Ezra Levant covers Nigel Farage’s Reform UK campaign in Clacton, where immigration—legal and illegal—drives voter anger over soaring rents (20-25% since 2021), NHS strain, and perceived benefits disparities. Farage, a Brexit architect, frames opposition as defense of British values like equality under law, contrasting Sunak’s "warmonger" rhetoric and Starmer’s leftist alignment. Social media fuels Farage’s appeal, especially among young voters, despite mainstream media attacks, including a debunked Channel 4 sting. Reform UK’s potential 12 seats signal a populist shift reshaping UK politics, with parallels to Trump, Milei, and Bukele’s victories. [Automatically generated summary]
Ezra Levant here, you can hear the seagulls overhead.
I am on the sea.
I'm in Clacton on sea.
It's a town in the United Kingdom.
I'm here for the UK elections, in particular Nigel Farage's district.
I'll have a whole show about what I've seen in Nigel Farage's foray into the election.
I want you to see it, though, not just to hear it.
And to see it, you need the subscription of what we call Rebel News Plus.
It's eight bucks a month.
You get to see my video show every day.
Sheila Gunn reads once a week.
And the satisfaction of knowing you keep Rebel News strong because as you know, we don't take a dime from Trudeau and it shows.
All right, here's today's podcast.
Sensoryism bug.
Oh my God, I'm so tired.
You can see the Canadian flag behind me, but I am not in Canada anymore.
I was yesterday.
We had so much going on in Canada yesterday, but then last night, I got on a plane.
I flew all night.
I slept maybe two hours and I landed here in Old Blighty.
I am in London, the capital of the United Kingdom today, 4th of July.
I know back in North America, 4th of July equals America's Independence Day, but here in the UK, it is their election, and it is a riveting election that I think Canadians and Americans should find very interesting, especially Canadians.
Let me tell you why.
Election Night Landing00:11:04
In the UK, there have been two parties that have been trading government back and forth for a century.
The Tories, actually one of the longest standing political parties in any democracy.
The Tories, also called the Conservatives, they've been in power for 14 years, although they've had some troubles, I got to tell you, swapping out prime ministers every few months.
And they have this sort of AI-generated prime minister named Rishi Sunak, utterly devoid of charisma and personality.
Just awful.
But up against him is someone even worse, the labor leader Keir Starmer.
Just everything you'd expect in a left-wing party.
Think a white version of Jagmeet Singh.
The iconic image for me is Keir Starmer on his knee, taking a knee for George Floyd, which is an American thing.
But anyhow, it's just a mess, demoralized.
I saw a poll the other day that asked people who were going to vote for the Labor Party, why are you going to vote Labor?
Only 5% say because they support what Labor is about.
Everyone else is just anyone but the Conservatives.
But then an amazing thing happened.
Days into the election campaign, Nigel Farage jumped in the campaign.
Now, maybe the name Nigel Farage rings a bell.
It should.
He was the leader of the UKIP party, the UK Independence Party that fought for years, a lonely battle to get the United Kingdom out of the European Union.
We don't really know what the European Union is in North America.
It's like a mini United Nations for Europe.
Trouble is, it actually has real power.
For example, they have the Euro currency.
They have a European court.
They have common budgets and they have a European parliament in Brussels, Belgium.
But put your thinking cap on for a minute.
Why would the United Kingdom, a proud independent country, used to be a grand empire?
Why would it be in a government like the European Parliament where Germany and France and a bunch of other countries can outvote it?
It made no sense.
One of the beautiful things about UKIP was that its symbol was the pound.
They wanted to keep it.
Anyways, you may know that not long before Donald Trump's populist wave washed over America, there was a referendum in the UK and no one official thought that it had any chance.
Nigel Farage campaigned for Brexit, Britain exiting the European Union and against all odds, he won.
Everyone was for remaining in the European Union.
All the media, all the big corporations, all the official parties.
Nigel led the Brits out of the European Union.
It was amazing.
Perhaps the most consequential political act since, oh, I don't know, Margaret Thatcher was PM.
Nigel has spent the last couple of years enjoying life, giving speeches in America, around the world, having a TV show on GB News, which is sort of like Fox News here in the UK.
But my point is, they declared the election.
They called the election here in the UK.
And there was just those awful choices.
Yeah, there's some other small parties like the Liberal Democrats, but they had no chance.
But then Nigel said, you know what?
I'm not going to be a journalist anymore.
I'm not going to be a pundit.
I am going to jump in and I'm going to lead a party that was sort of like UKIP called the Reform Party.
