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Farage: right is not split in UK as 'Conservative party not on the right in any measurable way'
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, has been speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London, where he was being interviewed by Canadian self-help handbook author Jordan Peterson.
He rejected Peterson’s assertion that the right was split in the UK, because, Farage said, “the Conservative party is not on the right in any measurable way.”
He said their 14 years in government saw “the highest tax burden since 1947 … legal, mass immigration on a scale hitherto never even dreamt … illegal migration, small boats crossing the Channel, and the government completely incapable of dealing with it, because they couldn’t face up to what membership of the European convention on human rights was all about, and 14 years that saw net zero enshrined into law by a Conservative government.”
Farage was asked about energy production and net zero policies by Peterson, and the Reform UK leader said “our platform is to reindustrialise Britain. Let’s produce all the stuff we need in this country. Let’s become not just energy independent. We could actually become an energy exporter right now.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (right) is interviewed by Canadian self-help guru Jordan Peterson. Photograph: Ben Whitley/PA
There was a lengthy interlude when Peterson spoke about what he called “carbon apocalypse mongering and terrorising” and what Farage called “carbon dioxide hysteria”. Farage said “I’m an environmentalist in the old school sense” and suggested a focus on carbon had “actually blinded us to other environmental disasters that are going on.”
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The Green party of England and Wales have responded to the news that Thames Water is being allowed to borrow £3bn by reiterating their call for water companies to be nationalised. In a message on social media, the party said:
Thames Water have been allowed to add another £3bn to their existing £19bn of debt. They’ve run up this bill by paying out huge amounts to bosses and shareholders instead of investing in our water infrastructure. It’s time for water to be run for people, not profit.
Yesterday evening, in an interview with the Mirror, party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay were highly critical of the Labour government’s stance on environmental issues.
Ramsay told the paper “It’s incredible how much Labour has stumbled at its first six months. We’ve just had so many different policies – whether it’s on public services, poverty and inequality, on climate – where they’re not willing to take the action that’s actually needed.”
He said the decision on allowing a third runway at Heathrow was an example of “Labour just not taking its environmental commitments seriously,” suggesting “there will be a lot of disillusioned Labour MPs.”
Denyer criticised Labour’s failure to bring in a wealth tax, saying “it’s been so absolutely, maddeningly frustrating. Over and over again, they say that there are no alternatives. And there are, they are just refusing to consider them.”
Senior judge says she has written to Keir Starmer over 'deeply troubling' PMQs exchange
The most senior judge in England and Wales said she has written to Keir Starmer over last week’s prime minister’s questions, telling reporters she was “deeply troubled”, PA Media reports.
Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch raised the issue, describing a tribunal decision that granted a Palestinian family the right to live in the UK after they applied through a scheme originally meant for Ukrainian refugees as “completely wrong”. Starmer said in parliament that he did not agree with the decision, and that the Home Office intended to close the loophole.
The Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said on Tuesday that she was “deeply troubled to learn of the exchanges” and told reporters:
I think it started from a question from the opposition suggesting that the decision in a certain case and was wrong and obviously the prime minister’s response to that.
Both question and the answer were unacceptable.
It is for the government visibly to respect and protect the independence of the judiciary.
Where parties, including the government, disagree with their findings, they should do so through the appellate process.
Also on economic news for a moment, the UK-wide unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.4%. PA Media reports the employment rate in Scotland between October and December for those aged 16 to 64 was 74.2% – about 2,625,000 people – up 0.9% on the previous quarter but slightly below the UK rate of 74.9%. The rate of people classed as economically inactive in Scotland was 22.8% in the past quarter, down 1.2% on the previous quarter.
The SNP’s deputy first minister Kate Forbes said:
These figures indicate that Scotland’s labour market is proving resilient despite a challenging economic environment. It’s encouraging to see payrolled employment remains close to record levels and Scotland has higher median monthly pay than the UK.
To help more people into work our draft budget for 2025-26 allocates an extra £11m for Scotland’s employability services. We are also rolling out enhanced employability support for disabled people by this summer to help address barriers to employment as part of our plans to tackle economic inactivity.
My colleague Phillip Inman has this analysis today, suggesting that the earlier strong wage growth figures are likely to delay any possible interest rate cuts from the Bank of England, as policymakers at the central bank are likely to consider persistently high pay rises as inflationary.
