How Damaging Is Reform's Donations Row?

0:00This BBC Podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. The conference time, and here we are, Joe Pike, Chris Mason, how lovely to be here. Hello, here we go for an autumn of... Well, every year it feels like there's more conferences that are newsworthy and that we find ourselves out. I think I'm going to be doing seven. Wow. This year, which is one more than last year, and this is the first one, which is where we start our road trips. Mary Way, this is the Reform Conference in Birmingham. We're in a huge aircraft hangar like NEC, where the party also had their conference last year. And we're kind of a bit in the thick of it.

1:00And goodness me, Reform has been in the thick of it in this last couple of days. It's been an eventful conference, a very eventful conference, not all for the reasons they would have chosen. I've been speaking to Nigel Farage, you guys have been... The things are Robert Jenryk speaks speech on stage about the economy. And we'll get to... And milling around all week. And milling around, which is probably the most important thing to do at conference. And we'll get into all of that as we are reunited for this Saturday's episode of newscast. Newscast from the BBC. Humanity's next great voyage begin. You know I like my buses, I'll come onto them. I see that he was just a mirror of a town. Oh, Lord, thinking about it like a panter helped. Do we play music now? What do we do? And what will you do? Stir it a wall. Hello, it's Laura in Birmingham. It's Joe, Pike in Birmingham. I'm Chris Mason in Birmingham. I'm Lake Joe in Laura on some stools. I know. Comfortable stools, actually. Well, I'm... In the middle of this vast hall surrounded by coffee shacks and lobbying stands and all the usual paraphernalia of a big conference.

2:06Which is what reforms conferences now, isn't it? That's right. And people walking past with a pint, please to see that. Nice to see you, sir. A pint in shorts. What a combat. This is tremendous. That's not a streaming food. Thank you. So, sadly, we can't show you that on camera. Or, indeed, if you're listening to this in your luggles, but a gentleman looking like he's having a great time in shorts, suede loafers and a pint at a tentative. And if you speak to people who organise this, they say a real big focus for them. It's trying to ensure that people coming here have fun. Because you have to pay just over 50 quid to come here as a member. A lot, right. But also, as a cost of maybe like a train or your petrol, maybe a hotel. And the way they run things on stage with parotechnics and music is different from the other parties. What you see here in terms of big double deck of buses, three double deck of buses and a JCB digger. I think just sort of look good and seem big. It's just different from some bonus playing. Bony M playing. Last night, the after passes. Yeah, in the after passing. And the thing is, and this is true of all party conferences, isn't it?

3:08There's broadly speaking, two types of attendee at a party conference. There were those who were there and who were being paid to be there. It's their job. And we're in that kind of category, feel like. Alongside the elected politicians. And then there's the activists who are giving up time, taking leave from work, paying for their own hotel rooms, etc. Well, yeah, alongside arguments about politics and policy and people and all of that, they want to have a good time. They want to have a pint in their loafers that tend to tune us out the afternoon. And frankly, who doesn't? Exactly. Is a thing, as you say there, Joe, that I think one of the measures of reforms success in the last couple of years. And we'll get into the woes that they're having at the moment. But just as we kick off, they have been able to make politics for their members look fun. They have looked like they've been having a good time. At time when other political parties have looked thoroughly miserable. That's not always been the case. But reform has created, I think, a real sense of camaraderie among their members. They love it. But the party leadership has not loved the last couple of days.

4:10So just in case you had been living under a rock, quit to remind us what's happened in the last 48 hours. So the key thing, and it's shaped the tone and tenor of so much of the conversation at the conference, both in terms of its public projection, but also at every level, from activists I've bumped into the hotel breakfast bar all the way to the leadership, has been shaped by that Channel 4 news film on Thursday evenings, and just as the conference was really getting going, they had their opening day, they called it their business day on Thursday, but it was pretty low key in terms of numbers. Plenty of business folk here, but the activists were only turning up on Thursday night ahead of the big day, which was Friday, at just the point that that Channel 4 news film is broadcast half an hour in duration. I was talking to some senior figures lawyer in the hour or so before that film went out. Now granted they had been approached for their rights of reply in the 48 hours before that. They knew it would be difficult, they knew it would be embarrassing, they knew it would be awkward.