And in fact, it was sort of beautiful.
Nigel said he was inspired in part by the Reform Party in Canada.
Isn't that funny that he said that?
And he knows enough about Canadian history to know that when the Reform Party of Canada debuted in the late 80s and early 90s, it wiped out the decrepit, unprincipled Conservative Party in Canada.
I mean, think back to 1993.
Brian Mulroney had left.
Kim Campbell had come in.
She took that Tory party down to two seats, two seats.
And incredibly, in the last few weeks, Nigel Farage has had so much energy.
He's had more social media views than all other parties combined.
He doesn't have the team.
He doesn't have the volunteers.
He doesn't have the money, but he has the momentum because he has ideas, because he's fresh, and because he talks about things that everyone in the UK thinks about, but is afraid to articulate out loud.
The number one issue of which is mass immigration.
One of the things that Nigel Farage has done over the last few years is he's gone out into the English Channel in boats and just watched and filmed as hundreds and hundreds of migrants get on boats, typically in France, and just sail across the English Channel, a kind of D-Day invasion in reverse.
So Nigel has credibility for speaking out against mass immigration, whereas, for example, neither Kirstarmer nor the Tory Rishi Soon Act do.
So Nigel Farage has been talking about ending mass immigration, and so many Brits are supporting him for that.
Nigel's very carefully addressing the Islamification of UK society.
He's very careful not to appear racist or anything like that, but he talks about British values and being patriotic.
And he also talks about other things involving mass immigration, like can you even afford a house?
Here's Nigel Farage talking about mass immigration.
Listen to this.
We also have to say it's only right and proper that you only get benefits in this country once you've been here for five years, obeyed the law and paid your taxes.
Again, these are policies.
These are policies that are discriminatory in favour of British taxpayers and British people.
If you go to work in Australia, you won't get benefits or dental care.
You'll have to pay into the system for years and obey the law.
We're doing what a good, sensible country should do, recognising that the first duty of a British government is to its own people and not to anybody else.
People see the unfairness of it.
They say, how can it be that we're on social housing waiting lists for a year, perhaps two years, when these people that come illegally are put straight into four-star hotels or, if not that, private accommodation?
How can it be that those that come have access to dental care when we can't get an NHS dentist?
And I think the fact that the hotels alone are costing over £7 million a day makes people pretty upset.
Those that have come into the country legally aren't very happy about it either because they've gone through costs, time and hoops to be in the country the right way.
But it's the other element of this that I want to focus on today.
Frankly, I think this is very dangerous.
You only have to look at what's happened in Sweden in cities like Malmö to see that a large influx of young males coming from an entirely different culture and certainly coming from a culture in which women are not even regarded as second-class citizens has had frankly disastrous social effects.
We can't talk about housing as I have already mentioned without talking about the exploding population.
We can't talk about rents.
I mean so many young people now, over half their income is paid just to live somewhere and probably somewhere pretty modest.
Rents have risen by 20 to 25% across the entire country since 2021.
It is a direct cause and effect.
There are fewer places to rent, therefore the price go up.
You can't look at NHS waiting lists.
You can't look at access to GP services without understanding that the population explosion has put intolerable pressures on.
You can't look at our infrastructure.
You can't look at the traffic.
The M6.
As a southerner, I thought the M25 was bad, but you've got a nightmare.
I'm in a nightmare down the road here.
The population explosion is diminishing the quality of life of everybody in this country.
It is making us poorer.
It is unacceptable.
And this says nothing about the quality of the vast majority of people that come.
We've all got friends that have come here from all over the world.
We're a very welcoming country.
We just can't take million upon million upon million.
It does not work.
I've shown you this clip before.
Here's Nigel talking about net zero from a carbon point of view.
He thinks it's bollocks, as the Brits would say.
You'd have thought with Brexit, now we're in control, it'd be less of a threat, but it's not.
And that's because of the whole net zero agenda that's being pursued.
Boris went absolutely full pelt for it.
Labour is still on that track.
The Tories are now saying, well, we won't do it all tomorrow.
We wait till the day after.
And frankly, the whole thing is about charging us more money.
The whole thing is about controlling our life and our behaviors.
And in terms of the environment, it makes absolutely almost no difference whatsoever.
I mean, Labour are talking about decarbonising the grid by 2030.
Impossible and would cost a fortune.
And of course, who pays?
Those at the lowest end in society pay the most percentage of their money on fuel, on heating the house, and all of cooking, all of those sort of things.
The Tories are now saying 2035.
What we're saying is the whole net zero needs a complete rethink.
