let you hear a little bit more so this is not coming from our mouths but theirs if it's an Asian name i'm not even knocking the door they are not voting Reform i ain't wasting my time look at this one two three four five that one might belong to him i don't know but again this is just what we're infested bit that's why they're buying along here because the houses have got big gardens they're absolute they're parasites absolute parasite it's like on partridge isn't it alan's rice is killing us here and the influence as well you know they're in our judiciary they're in our schools they're in our health care they're everywhere and they are not working on our side they're against us you know that amongst the asian community around there it is seen as i mean that you're targeting asian people i'm targeting extensions if it's them that's building them fine if it's if somebody else that's building them fine i've got no interest in the who i'm only interested in the what so when a house comes up for sale white people need to be in there you almost need to out out muscling the muslims you'd need a proper nuclear option like literally drag them out their home stick them on planes and **** them off to pakistan which you'll never do in a month of sundays i think what he's so revealing about that is you see the mask slip that there he is the acceptable face of reform when he's knocking on someone's door but the moment the door is shut and he thinks he's in safe territory you know it's all they've infested this and they've taken over that and we've got to get them on a ******* plane and get them out of the country as fast as possible and that you think is where the real heartbeat is of people like him who are in reform and remember this comes years after Nigel Farage said yes we have a few bad apples but we're going to root them out there's no place for them in the reform party and here we are in 2026 they're still there. Yeah I mean that was when he was getting elected in Clacton first time round in 2024 he said we're going to professionalize the party we're going to clean it up and presumably with the amount of money that's coming in now with the millions in donations that is coming into the party you would have thought it would be used for precisely that you'd kind of want to know who is coming in who is getting elected and whether frankly they're going to embarrass you because the question is not really what happens to Old Dean in Bromley or Alan in Solihull they are you know in the crudest terms expendable to the Reform Party but if this goes right to the heart of the leadership if there is somebody inside the press office who has actually been hearing stuff that goes to you know the the senior leaders the the very heartbeat that is making Reform work then that becomes quite quite uh inescapable for them i think and i don't want to get ahead we don't you know don't want to get ahead my skis we don't know what we're going to hear on sunday But I do think it's interesting that Richard Tice's first response to this, and I don't know how much he'd heard, to be fair. You know, I don't know if he'd he'd waited for this to appear when he was speaking a couple of days ago. He clearly got wind of of this report coming and he tried to sort of pass it off with this sense that it was just the language that ordinary people use. Right. This whole idea that, well, stop being so elite, stop being so middle class, stop being so judgmental. This is just how ordinary people talk. And I do think that's a kind of fascinating place. I mean, we're going to be speaking to Tim Montgomery a little bit later, who was of the Reform Party till not long ago. I think it's a really interesting point for us to explore, which is, has Trump shifted the whole Overton window so far that this becomes normal talk? Or are people actually going to be horrified and deeply, deeply offended by the sense that because you are an ordinary person or a working class person or somebody who has a bit of a giggle and a bit of a joke, you would come out with this stuff? Look, there is a central question that arises from all of this. Is what we saw on ITV last night a few bad apples or is what we saw the party itself? Because if Richard Tice is saying that's just the way people talk, then you are making it permissible to use the P word to describe people from the Indian subcontinent. you're making it acceptable to say all sorts of things about people that they've infested that they are this that they are that they're you're sanctioning it essentially that language is fine and if that is all fine then that is the party and so Reform needs to decide what it is, is it a fully respectable mainstream party which just has stronger views on immigration and illegal immigration than say Conservatives or Labour or is it a place where you can be bigoted and racist and feel free to do that. Yeah, I mean, this takes you right back to Donald Trump in 2016 talking about locker room banter, right? We don't really have the idea of the locker room, but we do have pub chat. And I think it's worth us listening to a recorded conversation in the pub, which actually made my flesh crawl. This is two of the