Nigel Farage has sage words of advice – for Peter Dutton and the Western world

Nigel Farage, the insurgent prince of British politics, hopes Peter Dutton will win the forthcoming Australian election … but if the Coalition want to achieve a majority, he has one piece of advice.

Nigel Farage has offered some advice to Peter Dutton ahead of the federal election.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Nigel Farage, the insurgent prince of British politics, the cheerier, cheekier, friendlier, British Donald Trump, armed with clear messages and plain speaking, ­exudes maximum self-confidence right now.

“I think Reform UK (Farage’s Party) will win the next British election,” he tells me during an ­interview at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference in London.

“Will it be me as prime minister? I don’t know. I hope so. Life’s a game of snakes and ladders. You never know what life’s going to throw up.”

Britain’s election is still three or four years away.

Dealing with something more proximate, Farage hopes Peter Dutton will win the forthcoming Australian election.

But with the Opposition Leader needing a big swing to beat Anthony Albanese and at least 18 seats before he gets to anything like a majority, Farage has one piece of advice for the Coalition.

“I like Peter Dutton. I think he’s a very, very good, solid guy. I think Dutton’s very good. If I would say anything, it’s just that the whole campaign for the Australian Liberal Party, maybe it just needs a bit more fizz.”

Then he adds: “I like drinking fizz, too.”

Given Farage’s power in the global conservative movement and his extraordinary rise since the early Brexit days, it will be ­advice Mr Dutton will surely take heed of.

Nigel Farage, left, is interviewed by The Australian’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan, right, on the sidelines of the ARC conference in London

The idea of Reform actually winning a British election when it only has five sitting MPs in the House of Commons might seem far-fetched, but a recent YouGov poll put Reform in first place, narrowly ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives.

I ask Farage what is the single biggest issue for the UK, and therefore for Reform.

“The biggest issue is the impact of the population explosion on the quality of life for everybody,” Farage tells me. “There’s been a completely unplanned population increase of 10 million people in the past 20 years. There’s a huge impact on schools. The situation in housing is literally impossible. I mean Generation Rent.

“People in London live like students until they’re 40. People live with mum and dad in a way they haven’t since Victorian England. There are no more roads but 10 million more people. There’s access to health.

“Also, the impact it’s had on communities has been pretty stark. We have towns and cities where there are absolute divisions. One group of people live here, an entirely different group of people live there. There’s a lack of integration. There’s been a growth of Muslim majorities in the inner city parts of some cities, with the lowest educational standards, the highest levels of first cousin marriages, declining health, huge welfare dependency. Is it any wonder extreme ideologies can be fostered in environments like that?”

He proposes Britain should ­become a “net zero” immigration society. Some immigration would continue, but “overall the policy is not to increase the population through immigration over the next few years, to give us half a chance to adjust.”

Farage also wants to create a Britain where Brits themselves want to stay, saying: “I would also like to stop emigration.”

He runs through the types of Brits who are leaving, and he doesn’t want to lose any of them. There are the people who bought a semi-detached house in London decades ago for some thousands of pounds and find it’s now worth a million pounds. They cash in their chips, buy a nice house in Spain, where the weather is good, and they’ve got loads of money left over. The problem with losing that cohort, Farage says, is that they are big spenders in the economy.

“And of course the rich are obviously going. The Conservatives started that.”

By making the tax treatment for foreigners living in London less generous, Conservative and Labour both thought they would assist equity. Instead, they’ve seen a massive drain of millionaires, and much of their capital, from the country. Farage adds sarcastically: “We can’t have successful people in Britain because they’re bad people. Anyone who succeeds is bad, you do understand? Take that with a note of sarcasm please.”

But worst of all is the loss of 30-something entrepreneurial types. They don’t all move to Dubai, Farage says, lots go to Lisbon, or Milan, or even Athens. The cost of living is cheaper, taxes are often lower. “The whole of Europe is putting tax deals in place to grab young British entrepreneurs.”

Nigel Farage and Jordan Peterson on the conference stage. Picture: Andrew Parsons/Parsons Media

Farage seems to be a lucky politician at the moment. As he says: “I think Donald Trump’s victory is especially good for me. If you look at the contract with the people we put at the general election last year, the policy similarities (with Trump) are quite remarkable.

“Back in 2016, we’d won the Brexit vote and suddenly I had a bit of respect. I decided to roll the dice and I backed Donald Trump. People said I was mad. I was almost the only person this side of the Atlantic who defended him.

“We’re personal friends, everyone knows that. I think there is a knock-on effect for Reform, for me. I think it will make a big difference. And if Elon Musk does his thing with the Department of Government Efficiency, that will give us a blueprint.”

Like others, Farage thinks Trump’s victory is a big moment in Western cultural politics: “I think it’s a huge push back against divisive identity politics. No one can doubt Trump does stand up for ­Judaeo-Christian values, which underpin everything our society is built on, including tolerance.”

Farage strongly backs the consensus that Britain must increase its defence spending. But he is more critical of 14 years of Conservative government than he is of the Labour government of today: “The last Labour government in 2010 spent more on defence than the Conservatives spent in any of the 14 years they were there.”

Britain must substantially increase defence spending, he says, “if the Americans are to take us seriously – and without the Americans we are basically defenceless.

“I’ve sat and talked to Donald about defence, about NATO. If he thinks we’re making a fair contribution, he’ll respect us. If he doesn’t, there’s no particular reason why he should.”

Farage is a strong proponent of nuclear energy, as indeed are Labour and the Conservatives. But he would abandon the net-zero target and, he says, save billions of pounds in renewables subsidies.

Farage points out that in Labour’s 25-person cabinet there’s not one who has worked in private business. He says he will bring people with strong business experience, with strong achievements, in to government to help lead a pro-business regime.

“We have to become wealth creators again. Without business, without profit, you can forget about healthcare, you can forget about all the things the state can do to help people.

“We’re at one of those pivotal moments, it’s a bit like the mid to late 1970s. The country was falling to pieces. We were able to turn it round but it was painful. We have to do that again. If we don’t, within a decade we’ll effectively be gone.”

Greg Sheridan travelled to London as a guest of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.