We produce less than 1% of the world's CO2.
China are building about 80 new coal-fired power stations every single year.
And the other point about it is that, you know, of course, I want us to be environmentally friendly as much as we can.
The answer to that, above all, is nuclear energy.
If you really want low-carbon generation of reliable energy, then I think, you know, to me, nuclear would be the right way forward.
Nigel Farage's Charisma00:08:12
You know, one of my favorite things about Nigel Farage is he's got a sense of humor.
He's, I'm not going to call him eccentric because, you know, if you spot an eccentric Brit, you'll know it.
But he's a character.
Let me put it that way.
He dresses like a classic Brit.
He loves going to the pub and having a pint.
He's a real guy, unlike the robotic Rishi Sunak or the bland, meaningless Kirst Starmer.
I mean, just look at this guy on TikTok.
Well, it's breakfast on polling day.
The Daily Mail do not like us at all.
But this is funny.
Vote Farage, get them.
But vote Farage.
That's all people see.
Thank you, Daily Mail.
I love it.
Never been seen before, but it is only midday on polling day.
There's a long way to go.
So yes, it'll never happen again.
First day of the job, I'm in the boxing ring now.
I'm Niger Security.
Do not mess with me right now.
I'm going to smoke you.
Well, no more milkshakes anymore, I promise you.
No one's going to come near it.
Anyway, so I'm here in the UK today, election day.
I'm in London.
As you can see, I'm in Trafalgar Square, one of my favorite places in the world.
And then tonight I'm going to go to Nigel Farage's riding, his district.
He's running in a place called Clacton on Sea.
I've never been there before, but it looks interesting to me.
It looks like the kind of place that gets forgotten by the fancy people.
It's just full of old white men.
And I say that because actually the Labour candidate running against Nigel Farage in Clacton has said bizarre things like, I drink the tears of white people and I'm running for all black and brown people.
Here's Nigel Farage with his answer to that.
He was asked, what are you going to do for black people?
He said nothing.
But he said it in a beautiful way.
Take a look.
I was asked the other day, what was I going to do for the black community?
Do you know what I said?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I couldn't give a damn whether you're black or white, whether you're gay or straight.
I really don't care.
You'll be judged by your character.
You'll be judged by your ability.
You'll be judged by are you a contributor to society or a taker out?
And right at the moment, this is considered to be dangerous radical thinking.
But I think if we can start to explain why this matters, if we can start to explain that that's the only way we're going to have any chance of a unified society that works together, you know, with mutual benefit for each other, I think this is one of the next great political battles.
And we're going to need some quite brave leaders.
I find that so refreshing.
A candidate who actually means I'm going to treat people the same regardless of race.
Again, I say people have called him racist, including the Labour candidate running against him.
But look at this.
Here's an excerpt of a speech.
Nigel Farage had an enormous rally.
I think it was in Birmingham, the second largest city in the UK.
And he had a patriotic British progressive Muslim member of Reform UK articulating what it means to be a newcomer to the UK who loves the UK.
And because I think there's too much factionalism and sectarianism.
Look at this speaker besides Nigel Farage, who was at that massive Birmingham rally just a few days ago.
I'm Zia Yousaf.
I'm a technology entrepreneur who sold my company last year and I just became one of the biggest donors to Reform UK.
Let me tell you why I did it and why I'm here.
I did it because I love Britain.
I love my country.
Britain is home to the warmest, most welcoming people in the world.
We would do well to ask, why do so many wish to come here and make Britain their home?
The answer is British values.
These are the values of equality under the law, the presumption of innocence, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, love of family and love of country.
These values have been exported across the world They gave birth to the United States, to Canada, to Australia, and many others.
These values in a historical context are nothing short of a miracle.
They can be subscribed to by those of all faiths and races and they are worth protecting.
Isn't that heartwarming?
That's exactly it.
And there's so many Brits who are Sikh or Muslim or Hindu or black or whatever, who are saying, yes, I want to be a patriotic Brit.
I don't believe in wokeness.
And Nigel Farage is not racist.
In fact, he's the opposite.
So Nigel Farage is saying, enough of that.
Stop that.
Stop the mass immigration.
Bring down the cost of housing.
Stop the anti-patriotism.
Renew patriotism.
It's very exciting.
And I'm here not just because I'm excited for the UK, but I'm here to see how it works in the UK.
And could it work in Canada?
Could we have a political leader who speaks bluntly about these issues like mass immigration and radical Islamism?
Can it work?
The UK is just as woke and politically correct as Canada in many ways.