councillors talking about a female reform candidate. Oh, mate, if she was my daughter, So it's going to be bath night on a Thursday. Hey, time for your bath. I'll wash your butt through this time. Oh God, we're all going to end up in the papers. It would still be bath night on a Thursday. That is the language of child abusers. I mean, frankly, just to spell it out. bath night of your own child is understood in the language of victims as being the place that you were abused by a guardian or a parental figure so the fact that even the guy opposite listening to it kind of like does a sort of intake of breath means that he knows he's going into places which are, which are so beyond the pale of what should be normal pub chat. I can't work out if he's sort of almost, you know, stop me when I've said too much, you know, stop me when I've gone too far. And of course, nobody does. But I think that this is not to say that the racist or the anti-Muslim or the bigotry is any worse, but this is taking you into something I simply haven't heard before like we are now finding it okay to joke about incestuous child abuse in a pub with our friends against somebody who would become a colleague I mean I sort of I'm slightly lost here I know and it's worth saying that we just we had a conversation about this in the office before we came into the studio with the other kind of people on the production team all the women felt exactly the same as you did about just how utterly repellent it was that what was being articulated i mean i would just note quietly the kind of irony that you know which is the party that's made an awful lot of noise about grooming gangs and protecting the girls and protecting the women um it's Reform and here we have two Reform guys bantering in a pub in pretty ugly terms and again You know, what does Richard Tice say? Is that just the normal language that's acceptable because that's the way ordinary people... Oh, it's just a bath time joke. It's just a bath time joke. Oh, come on, lads. Don't be so po-faced. Yeah, don't be po-faced. Locker room, pub bants. Yeah. I'll tell you who's coming out of this really well this week, and it's made me sort of start thinking, I wonder what she knew. But it was only a week ago that Kemi Badenoch made that very clear line in the sand between conservatives and reforms in terms of values, in terms of what they stood for. She talked about the Britishness of her children, whatever their mixed race heritage. And I'm starting to think, God, I wonder if she, you know, if she got ahead of the game here, if she had a tip off or something. I mean, I don't know this. This is just, you know, sort of speculation. But she was so clear in that speech that she did not want to fight the drama queens of reform anymore. And the leadership were people who were accountable for this dreadful language. and here we are a week later 10 days later literally seeing her words sort of come to life in the form of a of a video which kind of spells it out to the point where it becomes unavoidable if you are voting for Reform you know who you may be picking as your candidate look we've spoken before about Farage copying from the Trump playbook yeah never surrender always double down And it's just locker room banter, which was what Donald Trump said after he was caught on that Access Hollywood tape being able to kiss women and grab them by the pussy and all the rest of it that was on that vile tape. And sure enough, Donald Trump did survive and he did face down his opponents and, you know, he got elected in 2016 and that has been his M.O. I'm just not sure, you know, how far. And this is, again, the Overton window about how much it shifted. i'm just not sure that that is acceptable in the context of british politics to make that the norm where you can say whatever the **** you like about women about muslims about jews about black people about brown people i think there are still levels of decency in this country i'm sure there are some people who do say these things i'm sure there are people who are so worked up about some of the issues around illegal immigration and i think they're right to be worked up about those issues There's other kind of phrases that you thought were banished to the 1980s. Words that you kind of haven't heard for years are suddenly back. But I don't think that's the majority. And I think that Ken McBean was right to draw that distinction. In a moment, we'll pick up with Tim Montgomery, who has had an interesting journey inside and outside of reform. What does he make of what we're hearing now? Now, time to thank our partner, HSBC UK. So, what actually makes a bank account Premier? Well, an HSBC Premier account gives you exclusive access to plenty of perks that make you feel extra special, including offers and rewards across travel, dining, shopping and experiences. That sounds great, but I'm particularly intrigued by the experiences bit. Yeah, through Premier Lifestyle, customers can now enjoy priority access and exclusive ticket allocations for major music tours, sports events and theatre productions. Nice. So it's not just about what your bank account does for your money. It's about the extras