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With me now is the former UKIP and Conservative MP Douglas Carswell
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Good morning, Douglas. Thanks for your company. I guess, as I just described in the introduction, you are the OG high-profile defector
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UKIP, sorry, Tories to the UKIP back in 2016. What do you make of Rosendale's defection and indeed the wider influx of Tories
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now making their way to reform? Is that an issue, do you think? It's not great news for the Conservatives
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One of the reasons why I think it's really bad, Andrew Rosendale was a sort of totemic MP in 2001
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He won in Romford at a time when many Conservatives felt they couldn't win
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He was very, very good and very, very effective at reaching out to voters who had given up on the Conservatives
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So for Andrew to give up on the Conservatives now, it's pretty grim news
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What do you make of the influx of Tories? There are some concerns from reform voters saying, look, if we wanted to vote Tory, we would have just stuck with the Tories from yesteryear
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Is there a real argument that reform is at risk of welcoming too many sort of, I was going to say, failed politicians of the past
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Well, it's interesting. Farage seems to have said that there's a deadline
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He doesn't want reform to basically become a second chance lifeboat for failed Tory politicians
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And I think it's probably quite important that he sets a deadline. But equally, there are some very talented people in the Conservative Party
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There are some very capable people like Andrew Rosendale, like Robert Jenrick
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Look, at some point, if you think that Britain needs to be saved
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if Britain needs to be rescued from the current disastrous condition of the country
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the right is going to have to come together. So, you know, it's great to see reform doing well, you know
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but fundamentally, I think we need an alternative to the left, And that probably at some point going to mean reform and the Conservatives at some point either coming together by one lot joining reform or some kind of deal But right now clearly reform has the momentum
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Do you think there's a chance that they've peaked? There were some whispers from Farage directly or maybe somebody close to him who said that they feared they may have peaked
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I think there's going to be ups and downs, but they've sustained a pretty significant lead for
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well, eight or nine months now. I wouldn't worry too much. There will be times when
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you know, that polling lead narrows. But overall, I just don't see the Conservatives
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forming a credible opposition right now. They're very hesitant to do and say the things that need
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be done and said to rescue the country. Now, that may change. But one of the reasons why I think
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Robert Jenrick's defection to reform was so significant is if the Conservatives were going to
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rise to the occasion, I think it would have been because people like Robert Jenrick
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were leading it. That's obviously not going to happen now. And I think that more or less
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makes it, you know, it's difficult to see how Kemi Badendoc is going to compete effectively
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with Nigel Farage's reform party now. I guess on the flip side, though, she has improved at the ballot box
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She's kind of been a bit more coherent in the last four or five months. And maybe the argument is that's why Jenrick defected anyway in the first place
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because he wanted to be leader of the Tories. He saw that Kemi was pulling her socks up and thought, well, I'm done with this
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I'll just go to reform. I'm not really, you know, I'm 4,000 miles away from what's happening in Westminster
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so I'm not really the person to talk to about this, but I suspect that actually this idea
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that somehow Kemi Badendoc is, you know, suddenly found a second wind and is improving her performance
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this is all Westminster bubble talk It just doesn really seem to be reflected in the polls I just don really think that after nearly a year on the job there any sign that she putting together
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a credible alternative. Whereas I think people like Danny Kruger and James Orr in reform are
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putting together a credible alternative. So I think the issue really is, what does Britain need
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to do to fix the mess it's in. Britain has been let down by successive governments for 20 years now
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It needs fundamental reform. I have to say Danny Kruger and Nigel Farish
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seem to be the only people in British politics that are addressing some of the fundamental problems
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that the country faces. I think the Conservative Party is just too reticent, too reluctant
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They haven't committed clearly to undoing all the human rights nonsense. They haven't committed clearly to coming out of the various international treaties so that we can stop the boats
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They're too reluctant. And frankly, I don't think Britain has time to wait for a bunch of centrist dads in the Tory party to accept that what they did on everything from climate change to immigration was wrong
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The country just doesn't have time for that. So I think I think that's fundamentally why the Conservative Party is is in such dire straits
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well i would say as well just on that point i mean zahawi's um defection to reform was fairly
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underwhelming that he was one of those climate change zealots the net zero zealots and he's now
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in the ranks just before i let you go douglas um you've been with you've been familiar friends
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colleagues with farage since you know 2016 a long time um how has he changed since 2016 and also
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uh i'll ask another question just whilst i'm here yapping away what do you make of lisa nandy's
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comments about calling him a fascist? Lisa Nandy, you know, we often talk about
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the poor caliber of British politicians and I think Lisa Nandy personifies that
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decline in ability There she is talking about Farage and reform and implying somehow that they are fascistic It her party that is cancelling elections It her party that wants to abolish trial by jury It her party that has introduced
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reforms to UK law that now basically treat people differently based on their race and their ethnicity
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It's extraordinary that she uses such inflammatory language given the track record of her own party
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So I think the less we hear from Lisa Nandy, the better
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But, you know, fundamentally, I think that reform, it's for reform to lose the next election
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They're in a very strong position. And, you know, Nigel, unlike when I joined UKIP back in 2014, 2015, he now has a team around him
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He doesn't just have Danny Kruger and James Orr. He's got people like Robert Jenner
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A team is beginning to emerge around him. And I think that bodes very well. You know, if if you remember what it was like a decade ago, Nigel was a one man band then
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He's not now. And I think he's certainly got the chance now to, I think, become the next prime minister
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Yeah, I remember when I was a young local newspaper reporter, maybe 16, 17 years ago, Farage rocked up at my local newspaper
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I was expecting him to come in a fairly decent car. Anyway, he rocked up in a clapped out, I think it was an old Volvo
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which, you know, the wheels are almost falling off. And he was going to Hove Town Hall in Sussex to give a speech
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And there was a bane crowd of leftists. Even back in the day, that was still going on. But, yeah, he's come a long way
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Douglas, thanks very much. I think you're in Mississippi, aren't you, which has got a GDP higher than the UK, I think
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Yeah, Mississippi's per capita GDP has now overtaken the UK. last year household income grew by about 4%. We've not had that level of growth in Britain in many
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a decade. So Mississippi is on the up and if Britain really wanted to grow
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they could learn from the United States, particularly from the southern states like Mississippi