There's pride flags more than there's union jack flags.
There's wokeness.
There's all sorts of affirmative action and things that we associate with the United States.
They've imported it here to the UK, just like we've imported those ideas to Canada.
Can someone speak bluntly and withstand the assault on him by the regime media?
Let me give you an example of an insane thing they did.
Nigel Farage is very good at talking about these issues, but maybe some other people in his party are not quite that way.
And there was this stunning story in a TV network called Channel 4.
By the way, you might remember Channel 4.
It's Kathy Newman who tried to interview Jordan Peterson.
Here's just a flashback: if you're wondering what's Channel 4, it's this.
Well, then we break it down by age, we break it down by occupation, we break it down by interest, we break it down by personality.
But you're saying basically it doesn't matter if women aren't getting to the top, because that's what's skewing that gender pay gap, isn't it?
You're saying, well, that's just a fact of the fact that women aren't necessarily going to get to the top.
No, I'm not saying it doesn't matter either.
You're saying there are multiple reasons for it.
Yeah, but there's reasons why should women put up with those reasons?
Why should women be content with that?
I'm not saying that they shouldn't put up with it.
I'm saying that the claim that the wage gap between men and women is only due to sex is wrong.
And it is wrong.
There's no doubt about that.
The multivariate analysis have been done.
Nigel Farage's Clacton Challenge00:16:13
So I can give you a message.
If you've been talking about multivariate analysis, I'm saying that 9% pay gap exists.
That's a gap between men and women.
I'm not saying why it exists, but it exists.
Now, if you're a woman, that seems pretty unfair.
You have to say why it exists.
But do you agree that it's unfair?
If you're a woman, not necessarily.
And on average, you're getting paid 9% less than a man.
That's not fair, is it?
It depends on why it's happening.
Yeah, so you know who we're dealing with here.
So Channel 4 had this huge exclusive that they saw all these racists in Nigel Farage's party and they did this exclusive blowing the lid off it until it turned out that it was an actor.
They had hired an actor who specializes in playing sort of grouchy, grubby buffoons and hooligans.
We've been undercover to find out.
How are you doing?
All right.
This is what we found when we joined his troops inside Farage's Clacton campaign.
Once you're ready and you're happy, just set off on your benches.
At this meeting, they're assigning teams to go out leafleting.
We meet Andrew Parker, who describes himself as a property dealer.
Let's go.
We're assigned to go out canvassing with Mr. Parker.
In the car, there's a pep talk about what to say on the doorstep.
Use the word illegal.
Emphasize illegal.
Especially if you open the door with a bunch of ****, isn't it?
The reform canvasser then gives his view on Muslims and what the party would do with mosques.
Sick, mate.
Sick mother ****.
Talks a cult.
If you don't know about Islam, it's the most disgusting cult hell.
We're ****ing kicking all Muslims out of the mosques and then certainly the witherspoons.
Wearing his blue and white reform rosette, he gives his views on how to stop the boots.
You've got DL11 here, a place near Dover, army recruitment.
You get the young recruits there, yeah, with guns on the beach, target practice, just shame them.
That's what the Greeks done.
They know about that.
Look at the Australians.
I'm going to say the ring fence Bradford Star and just do that as well.
I've got these bastards running their country.
Must be joking, mate.
Don't fly that flag.
Channel 4, by all accounts, hired an actor to be racist because they couldn't actually find a racist.
And that started popping up in other channels too.
The BBC, their version of our CBC state broadcaster, had a town hall with Nigel and they stuffed it with activists.
These were not random Brits.
These were people recruited for the panel.
Hello, I'd like to know what is it about you and your party that attracts racists and extremists, whether you say you want them or not.
Well, I've done this.
I've done more.
I've done more to drive the far right out of British politics than anybody else alive.
I took on the BNP just over a decade ago.
I said to their voters, if this is a protest vote, but you don't support their racist agenda, don't vote for them, vote for me.
And we destroyed them.
I've never allowed in parties I've led anybody who was even a member of an extremist organization to join our parties.
What happened over the last weekend was truly astonishing.
A tarade of invective abuse directed at the Prime Minister.
The whole thing was unbelievable.
It didn't ring true.
So I checked it out.
It turns out the man that did this is an actor.
He was contacted by the Telegraph this morning.
He denied he was an actor.
We then found out, yes, actually, he is an actor.
He's worked in the past for Channel 4.
On his own site, he says, I'm a well-spoken actor with an alter ego.
I do rough talking.