it can do for you too. Exactly. Everything's Premier when your bank account is. Search HSBC Premier. At HSBC UK, you're backed by the current account switch guarantee. We're joined in the studio now by commentator Tim Montgomery, who was instrumental in setting up Conservative Home. who then joined Reform and has since exited Reform or was exited from Reform. And that came after you were critical of the party and its mechanisms after the kind of undercover Channel 4 report. And here we are a few weeks on and we've had another report this time from ITV. What did you think when you were watching it? Did you recognise those people that were filmed? To be honest, I didn't. I congratulate ITV on exposing what needed to be exposed. Those views were reprehensible and those people should have no place in a democratic political party. I can honestly say, with the exception of finding some people at the party conference previously, last year, at the reform conference, who had despicable views and who were reported. I've been out on the campaign trail with reform members for most of the two years I was a member, and I didn't see what that ITV documentary uncovered. I'm not denying that it's a problem inside reform and it needs to be dealt with, but I do not think at all that that is typical of reform membership. And I say that, John, as someone who's been very critical of the reform leadership, and they need to get on top of vetting and there's work still to be done, but i really do not think it's typical of the average reform supporter and activist i just wonder though because you sort of sense there was a knowingness about that when they were canvassing they knew what face they had to put on and when the cameras they thought weren't on them the mask slips and they go into well just as well we didn't say that for the papers or you know don't want that to be on tv yeah well look my own view is that um reform now have a lot of money in their coffers and they should be able to be able to afford the rolls royce of vetting procedures but people who are determined they will get through vetting and my own experience sort of in the Conservative Party and of years of getting to know activists you only really get to know them um after a long session of canvassing usually in the pub when the candidate or the mp isn't there and it's probably the third fourth or fifth time before they really reveal their true selves now i don't know why itv chose the particular people that they did was it random was it on a tip-off i imagine it was some kind of tip-off that they found those people because i think if you randomly went to the average reform member or branch you wouldn't find those sorts of views i guess the interesting thing about vetting them is that you find out whether people are polished enough to say the right thing you don't actually know what's inside people's mind you can never know that but what we are grappling with at the moment partly in response to Richard Tice's own comments are whether this is normal for the British public whether that kind of view is normalized now for the British public the anti-Muslim sentiment the anti-Pakistani sentiment the racist sentiment I mean some of the misogyny, misogyny was very striking actually that was one of the things that I was actually really taken about I found it unbearable you know we talked about that a little bit um earlier but it is are we saying that british people are just getting used to this now that no no i don't know quite i've seen richard tice's comments not perhaps in full context i don't know why he said that i don't think that's typical of most british people and it's so you think they'd call it out in the pub if you i mean not you but if if people if men heard their friends talking in those terms in the pub do you think they'd actually call it out because so much of this comes down to complicity like oh well he was a bit drunk oh well we'll love yeah well people just because i think one of the excuses that one of the people in the tape used was that they were on medication you don't become a different person you know just because of medicine you just become an exaggerated form of yourself um no i i've not heard that sort of language in any group that i've been part of in any pub you know football crowds whatever um i'm a regular football supporter go to lots of games i haven't heard anything quite as bad as that i do not think That's typical of British people, let alone reform. Yeah, just staying with the Richard Tice comments, because it does sound as though Richard Tice is saying, yeah, those views, yeah, that's what people say, that is our party. Good old common sense. And I wonder whether, well, you know, are they, did what we hear last night, is what we heard last night, the voices of a few bad apples, or is that the party? Well, I've tried to give my view. But Richard Tice's comments make it seem, well, that is the party. Look, there were lots of things said by those people that are no longer, quite rightly, no longer a part of reform anymore. They've been removed. That's the most important thing that reform can do. When bad views are discovered, take action against