5:11I don't think they'd realise the scale of it. And in the immediate aftermath, the hours immediately after it went out, there was something of a sense of, well, a recognition of its gravity. Those conversations went on late into Thursday night, into Friday morning, and off the back of that, we saw them, we woke up to the departure. Dressed up as temporary, but it may become permanent, let's see, of two really senior figures. Granted figures that you don't regularly see in front of the cameras, but absolutely crucial figures within reform. James Orr, the head of policy, academic in Cambridge, former lawyer, and Dan Jukes, who has been at Nigel Farage's side, literally at his side for years and years and years. And both of them out. And the allegation, again, if you haven't seen it, is that undercover reporters who were posing as a father and son within American company were discussing ways of channeling foreign money, which is not allowed into a UK political party, and reform had tempted them,

6:12encouraged them to pay for a polling that was done and ended up on the front page of the some of the newspaper. Now, the official position is that no laws have been broken, nothing's gone wrong, but this, I agree with you, Chris, we're talking to people when I arrived here today. This is not something I think senior people in reform think they can just brush under the carpet. And senior figures said to me today, the other stuff, other donations, things that people have been talking about for months about that 5 million pound gift in Nigel Farage, they're thinking, oh, why that will all be fine. This was described to me, have we got a bleat machine? We are. Channel 4, did you want to do the night? I'm going to have to borrow the air. Well, I'll say a genuine mess up, I'll say. A genuine mess up, and particularly the personalities involved, Miner is really, really senior, and really, really serious, and there's been a lot, I think, of genuine disappointment and also kind of disbelief. You know, one party source said to me this morning, they could hardly actually believe it.

7:12But for the first time today, we had a chance to sit down with Nigel Farage and talk to him in detail about what he knew and what he didn't know, and we'll play a couple of those clips in just a second. Joe, from Eurochats here in the last 24 hours, how much damage do you think the party reckons they might take over this? I think the one advantage of these scandals in the past around reform and its finances and Nigel Farage's finances isn't their hard to explain, and this is still hard to explain. And nobody really knows outside of our Westminster circles who the key characters involved in these sorts of things are. And the difference this time is there's video, and we can see it, and we can hear it, and you can sort of have a feel for the language, but also have a feel for these sorts of encounters, one in an encourages hotel, others people talking about oysters and mixing, Guinness and champagne, it gives you a feel for the sort of wealth that some people in politics I suppose do move in, but also it gives you a feel for conversations that are having

8:14private in this world. That's right, and some of the phrases, like these little clandestine projects, oh you'll have deniability or your father will have deniability. This isn't just as Nigel Farage said, oh a bit of pub talk, it's a series of meetings over many months, and actually reform members said to me here today, I so do you know to think it's fair, because some people here think, oh it was a stitch up, it was not fair, but one member said, you know what actually, it's all documented, it's all there on camera, and their view was, Nigel Farage has to have more control and be more careful about what people are up to, but when I sat down with Farage today, and he's in one of the sequences, right, so you're right, it's not household names, that people are going to recognise in most of the film, but in one of the sequences, he's sitting there in conversation while these undercover reporters and his former chief of staff are discussing explicitly the mechanism of getting American money to a UK political party, and when I asked him what he was doing during that moment,

9:17he said to me in the end, and he got a little bit, maybe not irate, but sometimes introducing it quite testy I suppose, and he said, as you were about to hear newscasters, frankly I wasn't even listening. Because I was told he was giving it to a UK family trust, oh sorry, a family office, it was based on the UK. But he said in your presence, I am not. I am not a compliance officer, I was in the middle of the canvassing in the Claxon by election, I turn up, I frankly wasn't even listening. You were listening. I just asked, is it all above board? I was just there to come and say hello. So you weren't listening when you were discussing donations of thousands and thousands of homes to go out? I was told, I was told, was it, global family office based in London, so the money could have come from Singapore, the money could have come from all over the world, you know, income could have come from all over the world into a family office based in London. I know the electoral law, you know, I know donation law better than anybody.