Farage says Labour government is 'miserable' and 'declinist' in attack on Rachel Reeves
Nigel Farage has said that chancellor Rachel Reeves makes him want to reach for the “cry tissues” and that the Labour government is “miserable” and “declinist” while being interviewed in London by Canadian self-help author Jordan Peterson.
Asked about the family unit as a fundamental pillar of civilised society, the Reform UK leader and MP for Clacton said that when he decided to come back into frontline politics ahead of the last general election the three things that motivated him were “family, community and country.”
Farage then lamented declining birthrates in the UK, saying:
Family matters enormously. Of course, we need higher birthrates, but we’re not going to get higher birthrates in this country until we can get some sense of optimism, and we need a complete 180 degree shift in attitudes.
We need some very, very big cultural changes. We’ve got to get that spirit, that sense of optimism, back in the country. We had it in the late 1980s. We actually had it through much of the 1990s. That’s what we have to recapture
Frankly, being led as we are by … I mean, God … doesn’t Rachel Reeves just make you want to reach for the cry tissues? It’s all so miserable. It’s all so declinist. Frankly, the Conservatives have been no better.
We deem a change of attitude in Britain, we get that right, people will have more kids.
In October 2024 the ONS reported that the fertility rate in England and Wales had dropped to the lowest on record, saying “The number of children born in England and Wales has been falling for the last decade and is at its lowest since 1977, while the average age of first-time mothers is at an all-time high.”
Nigel Farage was put into a somewhat awkward spot during his interview by Jordan Peterson at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London, after Peterson asked him a long rambling question which including describing single mothers and same-sex couples as “deviations from the norm”.
Peterson continued “You could make the case that that stable, committed monogamy, heterosexual child-centred monogamy is the kind of long-term commitment to community, to sacrifice and to future that’s the fundamental unit of civilised, organised, civilised society. And so I’m curious what you think about that?”
Farage said, with some wry self-awareness, “Well, I may not necessarily be the best advocate for monogamous heterosexuality or stable marriage, having been divorced twice.”
Farage: right is not split in UK as 'Conservative party not on the right in any measurable way'
Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, has been speaking at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London, where he was being interviewed by Canadian self-help handbook author Jordan Peterson.
He rejected Peterson’s assertion that the right was split in the UK, because, Farage said, “the Conservative party is not on the right in any measurable way.”
He said their 14 years in government saw “the highest tax burden since 1947 … legal, mass immigration on a scale hitherto never even dreamt … illegal migration, small boats crossing the Channel, and the government completely incapable of dealing with it, because they couldn’t face up to what membership of the European convention on human rights was all about, and 14 years that saw net zero enshrined into law by a Conservative government.”
Farage was asked about energy production and net zero policies by Peterson, and the Reform UK leader said “our platform is to reindustrialise Britain. Let’s produce all the stuff we need in this country. Let’s become not just energy independent. We could actually become an energy exporter right now.”
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (right) is interviewed by Canadian self-help guru Jordan Peterson. Photograph: Ben Whitley/PA
There was a lengthy interlude when Peterson spoke about what he called “carbon apocalypse mongering and terrorising” and what Farage called “carbon dioxide hysteria”. Farage said “I’m an environmentalist in the old school sense” and suggested a focus on carbon had “actually blinded us to other environmental disasters that are going on.”
The first of up to 390 prisoners are being released early as the Scottish government attempts to tackle overcrowding in the country’s prisons, PA Media reports.
Emergency legislation passed by MSPs in November will change the release point for those serving prison sentences of less than four years from 50% of their sentence to 40%.
The Scottish government said it expects the change to bring about a 5% reduction in the prison population. Those convicted of domestic abuse or sexual offences will not be released early under the changes.
Justice Secretary Angela Constance told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme:
It is fair to say that in terms of crimes of violence that is not an insignificant proportion of people serving short-term sentences.
But the important point, and the raison d’être of this legislation, is that we need to achieve a sustained reduction in the prison population that is necessary to ensure that our prisons can continue to accommodate those who pose the greatest risk of harm, and also to support rehabilitation in order to reduce re-offending.
There is an inextricable link between the work that goes on in prisons and the safety of our community.
Towards the end of last year prisons in Scotland had a population of about 8,300 inmates, above the total capacity which is set at about 8,000.
Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Liam McArthur said: “For years, the government was warned that overcrowding in the prison system was a disaster waiting to happen and failed to act.”
Government warned 'only matter of time' before prisons in England and Wales exceed capacity again
The chair of the independent sentencing review has warned the government that it is “only a matter of time” before prison numbers exceed capacity again in England and Wales.