them. But most of the views that we heard in the ITV report were despicable. And Emily and I said that I was particularly struck by the misogyny. So let's just say one thing. Some of the views like there is a general concern about Islamification in certain parts of the country. Now, that's a legitimate concern, I think. And some of the views were absolutely unacceptable in any way. I don't precisely know what Richard was saying. Was he talking about the acceptable part of that conversation, those conversations we had or the unacceptable? If he was saying that they're generally part of the national conversation, well, he was wrong. But if he was saying that let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater and censor everything, well, I would understand where he was coming from. So, you know, the men at the top, I'm going to call them the men because there's, you know, there's sort of four prominent sort of leadership roles, aren't there? Whether it's Zia Yusuf, Nigel Farage, Jenrick or Tice. Do you, I mean, how of those men? That is a problem. There isn't enough women in reform. I think the board now has Andrea Jenkins and Nadine Doris, a board of 12, has two women on it. I think HQ is very macho, very male, quite young male. And I think there is a lack of maturity and a lack of female voices. I don't know whether that was where you were going, Emily. No, it wasn't actually. That certainly is one of my concerns about the organisation and its internal structure. I suppose what I want to pinpoint, Tim, is you have worked closely with the leaders, right? How many of them do you think share views that are heading in the direction of the voices we heard on tape? Not at all. Not at all. What I got into trouble with reform was I've always regarded Nigel Farage as someone who polices the right in a way that Jeremy Corbyn never policed the left. You know, he's kept Tommy Robinson out of reform. But recently, particularly since the rise of Restore, I've noticed him being more indulgent, for example, of Zia Youssef and saying some of the things that Zia Youssef has been saying. And I've never really understood what Nigel is playing at in that, because that isn't his typical approach to politics. I mean, Jenrick just last week talked about using lethal force against immigrants, and we had to dissect whether he meant, you know, asking the Royal Marines to shoot people in boats. i i think what is generally genuinely true is that reform have been spooked by the rise of restore and i think the rise of restore restore is a very different party from reform its approach to deportation the behavior of some of its activists in a way that reform takes action against people who mispay restore doesn't um and so there is something out there perhaps this is partly what richard tyson was talking about there is something out there unacceptable views that i would regard as unacceptable you would regard as unacceptable that most Reform members regard as acceptable are abroad in a way they weren't before yeah but this is really interesting because i think my own view is Reform should be challenging Restore and saying we want nothing to do with your views right and appealing to people like my mum who basically who believe in most of Reform's policies but don't like the men but they sound actually they sound enviable they sound like they envy Restore's position, rather than knock it back. I mean, take something like, and this is a different one altogether, but the Patriot platform, the people who were rampaging all over, I think, was it Portsmouth and Southampton? I mean, Reform didn't know how to address that. They didn't know whether to say that is thuggish, vigilante behaviour, or whether to say, come on over, right? Well, you asked a question about Reform yes people at the top of Reform. I don't think that they believe in the same stuff that Restore is putting out really but it's just as bad to me as if they don't believe it but they're acting out those lines in order to appeal to Restore okay voters and Nigel Farage needs to decide very soon because the tactical voting problem against Reform that is Reform's number one problem is only going to get worse so long as it continues to play footsie with Restore and i do not understand why Nigel Farage hasn't already drawn a line and said we're going to go after middle England not the Restore he should do to Restore what Kemi has just done to yes absolutely 100 and just when you hear Zia Yusuf i mean the last time we were in a studio together was just after Zia Yusuf had made those comments about the Labour candidate for Holborn and Southwark and when he said you know uh she was born in Somalia do you understand what's happening i mean frankly from the labour party's point of view of view it was marvelous that Zia Yusuf said that But it was downright racism, wasn't it? Well, it's certainly not a view that I would support. And I think when you... Is Zia Yusuf out of control? I do not know why Nigel allows him to say the things that he does. And when I first went into Reform, Zia Yusuf was the one that was most concerned. When Sarah Pochin, the Reform MP, came in on a by-election, said her thing was