10:18Frankly, we're two individuals involved here, I've never been involved in fundraising before, and they shouldn't have been involved directly in fundraising, they should have done basic checks, and nobody, nobody should be brought to me unless they've been invested properly. You say these two individuals, but actually they were both two of your most senior staff, Downjuks worked for you for years. I know. He would have normally been in this room, he was always by your side. I know, I know. And he is recorded saying, this happens all the time. Which I'm pleased to say isn't true, because he mentions two names, and they were redacted out of the channel for news reports. So on the record today, can you categorically say that foreign money has never been funneled to reform the UK in that way that has never happened? Never. categorically denied, even though you've admitted you weren't listening during a conversation like that.

11:20I'm not a compliance officer, I'm a leader, I shake hands and take photographs. That's the point. You're the leader, the box stops with you. That's the point. I can stop campaigning and work at an office, a big compliance officer. I'm not a compliance officer. But what I do know, what I do know is our checks. And by the way, we send donations back in the time. People send us money, we send money back to all the time. Now for a party leader to not be listening during a conversation about donations of tens and tens and tens of thousands of pounds, if you're one of Nigel Farage's opponents, what do you think they're going to do with that Chris? They are going to leap on it and they already are because they can see, because it's here on the walls of the conference. What is the war, what was the slogan? It's not really a slogan, but what was the message that reform wanted to project from this conference? He's written on all the walls around here the first 100 days. In other words, them putting themselves in front of the country and saying, we are a prospective government of the UK. In other words, we want to be the law makers.

12:22At just the point that critics can say, ah, look at that filming for the other night. Does that not show an attempted pattern of behaviour, a being cavalier around all of that? Now Nigel Farage emphasises that he says the reason there was loads of bleeps over that Channel 4 news film is that when there were suggestions being made that there was a pattern of behaviour around channeling money, it's that it looked permissible when it might not have been, was that that wasn't true. So we should say that for the interest of fairness, but absolutely reformed opponents can leap on that. And then they can make an argument that says, okay, Nigel Farage will attempt an element, as he said to you, oh, I wasn't listening, these people were presented to me, I'd not met them before. In other words, trying to put some distance between him and them. But the argument goes, well, where's the curiosity? Where's the curiosity? When you're aspiring to lead the country, where there'll be a million at one moment, where you will need to have an attention to detail and to curiosity.

13:22And where is that? And also, Tim Shipman's written about this in the spectator, what about the culture? What about the culture around Nigel Farage that perhaps allows that to happen, whether he knew much about it or not? And this is the point about the characters involved. So James Orr and Dan Dukes were not some random people working a million miles away from Nigel Farage. There were people who were both very, very close allies, particularly Dan Dukes, who'd worked alongside him since he, I think, he was 16 or 17 years old. Yeah, first met him on a school visit, I think the Nigel Farage had met. So for them to think it was okay, and it's another thing that we discussed in the interview, is like, why did they think it was okay to be going around town doing this, not once, not twice, but repeatedly through a whole series of meetings? For more than a year. And it all brings up their were pattern of how Nigel Farage, who wants to be Prime Minister, who people here think has got a really good sort of Prime Minister, how does he handle pressure? Because if you really want to make it to number 10, it's only going to get more intense. The scrutiny is only going to get more affairs.

14:22Part of his script, if you like, in the last few months has been always applied to me, it's all terribly unfair. We know that's really not the case. If you want to be Prime Minister, people in this country, because we have a rumbunxious, free, wonderful, free and fair press, they'll crawl, people will crawl over everything. And when it comes to money and politics, there are rules that apply to every single political party. But I was interested talking to him today about the press that he's been under. And he really sort of did admit, yeah, during this summer I've been really, really angry. I've been very aggrieved. And he even said that his family don't support him doing the job anymore, and that they've begged... Get more with BBC Podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows, like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and Your Dead To Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts, add free, with an Amazon Music subscription.