Let me tell you, from the minute he turned up in that office in Clacton and I saw him, he was acting from the very start.
He even says on his website, hire me, I do undercover filming.
Or this outrageous question, but look at how Nigel turned it around.
Nigel Farage, I just have a question about being a paid actor.
You also run a, you are online on a website called Cameo where you'll record paid shorts of you doing roasts or pec talks for people.
I was just wondering, your cheapest ones you do are £70.
If I paid you £70 now, would you admit that this country would be nothing without our rich history of immigration?
Well, I'll tell you what.
I'll tell you what.
I'll tell you what.
And this is what's gone wrong.
Because you talk about immigration, and it ran from after the war up until the millennium at net 30 to 40,000 a year.
And yes, it worked.
In fact, we had the most successful immigration policies of any country in the whole of Europe.
No question.
Now, it is so totally out of control.
Just think about this.
Two and a half million people have come in the last two years.
You wonder why you can't get a house.
You wonder why your rents have gone up 25% in four years.
You wonder why our infrastructure is struggling.
You wonder why we have to build a new house every two minutes just to cope with the numbers.
And that's the issue.
It's now running at numbers that are literally unimaginable and are diminishing the quality of life of everybody in this country.
And frankly, this should be the biggest issue of this election.
Those were not random people.
The BBC did not disclose who they were.
Now, Nigel still hit it out of the park.
Today is election day.
I'm going to see if I can talk to some folks here in London.
Then we're going to get on a train or a car and make our way to Clacton on sea.
I'm glad that it's not raining as I thought it would be.
I'm going on about two hours' sleep.
I'm going to be back in Canada in a couple of days, but I want to be here tonight.
I want to see if Nigel Farage can break through in Clacton.
I think he can.
I want to see how many other reform UK MPs punch through.
I'm hoping it's maybe 10.
Now, I know that doesn't sound like a lot because the British Parliament has around, I don't know, 600 or so MPs.
It's quite a large parliament.
So you might be thinking, what's the use of having only 10?
I think there's two purposes.
One is the Reform UK should smash the Tory Party into smithereens the same way the Reform Party of Canada smashed Kim Campbell's party down to two seats.
It must be repudiated and turned into powder.
But secondly, Nigel Farage is an outstanding parliamentarian.
I want to show you one of my favorite speeches that he gave when he was in the European Parliament.
There's a couple of them.
This is one when he was taking on some nameless, faceless Belgian bureaucrat named Rompy or something.
He called him Rompy Pompey.
You take a look at Nigel just in full, fully just flourishing in the European Parliament.
You have the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk.
And the question that I want to ask, the question that I want to ask, that we're all going to ask, is who are you?
I'd never heard of you.
Nobody in Europe had ever heard of you.
I would like to ask you, President, who voted for you?
And what mechanism?
Oh, I know democracy is not popular with you, Los.
And what mechanism do the peoples of Europe have to remove you?
Is this European democracy?
Well, I sense, though, that you're competent and capable and dangerous.
And I have no doubt that it's your intention to be the quiet assassin of European democracy and of the European nation states.
You appear to have a loathing for the very concept of the existence of nation states.
Perhaps that's because you come from Belgium, which of course is pretty much a non-country.
Isn't that great?
I want to give you one more taste of Nigel Farage.
Take a look at this.
This is again when he was in Brussels as a member of the European Parliament for the Brexit Party.
Take a look.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Funny, isn't it?
Funny, isn't it?
Isn't it funny?
You know, when I came here 17 years ago and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me.
Well, I have to say, you're not laughing now, are you?
And the reason you're so upset, the reason you're so angry has been perfectly clear from all the angry exchanges this morning.
You, as a political project, are in denial.
You're in denial that your currency is failing.
You're in denial.
Are you telling me that a man with that humor and charisma and facility of the English language just I'm not going to call him Churchillian because I think Churchill had maybe more of a gravity or a graveness to him.
But are you telling me that a guy with the charisma and the sense of humor of Nigel Farage isn't just going to be the most effective MP in that house, even if he has a small party?
Getting Nigel Farage into the British Parliament will change the UK.
And look across the English Channel.
On July 7th, that's this Sunday, they're having the second round of their national elections, and Maureen Le Pen is in the lead.
She's a right-of-center anti-immigration candidate.
Look at Holland, the Netherlands, Kurt Wilders and his Party for Freedom is now the governing coalition.
Look at Hungary and Victor Orban.
Look at Argentina and Javier Mille.
Look at El Salvador and Naib Bukele around the world.
People are, the pendulum is swinging back.