about the burqa, you know Zia was very concerned about all of that only this week actually he's you know distanced himself from Suella Braverman's remarks about Englishness so there's a lot of good in Zia Yusuf but he does seem to be playing a role and there are others in reform playing a role of trying to stop the leakage to Restore look and Restore will do massive damage to Reform and just three or four percent if they win that at the next general election will stop reform winning seats but the bigger danger is that every time they chase a Restore vote they're losing Middle England on a much larger scale and that's what they should be focusing on for somebody who's now talking sorry tim but i'm probably being too verbose no not at all it's just you keep using this phrase middle england yeah and as john said you originally set up ConservativeHome you were the sort of the arch sort of you know tea leaf reader of conservatism in this country why did why did they lose you what how has reform policy-wise got you and and conservatism has lost you well there are many reasons but the conservative party in office did the opposite of what it promised to do on a whole range of issues and i still don't think it really has come to terms of how it failed so comprehensively in government so you would still vote reform would you um i would vote for reform in well i think to be honest what we have now in the uk is we have two center-right parties we have a center-right party in the south a martz and spencer party the conservatives the appeals to the home counties and people who are better off and then we have a northern particularly actually east west divide as important as north south slightly more sort of blue collar in feel and that party is reform and for all of reform's troubles it's still got 20 percent of the vote with the 75 million pounds in the bank it's committed to target people in those seats i would be very surprised if reform didn't win a hundred plus seats at the next general election so somehow we have to get used to the current these two parties living next door to each other i'm just going to push you a tiny bit unkindly on what emily's just asked you about how you're going to vote i think you still live in salisbury or there about yeah well john glenn is a very good friend of mine and he's my local mp so and he was on the news agents earlier this week he's a great man and so a bit of a cop-out but i should be voting for my for my friends yeah okay so that's that question how many more scandals can nigel farage and the reform party survive i mean we've got the investigations we've got the parliament i almost lost count we've lost the parliamentary standards investigation into not just the five million pound the five million pound gift then we've got the donations then we've got the undercover reporting about whether they were trying to get around electoral law. We've now had the ITV investigation, and we haven't seen the full details of that yet. We've only kind of got the snippets of it. How much more can he withstand of this? Well, he's withstood an awful lot of it already. The most remarkable thing about the reform vote, really, is given all that you've rightly just summarised, and lots more besides, in terms of other difficult news stories reform have had to cope with their vote is very loyal and i think that's partly because um people do think there's an unfairness in how reform are treated you know i i've tried to deal very uh directly with all the questions you've thrown at me i'm not um distancing or or saying that this um investigation isn't important but where is the investigation by a mainstream media organization into the green party and the anti-semitism within its ranks where is the investigation into sort of the inner city Labour heartland. Oh come on Tim, you don't, I mean like if you go through any of the mainstream papers or news agencies I would say I think they've been pretty condemning of the Green Party. I mean we've given the Green Party a tough time. But where is the undercover investigation? You don't need one, I mean they're saying it all out loud, right? You don't need to go undercover at the Green Party to find out. I think there's still problems of anti-Semitism for example in the Labour Party in the inner cities where is the investigations into that? I do think part of why reform get away with things perhaps they shouldn't get away with is a sense that the mainstream media is out to get them in a way that isn't true of other political parties and I would say there's some basis for that Do you not, sorry, I think that's really interesting because I mean it has long been suggested that the media gave reform an incredibly easy time that Nigel Farage has been the darling Well I think in the Mail, in the Telegraph, in the Times, they have sort of, you know The Times has been a real critic of Recently, but not for the last 10 years No, for a lot, I've been at the Times, I was a commentator at the Times and I saw a lot of it happen when I was there I think you're right about the Telegraph and the Mail and the Express and the Sun but I think the Times has always been quite I mean I would say that, you