15:22And to stand down. For the first time, really, in my clinical career, you know, I haven't got my family support. They'd rather have packed it up in the UK tonight. So yeah, it's been difficult. Have you thought about packing it in and walking it away? No, I haven't. I haven't. But when you've got your family begging you to, it's not easy. But I think we're through that now. I believe we're through that that period. I think the general public do understand that, you know, I have got some unusual circumstances that others don't have to deal with. And yeah, you know, we're back here. I think that's admission, that new detail is absolutely fascinating. And I suppose we had an idea of it because it was sort of visible. In his media interviews, Nigel Farage was looking uncomfortable. And some of his people on his own side, like Tim Montgomery, talked about the Nigel Farage we knew seems to have disappeared. On your point about pressure, though, Laura, what's interesting is the real moment of pressure for Nigel Farage and some cheering in the background. Let's just see what's going on.

16:22So we've got Jeremy Kyle, I can see. You won't be able to see on our cameras, but Jeremy Kyle, oh, and Nigel Farage going on stage. So they very much love him here. Looks like he's about to have a little chat with Jeremy Kyle on rival white leather chairs. I know. But over here on ours, it's a bit different as well. Sorry, Joe. Picking up on that is actually interesting. You see out of shot for New Scasters watching that conversation with Jeremy Kyle and Nigel Farage. That a lot of people, not all, but quite a lot of the reform of Fissionado who have, you know, are sufficiently plugged in and signed up that they've handed over their money to come to the conference. And they've dragged the idea that an element of, my words not always there, but a sense of the world's out to get it. That sense of a collusion, it was a phrase word that Nigel Farage used to me the other day when I was talking to him, that perception of a collusion when there's a sense that they feel they get a disproportionate amount of scrutiny. Layer on top of that, the observation that he made to you today about the impact

17:23on his family and how keenly he feels that. And then the critique that we heard over the summer from Tim Montgomery, the founder of Conservative Home who defected to reform a couple of years ago, about a sense of a crabby Nigel Farage, he's perhaps not as widely appealing a one as a more upbeat and smiley Nigel Farage, which is broadly a critique by the way I think that Nigel Farage accepts. Yeah, that was fascinating. And you get to the essence of where they all know it. And Joey did say to me that he wasn't going to walk away in our conversation, even though his family, to use his word, were begging him to. He sort of said, oh, I think I'm through that now. But is it kind of conversation that people have quietly, isn't it, around the edges of this party? Yeah. Because Farage also, he sometimes does unpredictable things. He called a bioliction that technically he didn't have to do. He's walked away before and then come back. Good times for the crowd. All it's done. Yeah. Do you think that newscasters would be mad to think, you know what, he might just wake up at some point in the next few months and think, I'm not going to do it.

18:24I mean, I think an on-brand thing would be for Farage to walk away now and then come back six months before the next general election. Yeah, it's certainly possible. And I think what is interesting here is that we have seen potential successors set out there still. Certainly Robert, generic speech today seemed to be a very carefully prepared speech with sort of a bit of a big chunk of new policy. But also there were sort of clear clap lines, pererations. It was a bit different from the more free wheeling Nigel Farage start speech. And that's the use of videos as well. And the right use of videos as well. A habit of doing when he was in the conservative folder. It had a range that was beyond the granted treasury spokesman house perhaps wider parameters than a shadow just a secretary. But it did range a little beyond a mere fiscal analysis, you know. I love that. Is this journalistic code when you read or hear someone say, in a wide range interview, it means one of two things. It either means it's an audition for the leader or it means there wasn't really anything. Why do they have a headline? So people say, I don't want to be a range interviewer.

19:24And then you see the ZUCIF video. This video he put on his social media. He's the home affairs spokesperson, but not currently an MP. Not currently MP, but he has recorded this quite impressive slick video telling his personal story. He's walking in all of these sort of pieces to camera. And he starts the first one outside his childhood home. He's telling his story perhaps because he wants to ensure reform party members know it. And certainly polling suggests that he is one of the most popular within this party. People here really really like it. And people outside of the party often look to him as being one of the most provocative people. So then let's hear about the generic speech. You were watching it. You were watching it. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. Right, right. I had taken away. I think the tone was defined. There was also this message of urgency. We've heard a lot from reform politicians that Britain doesn't have time for anti-burner sort of 10 year plan. And they want a general election, you know, very soon talking up the possibility of a mace nap election because I'm going to happen.