And need I say that in North America, Donald Trump is far ahead of Joe Biden.
And in our own country of Canada, Pierre Polyev leads Justin Trudeau.
I'm here in the United Kingdom because I love the UK, because I feel like it's the mother country for us in Canada.
And we have so much to learn from them in terms of culture and history and freedom and democracy.
But I'm also here because, as I've said before, the UK is a kind of time machine.
What happens here happens in Canada, often five years later.
I've said that in a negative sense before, mass immigration and wokeism.
But maybe the pendulum swinging back here today will be what happens in Canada tomorrow.
I sure hope so.
As you can see, I'm a pretty big Nigel Farage fan.
I'm also an Anglophile.
I'm confessing it.
I want to see what the Brits have to say.
I'll keep you posted.
I came here on frequent flyer points, so I'm keeping my costs really low.
Although my cameraman and I are headed to Clacton on C.
We got to get a hotel room there overnight.
The total costs of my trip, including cab fare, hotel, and other incidentals, probably going to be about $1,000.
If you want to help me chip in, please go to rebelfieldreports.com.
I'll have updates on that page.
I'm going to do my show about it, and I'll have some tweets along the way.
What do you think the result's going to be?
We'll find out soon enough.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
I'm Ezra Levant from Rebel News.
We're based in Canada, but we care about things around the world because we can learn lessons from places like the United Kingdom.
And I'm here in Clacton to see how this election goes with the entrance of Nigel Farage, the leader of the new Reform UK party.
He's running here in Clacton an insurgent campaign to boot out the Tories and bring in a platform of stopping mass immigration.
I'm going to talk to ordinary people and see what I can find out.
What do you think about the candidacy of Nigel Farage here in Clacton?
What do you make of that?
I think he's got some good ideas, but I think he could be quite dangerous.
I think there's a lot of people that maybe would take on a different stance with it all.
So, yeah, so I wouldn't vote for Nigel on that basis, really.
The local candidate here is Nigel Farage.
Reform UK is sort of an upstart party.
What do you lads make of it?
It's great.
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with it.
All four of you agreeing?
Yeah, it's a pretty neat reform.
And what is it about reform or is it Nigel Farage that you like?
He knows his stuff.
That's what he is.
He knows what he's on about, knows what to do, and he's prepared, isn't he?
Yeah, I like Nigel.
He's good.
Is there a particular issue that he talks about that you agree with?
I agree with some of the stuff he says.
I think it's needs to make Britain great again.
Nigel's been pretty popular on TikTok and social media.
I get a real kick out of it.
I'm over in Canada.
Do you guys follow him on TikTok or Twitter?
Everything, yeah.
What do you think?
Is he being silly or is he connecting?
No, he's connecting to everyone, yeah.
Yeah.
What are your thoughts on the election and do you feel comfortable sharing them in public?
Because I noticed some people are a little shy to go on the record because I think maybe they're worried about being cancelled or something.
I think cancel culture is a big issue for people.
They're afraid to talk freely.
So I think, so it seems like Labour have won the election.
That's what the news would give you to believe, the mainstream media.
I think what this is about is what kind of gains reform can make and can they overtake the Tory party?
It's about stat what can they do and who's going to stand up for the right, for the right wing in the UK.
I take it you don't think the Conservative Party is really conservative at all then?
No, they're no longer conservative.
They're what people call Labour-light.
So they're kind of carried, they carried on from Blair.
They carried on a lot of his policies.
So, yeah.
I think the phrase far right here in the UK has a particular meaning that's sort of scary, scarier than in North America.
If someone said you're far right, that wouldn't sting in America.
But here it's own police.
It's basically code for racist.
And I wonder if Brits are afraid of saying, no, I want to control immigration.
I want to control wokeness.
I didn't know the cancel culture was so powerful here.
Do you think there's a lot of secret Nigel supporters who maybe won't publicly say they're for Nigel and the reform, but in the ballot mark an X when no one is looking?
I think definitely.
And I think a bit like with Trump in America.
So in 2016, a lot of the polls said that Trump didn't have a chance.
I think there are secret reform voters, but also you're going to see a lot of people come out and vote for reform that wouldn't normally vote.
So they're not being picked up by the polls.
Do you think some people are shy about supporting Nigel Farage and might vote for him privately, but wouldn't say so publicly?
Definitely, definitely.
Because there's so much stigma attached to people's views.
You know, you can vote one way and people might think that you're racist.
Not necessarily racist, but the way our communities have changed, you're just thinking, you know, is it right?
Is this what we want?