Former justice secretary David Gauke told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme:
It is only a matter of time before, once again, prison numbers will exceed capacity. The government was forced into taking action in the autumn, but we are going to be in a similar position probably at some point next year, and that is far from ideal.
We should be much more strategic about these things. You don’t want to be rushing the release of prisoners out and action is going to be needed. What we have seen for the last 30 years is something of a bidding war between political parties as to who is prepared to lengthen sentences the most.
As a consequence, we’ve seen our prison population essentially double over that time. We now have the highest incarceration rate in western Europe and with that comes consequences, not least the fact that prison is pretty expensive.
Gauke, who was a Conservative justice secretary for 18 months in Theresa May’s government, was asked to carry out a review of the sentencing system this year.
He found that successive governments’ overreliance on prison sentences and desire to seem “tough on crime” have driven the justice system in England and Wales to the brink of collapse.
Transport secretary: Labour aiming to 'fundamentally rewire' railways after decades of 'leaking money' to private sector
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander has said Labour is proposing to “fundamentally rewire” railways in England to escape “decades of waste, inefficiency, fragmentation, with the privatised railways” introduced by the Conservative government of the 1990s.
Announcing a consultation period over the setting up of what will be called Great British Railway, Alexander said “this is a brand new public organization that is going to bring together for the first time in decades, the management of the trains with the management of the tracks and infrastructure.”
Alexander also told viewers of ITV’s Good Morning Britain that the government was intending to set up “a brand new passenger watchdog, which is going to have much greater powers than the travel watchdog that exists at the moment so that we can put passengers at the heart of the system.”
She said:
Over the last couple of decades, we have leaked money to private sector train operating companies in the management fees that we have been paying. And so this is about making our railways more efficient, providing better value for money for the taxpayer, and ultimately improving the reliability of those services.
It’s really important that we do this properly, because we are fundamentally rewiring our railways. We’ve had decades of waste, inefficiency, and fragmentation with the privatised railways.
I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t problems on the rail network in some parts of the country, and I recognise that people are ambitious for change. That is why we are going to have a radical overhaul of the way our railways are organised.
Reacting to those wage and unemployment figures, work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall said:
Since July, wages have continued to grow at pace, putting vital money back in people’s pockets as we work to make work pay and improve living standards for all.
But these figures also show that too many people are being locked out of work and denied that chance, including those sick and disabled.
Instead of writing people off and labelling them, we must step up our support.
UK pay growth rises 6% and unemployment remained unchanged
Richard Partington
Richard Partington is economics correspondent for the Guardian
UK pay growth rose in December and unemployment remained unchanged despite warnings from business that Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget would lead to job losses.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show annual growth in total average weekly earnings rose by 6% in the three months to December, up from 5.6% in November and above a 5.9% forecast made by City economists.
Regular pay, excluding bonuses also accelerated from 5.6% to 5.9%, matching estimates.
Unemployment remained unchanged at 4.4%, confounding expectations for a marginal increase to 4.5%.
Liz McKeown, an ONS director of economic statistics, said: “Growth in pay, excluding bonuses, rose for a third consecutive time, with increases seen in both the private and public sector. After taking account of inflation, real pay growth also increased slightly.
“The number of employees on payroll was broadly unchanged in the last three months of the year, continuing a medium-term trend of slowing growth. The number of vacancies also continued to fall in the latest quarter, albeit more slowly, with the total number remaining a little above its pre-pandemic level.”
Read more here: UK pay growth rises 6% despite job loss warnings after Reeves’s budget
Sadiq Khan: 'Brexit was a mistake that continues to have a negative impact'
London mayor Sadiq Khan is expected to tell diplomats today that “Brexit was a mistake” and renew backing for a youth mobility scheme.
In comments briefed to the media in advance, the Labour politician, in his third term as mayor, will tell delegates at a meeting with the EU ambassador and UK ambassadors of the 27 member states that Britain’s withdrawal from the EU “continues to have a negative impact.”
“As mayor, I’m strongly in favour of a new youth mobility scheme,” PA media reports he is expected to tell the gathering.
“This would help to aid economic growth across Europe, but also give young Londoners and EU citizens important life experiences – like the opportunity to work abroad and learn more about our respective languages and cultures.
“As part of this, I’m keen for us to look at how we can make it easier for schoolchildren from the EU to visit the UK and learn more about our shared ties and history.
“I’m a proud European and of the view that Brexit was a mistake that continues to have a negative impact – not just on my city and country, but on the European community as a whole”