20:28This big significant policy in terms of raising the tax repersonal hours from 12,570 to 15,000. And of course below the 2024 reform commitment to get it to 20. But the longer term aspiration is to get there. But Robert Jenric committed to in the first 100 days get to 15,000. And he actually expressed it in quite a nice way saying the first 15,000 you earn is yours. That got a huge round of applause. So essentially it's a tax cut for billions of workers at the lower end of the wage scale. Yeah, and it's massively expensive. And he says it's 17,18 billion pounds. And he says, you know, he says governing is about choices. And the choices would mean trims on benefits, although he's quite vague about precisely which ones. And some net zero programs and reducing foreign aid just to emergency, disaster emergency relief. I think he's trying to draw a bit of a contrast with the conservatives when they perhaps talk about stamp duty or inheritance tax. I think this is a more broad based tax cut for people.

21:31People have got men. Exactly. You're not going to inherit. Exactly. Any minute at all. Exactly, exactly that. I think they were very conscious in their attempts to sort of a bit of news management reform that they wanted a big chunky policy on the final day. As we record in the middle of the afternoon, there's going to be a kind of closing speech from Nigel Farage. But they see that as their big sort of policy delivery today. Not least because they're conscious in the last few days a lot of the stuff they've been saying has been drowned out by all of the fallout from the Jonathan news. And it's just short of confidence in the others. People at the top of the party said just before it started. Actually, we only get rid of the business, we've only got a two day conference. It's about half the length maybe of the Tories and labor. And this person was saying, we've only really got two news cycles. And of course, the first news cycle was really dominated by that undercover filming. All the questions that prompted and how Nigel Farage handled it overnight getting rid of those two gentlemen who we should say both deny wrongdoing and Dan Jukes has said that he will fight to clear his name. And they don't have that much time really to get out of the policies out, which of course is the point of this.

22:34Trying to reset things and show that they are ready for government. Because it already been in trouble with various financial stories that have been running throughout the summer. So this is, you know, it's a... Number four, really, I think. There was already a theme and would already have been a theme even without the channel for news. So had there not been this explosion of embarrassing allegations, there would have been really quite a big story yesterday. Because Jordan Baddela, who looks likely, not definite, but likely to be the next prime minister of France, he was here. And he and Nigel Farage signed and then waved around a piece of paper that was even bigger, I think, than Donald Trump's tariff board. Yes, it was. It was not like that. Yes. And it had that kind of Trumpian flourish of the removal of the... Exactly. The unveiling of the... Well, that's what they may think. I thought it was like the Trump tariff board. Yes. But then I went to the news conference, the two of them did afterwards. And there was a clear attempt to mimic a kind of news conference that three of us have been to a million times.

23:37Where there's a home secretary and a French interior minister or whatever. Sure. A bilateral moment, a moment of diplomacy of GM. It was by the Macron this week, right? Exactly. And you've got the flags. And you've got the flags. And you've got the... In their instance, there are two parties of opposition at the moment. You've got them named on the... On the back, Umas Kher, Micellas on a spin. Oh. You just spin round. No spin here. No, no, exactly. It's funny because they... And they had a memorandum of understanding. That's what that document was. And the... In the news conference and half of it's in English, in the other half's in... In French. I had a colleague trying to tell me that he thought there was a subtle difference between one of the paragraphs in English and the equivalent paragraph in French. A last-mile... Maybe a suit. A suit. A short version. The memorandum of understanding, which is basically a fancy word for a deal that's been done between two countries, means Joe that. That... That France will play a part in if the UK picks up people in Swabow, it's crossing the channel, taking them back. Of course, the big question mark is, what does happen in next April and May's elections?

24:39National rally are head in the polls, but the centre-right and centre-left parties would often maybe coalesce around a single candidate to try and stop Marine Le Pen. And also, Marine Le Pen, it's possible that there's an eligibility question. And then it is potentially possible that Jordan by Dele Jump's in her place and he could potentially get the... And there's no irony at all, is there, for reform's immigration policy being dependent on European cooperation? Who they sort of led into that saying, looks, Brexit doesn't mean we can't cooperate. And he wants to look, I suppose, like an international statesman, but there is an irony, definitely there. And then you also wonder, that in a scenario where National rally do win in France, maybe they try and do a deal with the British government as is now. Yes, I mean, this is a deal that previous British governments would have wanted to do. Neither of these parties are in power, but it is clever-political because it is a deal that other British governments would have wanted to do. Would Bartela do it with Shamanam Amoud? Well, I just throw out the question.