So I don't think it's racist or radical at all.
Voting Privately, Thinking Loudly00:10:57
I mean, I mean, this election is really about immigration, both legal and illegal.
I mean, the country's getting full.
My wife works in a school as an invigilator.
They haven't got any more room in that school.
You can't get a doctor's appointment.
You ring up at eight o'clock and you have to ring 30 times to get through and then by half past eight the appointments are all gone.
Well it sounds like you two follow politics quite closely, but I think most normal people don't.
I think most people don't even read the newspaper.
Well that's what I'm saying.
I'm saying you've got your volume knob turned up to 10 on politics but an average person in Clactony.
And so they're going to read the mainstream media.
They're going to get the news from Channel 4 or BBC or I mean not a single newspaper that I saw, major newspaper in London, endorsed Nigel.
So if you're a normal person you're probably afraid because you think well the whole world is going to call me racist if I support Nigel.
Well I don't care.
Well you don't but it sounds like a lot of people do.
They're starting not to care.
Now youngsters are starting not to care, social media is really big and social media needs to be hit because youngsters read social media and they're not, I think previously parties have overlooked it because they think youngsters aren't as stupid, they're not interested.
Now Nigel's party has targeted them in a way with facts that they can read, facts that they can actually see.
You look immigration like Jonas is a massive massive problem here but positive immigration isn't a massive problem.
We've got people coming from abroad to work in the NHS.
That's positive immigration.
You know, every country needs positive immigration.
You go to Canada.
I can't go to Canada because I'm too old.
Joy's blogs can't go to Canada if he hasn't got a trade, if he's not qualified.
So that's positive immigration, isn't it?
So the youngsters now are saying, hold on, I went to school and I couldn't do this because this is happening and this is happening.
There's not enough school places.
I can't go to doctor.
I can't go to hospitals.
There's not enough places.
And that is because of non-positive immigration, isn't it?
Nigel Farage has always fought against the press and they tried to stop Brexit with Project Fear.
They didn't stop him before.
Do you think they're going to stop them this time?
Hopefully not.
I'm hopeful.
I heard that there's a great turnout, so that is a good sign.
It's not good.
You know, we've got more of them coming over.
There's more of them than our British Army now coming over.
ISIS fighters coming through Africa.
Al-Shabaab all coming down from Somalia, across to West Africa and then coming across.
It's pretty sick.
They're coming from France or where are the boats coming from?
Vervant over to Italy and they're working their way down.
But they're bigger than our British Army now.
You only got to look at London.
They're bigger than our British Army.
All fighting fit men.
Where's their wives?
I started fleeing war.
Where's their wives?
Where's their wives and children?
They're not all fleeing war.
Very little percentage are fleeing war.
They're all coming from West Africa.
North Africa.
That's the problem with it all.
Too many.
And they're throwing away all their IDs.
They use their IDs to get through West Africa, tell me.
Every single checkpoint they used to use their IDs and then they start getting across there.
So when they get to France, they chuck away their IDs.
But not everyone in this town is racist and not everyone wants to vote for fascism.
That's it.
There are plenty of people here that support immigration and I would say that most of the local Clacton people actually probably do.
A lot of the anti-immigration policies here are from people that have moved away from London to create their own perfect little Brexit here.
So that's my opinion.
If someone's in France, I haven't been there in a while, but what I know about France is it's fairly free and fairly safe.
If someone's in France...
Last week's elections would say otherwise.
But facing the same troubles that we are.
But surely people in France are not in danger.
And just if you're in France already, aren't they just shopping around?
If they're already safe in France, if they came from Africa or somewhere they're safe in France, aren't they just shopping around?
I appreciate this opinion.
However, Britain as a nation for hundreds of years have travelled the globe telling everyone in the world we are the best people.
We have travelled the world telling people that they should respect us and trying to get them to assimilate to our culture.
Why now would they not choose to come here?
They speak English or at least the vast majority speak some English where they may not speak any French.
There is a reason people choose to come here and that is our own doing from hundreds of years of colonialism.
Can I ask you what is it about Nigel Farage or Reform UK that made you vote for him?
Immigration.
Immigration and a lot of his policies are for the people.
Before Reform UK was around, who did you vote for last time or did you vote last time?
First time I voted.
Really?
And how about you?
I used to vote Labour up to Tony Blair and I thought, oh I've had enough.
He was a warmonger.
Absolute warmonger.
Couldn't stand it.
I can't stand war.
And then now you've got Sunaks coming and it was war.
He wants to make it into a regime country.