know, Labour leaders traditionally have said they never get a fair a fair standing you know with them with the mainstream broadsheet newspapers um and so i guess maybe everyone feels that they're hard done by in the press maybe that's what a free press is yeah just on one other thing that i know you follow u.s politics closely and i remember us meeting up in washington when you were over do you think very good childhood i think if i remember we did we we absolutely did do you think that farage can play the trump playbook of just saying they're all out to get us they're a bunch of bastards this is the mainstream media we can say what we like the overton window has moved we you know this is fine this is what ordinary people think does that work or is british politics different from the us look there's a certain thing reform social media uh game is the best in the business and nigel farage has definitely learned many things from his closeness to the republican Party in America that benefited reform. But I think it's also the case that certain things are difficult to transfer. Rahim Kassam, someone who has been over in America for some time. He worked very closely with Farage. He was one of the proper ******* lunch boys, from what I remember. That's right, yeah. And he's now back in the UK. And I think he is sort of encouraging an attitude within reform to go and attack the mainstream media whenever they have something like this investigation is published. I mean, he worked very closely with steve bannon so you'll say it's the bannon playbook yeah and that doesn't work here because you know john the view that the average person in america has of the mainstream media is much less sympathetic than the average person in britain has for example the bbc the mainstream media in britain does not have the same low level of regard that is true in america so you have to be careful about importing directly from america and people who have you know have made their money uh out of a particular shtick in the u.s scene they shouldn't just come back here and be accepted as a advisors to reform and their approach is embraced because it will not help reform at all. Tim Montgomery, great to have you in, thank you so much, thank you so much as we sit here in the studio at a quarter to two on Thursday afternoon so far there has been no comment from Nigel Farage or Zia Yusuf on the ITV investigation however Nigel Farage has been on the television talking about the Chagos Islands and the deal he would have done with Donald Trump they've never had jobs, they've never worked of course they've never worked, they've never run companies, they've never made money and lost money, they wouldn't have a clue how to deal with Donald Trump I'd have gone in and said, right you know what mate, Chagos it's yours, Diego Garcia in perpetuity, the most strategic American political or military base in the world, which it is, outside mainland America, Diego is the most important thing America has for nuclear subs, for long-range bombers, for all of it, I'd have said, right I'm guaranteeing you that I'm giving up on this surrender in return, just please stop talking about the Falkland Islands, I know you like Malay So the deal that Nigel Farage was offering is that America gets the Chagos Islands and Donald Trump just doesn't say much about the Falklands It doesn't strike me as the best deal ever for British sovereign territory. Yeah, look, Chagos is the story that just keeps giving or rather just keeps taking because nobody really understands it properly. But essentially, in that clip to Benny Johnson Farage was saying, have the Chagos, leave Falklands alone Kemi Badenoch steps in and says what that's pretty humiliating she says giving away British territory in return for somebody keeping quiet is not a deal and she does seem to have a point which is you know to your point what are we getting in exchange like a nothing for a giveaway what are you talking about what is interesting about this story is actually frankly not the position that Farage has taken nor the position that Kemi Badenoch has taken which each speak to their own constituencies but the fact that the White House has now come in and attacked Kemi Badenoch on Farage's behalf. In other words, the weight of the White House is firmly behind the Reform Party leader and is actually having a go at Kemi. Yeah, and also it was the Pentagon as well, Pete Hegseth, Department of War. Fat Boy Pete. Fat Boy Pete. Frat Boy Pete or Fat Boy Pete. I thought you said Fat Boy Pete. You can't say that because he doesn't like fatties. frat boy in chief right the Defence Department have also weighed in and a lambasted Kemi Badenoch saying she should keep out of it and keep her mouth shut and what does she know about it why is the White House why is the US administration doing Nigel Farage's bidding I mean it may not have the British political establishment on his side it does seem to have the American political establishment firmly locked up we'll be back tomorrow see you then bye bye bye for now the News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK opening up a world of opportunity this has been a global production