25:39I don't know. In the election cycles, as they are currently set, means France comes first. Exactly. So what happens afterwards if they do win? But it was a coup, I think. And they were excited by it. Again, I was trying to say something this morning about, and this newscast is in a working to this. How has a party managed the news of a conference? There are some things that are out of your hands, like the channel for them. But did they lose some of the news value of Jordan Badella? Because it was happening on the same day as Nigel Farage's speech. In other words, it is doing its job around the length of the conference. Yes, like speech. Could you squeeze more out of a Badella moment news-wise? And then the speech is a big thing as well. When I'm pulling together a TV piece on the day of the leader's speech, the leader's speech is going to be big, isn't it? And OK, I gave a mention to the Badella thing, but it was just a mention. Not least because of all the channel for news stuff. It didn't help. Also, their messages slightly change at different points, in particular, on the biggest sort of issue and talking point around as undercover filming.

26:39We had, on Friday morning, some people talking of a hoax. It was rather braven and saying it was a hoax in a smear. Not language used by Nigel Farage, do you know? Because of course, it's quite hard to argue that something is a hoax and a smear. Even if you want to question why these journalists are doing this work. If you've decided to launch your investigation and basically suspend two members of the office, you can have a runner who they are in all the rest of it. But in the end, the facts of what they've uncovered. Absolutely. It's going to be more prominent than any motivations they may have had. And the other thing, just as another chair. Nigel Farage is taking questions from the floor, not that far from where we are. So that just explains that chair, newscasters. There's a rival broadcast going on from the Reform Party leader and Jeremy Kahnel, not that far from where we are sitting. But as you say there, because I mean, it is hard to get away from what has happened in the last couple of days. But one of the things also that shifted around a bit, Joe, you were reflecting there on the language,

27:42is whether or not Dan Jukzen and Orr, the former chief of staff and the former head of policy, are ever going to be back in their jobs. So there was a, just to kind of explain, they were sacked, supposedly. But then it was maybe they're just suspended, subject to investigation. The steps aside was the words before wanted to use. The others in the chair of the party said, well, they can't come back. But then if they've stepped aside in the investigation, could they maybe come back so it's a bit more money as well? And he's James Orr's position more recoverable than Dan Jukzen. So I've heard some people say that. And he has an international standing. And he's very close to JD Vance, who calls him his British Sherpa. He has a lot of links to the sort of traditional Christian rights in the US. He's somebody who is more established than Dan Jukzen. So he's very well known to us because if you want to talk to Nigel Farage, you... And it's going to be very close to Nigel Farage. Yeah. Dan Jukzen, you've got married recently, he's got a little baby, his wife's American,

28:42spent a lot of time in America. Is that where his future is in the short term before any general election camp? I mean, who knows? Oh, so it's a team. But this, these kind of conversations that we are articulating to newscasters now are the very ones that you hear privately amongst reform folk who are also dealing with. The human reality of politics, which is that they've lost people who they like and they've worked with for a long time. And they respect, even though they recognise that in this instance, clearly, they had to respond to what was on the table. But if we zoom out for a second, what has Nigel Farage been trying to do with this party in the last 12 months? He's been trying to professionalise it, make it look like a serious, sustainable outfit. And this mess is a real bump in the road on that. But what I would say is I think we've heard quite a lot in the last few months, when people in the Labour and the Tory party suit privately or publicly, was another big cheer for Farage, who have been terrified by reform, but who've looked at the bumps in the last couple of months and sort of thought,

29:48oh, well, it's all kind of fading, it's all fine, we're going to be back in the traditional two party system anytime soon. I think they would be completely crackers to conclude. Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. And you can hear it, can't you people kind of go, oh, thank God, there's a bit of sort of all-thank-you-us. Yes, well, they would be crackers. I mean, granted, things have tightened, haven't they? Reforms, lead after lead after lead for an unteen opinion polls for unteen months. Fifteen months? Yeah, it has stopped happening, Labour have been chopping some polls. Equally, there's been some others recently with reform at the top. On the professionalisation point, I speak to a lot of people in reform who have obsessed about trying to come. They've obsessed about trying to get that right, because they know how limiting a factor it could be if they don't at every level. Not just stopping things like the stuff we've seen in the last few days, but they're building up of their ground operation, the belief of local parties, compliance that does overlap with this sort of stuff. Marketing, social media, etc. to treasure it. They've got a new treasure recently. So they have been doing a lot of that.