I think it's too Muslim fight.
What do you make of his idea to have a kind of mandatory service for young people?
It sounds a little bit like military conscription.
Were you surprised by that?
That shows me we're getting ready for war.
That shows me that he wants war.
That shows me it's got war written all over it and to me I'm not going to war.
How many people who used to vote Labour are going for Nigel?
How many would come from the Conservative Party and how many would be more working class?
A lot of my friends have gone to London, like you know, gone from Labour to Conservative.
Are you working class?
Yeah, yeah, I'm working here.
But now as I say, they've gone from Labour to Conservative to Nigel now.
Everybody's for Nigel, as far as I can see.
I went to his meeting last night down here on the pier.
Everybody's for Nigel.
How do you think he's going to do nationwide?
I sense he's strong here in Clacton, but what about in other places?
I think he's a good man.
He's a winner.
He's a good leader.
Well, I really appreciate you guys stopping to talk with me.
Thank you.
Give me your prediction.
I know we'll know in a few hours.
How's reform going to do in this district?
And do you think they'll have luck elsewhere in the country?
I believe Nigel Farage will just blast this away, this one.
He'll be NP for Clacton on C tomorrow.
I think there is a possibility that quietly a lot of people are fed up with things in the UK and they're going to vote for reform and Nigel Farage because when they mark that X, it's in the privacy of a polling booth and they don't have to say who they voted for in public.
It's sort of the shy voter effect that Donald Trump had in 2016.
You might recall when Trump won in 2016, the New York Times, just days before the election, said that Hillary Clinton had a 90% plus chance of winning.
Well, I think it was because people weren't being candid with the pollsters.
I wonder if that phenomenon will be here.
Remember, Farage has campaigned in America for Trump.
He understands that Trump phenomenon.
In fact, in some ways, he predated the Trump phenomenon.
Remember, Brexit came first.
Trump came next.
It could just be that people are here to enjoy themselves and they don't want to talk of politics.
But it could also be that something's happening in a subterranean way that will be revealed tonight.
We'll find out.
Well, it's nearly 10 p.m. on election day.
Here in the UK, the election, the voting goes till 10.
So they're still casting ballots across the UK.
I'm standing in front of the Clacton Leisure Center, as they would pronounce it here in the UK.
And incredibly, we're told that the results might not be known till the wee hours.
In fact, some folks we met on the way in thought they could be here till 5 a.m.
I don't really get it.
I don't know how it could go that late, but that's what we're told.
And the reason I tell you that is because even with the five-hour time zone advantage I have from being here as opposed to in Canada, I don't think I'm going to give you the results before tonight, Canada time, before the show, Canada time.
So we'll have the results very early in the morning.
I'm here tomorrow as well.
Look, you've seen everything I've seen.
A ton of folks who were willing to talk to me in Clacton, at least, suggest they're voting for Nigel Farage.
And the polls suggest he's going to win too.
Now, whether or not that happens, we will not know till the only poll that counts comes in.
I do believe there is something like a shy voter effect.
What I mean by that is people who in their hearts saying, I'm going to vote for Nigel Farage, but wouldn't say that publicly for fear of opprobrium from their friends, family, and neighbors.
We saw that.
And by the way, that's something that helped propel Donald Trump to a victory in 2016.
People who didn't want to make a fuss about it, didn't want to be embarrassed about it, but when they were in the privacy of that voting booth, marked an X next to Donald Trump's name.
You can see there's a bit of a lineup here.
They have a tradition in the UK that all the candidates are at the counting center.
They wear their little, I forget what it's called.
It looks like a sort of a badge, a rosette, it's called.
So Nigel Farage, if he's not here right now, he may come here later, but it might not be for a few hours.
Anyhow, I'm learning about the British electoral system as I go.
By the way, I checked and Clacton, which is the district in which Nigel Farage is running, only has about 100,000 people in it.
For some reason in my mind, it would be a lot bigger, but the UK, even though it has about 50% more people than Canada does, it has 650 different districts.
So any given riding is actually about the same size or even smaller than in Canada.
So we'll see how it goes.
But let me put my bet in, my prediction.
I predict that Nigel Farage wins Clacton handily.
From what I could detect on the streets, at least, I really think that's going to happen.
I only found one Labor person in all my peregrinations.
As for the rest of the country, that first pass-the-post system makes it tough.
But I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that 12 people will be elected in the whole country for a reform UK.
Now, that might sound like nothing out of 650, but it's a toehold for a new party.
And if anyone can turn that into gold, it'll be Nigel Farage.