30:49But then there's the cultural thing, isn't there? I saw someone this morning who was saying, look, a big part of Nigel Farage's political appeal going back 20 years. Is that sense of him being a cavalier? That sense of him getting out there and saying stuff other people won't say. Campaining in a way other people won't campaign. But this person would say, you need round heads as well. You need people who are in the back office saying, hang on a minute. Are you sure? No, no, are you really sure? Now they say they've started building that up. I think that's an additional reason why this is, they've found this so wounding. Because however much of that they've done, a combination of personnel, culture, ethos, call it what you want. This has been really damaging for them. It's blown their confidence not entirely out of the wars of them at all most. And it could have quite a long time. So what's left for the rest of the day then here? You tell me Laura. I've been up since 4 a year. I think I've nearly done that. I've got to go back to London to get rid of it tomorrow's programme.

31:52You're with me and London tomorrow. On Sundays we back for the first Sunday newscast of this season. And what we're waiting for here is we recall. And when Nigel Farage has finished in the company of Jeremy Cowell, he'll be back out on the stage. He's sort of done, he did this last year. He sort of does the thing that John Prescott used to do with labor conferences 20 years ago, where he'll do us sort of valedictory tub thumping. Valedictory tub thumping talk to the members type address to round things off, which again speaks to another central truth with reform, which can be a both a strength and a weakness, which is that in the end it does come back to Nigel Farage. And they admit that people here, even the ones just coming for a Sunday because they got a job, they want to see him. I do think it's clear that he's, this is no longer one man band anymore. We have other prominent experience figures. And they got to take for last year with the distinction. And they say, and the newscasts will have their own view on this. How many people in Kimmy Bayton, Oxford, Newshadow Cabinet can be called,

32:54compared to Farage, Generic, UCF, etc. Braveman, etc. Tice. But, and also policy. I mean, they have said a lot of policy far beyond immigration, which is always the criticism. But of course, not everyone at home want to say they've heard the details of that policy, because of the strategy just like that. But then that happens more than in any other party. And it's perhaps always been the case for the various vehicles that Nigel Farage has led down the years. Of course, in any party things orientate around a leader, but they really do around Nigel Farage. And reform, you can newscast us, we'll hear that with the noises off. And the adulation with which he's held by, is party faithful. And that, that's part of this whole challenge around growing pains and scaling up from the rest of it, isn't it? Well, you can hear the size of the chair here in Birmingham, that adoration and affection for Nigel Farage is certainly live and kicking. Tomorrow we'll be talking about other things Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, is the first member of any Burnham's government to come on the programme Sunday morning.

33:57You'll be back with everyone on Saturday. Yeah, I'm going to have a day off tomorrow. And then we've got the Chancellor John Haley giving a speech on Monday. Yeah, a big speech on Monday. He's faced all those questions about how he delivers on the very thing that he resigned from. He was a defense secretary around on the defence spending. And then before we know it, we're head towards the trade union congress and then the Liberal Democrats and conference season heads on until mid-October. But I guess I'm asleep quick. Well, I just hope that we have this lovely wait letter cocktail lounge chairs. We can say goodbye. We might, I don't know, like, start singing my way or something. We need to get off the school and walk towards the counter. Together, we know exactly. We're not doing that in front of a camera. Thank you very much for listening. Everybody that's of assesses, newscasts. It's lovely to be with the two of you. And we'll be back tomorrow. Newscast. Newscasts from the BBC. You've come to the end of newscasts. Some people, and you know who I mean, might say you ooze stamina. Can I encourage you to subscribe on BBC Sounds? And you can get in touch with us anytime. E-mail us at newscasts.bbc.go.uk.

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