What happens during that period, do you think, which really drives the salience of an issue like immigration into the stratosphere?

Well, I think you have to start first of all there with the 2008 financial crisis and the accumulating effects of that.

And then the austerity policies that were rolled out by, by the British government in response, um, which, which is important.

I mean, I think because, so I started working as a journalist about a year before the financial crash.

So I kind of, that was my introduction to the world of work and politics all at the same time.

And I think there was something that the left got wrong about it at the time, which was to just think it would be a repeat of, you know, it'd be history repeating.

We know what happened after the Wall Street crash in 1929.

Do we need to be better?

How have we got to this situation?

Yeah, it's a very good question.

Because I have also written about the politics of immigration a lot over the years, I try and use what I know in the book to help readers get their heads around this because it is a big and complex issue.

There's a nice line actually from this scholar of migration, Heiner Haas, who says that any debate about immigration will inevitably be a debate about what kind of society we want to live in.

um because if you're talking about immigration um to a particular country you're you're mainly talking about people traveling for work um they are mainly coming because that country's government has invited them in and it's done so for um largely economic reasons you know it's part of a conversation among policymakers about well uh what what do we what do we want out of our economy? If we want growth, where is the growth going to come from? What are the jobs that are going to provide that growth? Who is going to do the jobs and so on? And likewise, with the other area of immigration that comes under heavy focus, which is displacement, refugees, that again, you know, is happening primarily for non-economic reasons.

You know, people are fleeing war, persecution and instability.

But it becomes a question not only about individual safety but what kind of society again do we want to be you know do we want to be a society where people have rights no matter where they're from what their background is do we want to care for one another um on the basis that we're all equal or or do we not you know and i think the constant problem with the politics of immigration is that it's thought about and talked of as completely separate from these other questions.

And I wondered where that kind of positive vision, where do you think that comes from?

Where do you think populism today sits in terms of it's a phenomena of the change in tech, it's the phenomena in the change in the media landscape, or do you think this is actually just part of the natural process and cycle of politics?

I think to explain that as concisely as I can, my take on it is that- Today's far right populism is a product primarily of, on one hand, the collapse of neoliberalism as a way of doing politics.

You know, we had 40 years in the UK, I think Australia too, of not only the economic policies associated with ne- with neoliberalism, but the, the governing ideology that went along with it, which was, as Margaret Thatcher put it famously, there is no alternative.

That, you know, left and right had to converge on very similar kinds of ideas, and that key decisions about the economy and about society were, were effectively removed from political contestation.

You know, the markets knew best.

We had to kind of go along with market logic.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, but particularly in the 2020s as we've had, you know, pandemic, war, increased climate pressure and so on, that way of doing things is no longer effective.

Then haven't, in a way, the far-right populists kind of won because they're changing our politics even though they might not be holding office?

Mm.

Um, and I mean, the kind of famous example of that is how the Tories behaved in, in the 1970s, you know, which was another time of a prolonged economic crisis, the growth of, uh, you know, the far right outside of the mainstream.

And- This is not an endorsement of this strategy or its content, but Margaret Thatcher was credited with kind of helping take the sting out of what the National Front were proposing by co-opting some of their racist rhetoric.

So her infamous interview she gave in 1978 saying, well, people are right to be worried about being swamped by people from another culture.

You know, long term, that's an incredibly damaging way of doing things because what it does is embed racism deeper within British society.

But in kind of crude electoral terms, it worked for the Tories.

And that's sort of the received political wisdom of the centre as well, that that's what you do when you're faced with this kind of insurgent pressure from the right.

Thank you.

What do we know about Tommy Robinson's, uh, criminal record?

Uh, he has a string of criminal convictions going back many years.

Some of them are directly related to his political activity.

Uh, so a couple of years ago he spent quite a few months in prison for repeating lies about a teenage Syrian boy, uh, when he'd been ordered to, uh, stop doing that by a court.

Um, he has a restraining order against him for stalking and harassing a female journalist who was doing perfectly legi- legitimate reporting on what he was doing with all the money that he had received in donations from his supporters.

Uh, he's also spent time in prison for mortgage fraud.

Uh, so that's an offense not related to his political activity, obviously.

What part have the major parties played in creating something of a political vacuum that has now been occupied by some of these far ri- right parties when people's grievances from the, the local, the county, and the national level about standards of living and changes in their neighborhoods, if people feel that they have not been adequately addressed?

Mm.

At that stage, Reform was a private company, you know, owned and run by some very wealthy people that didn't really have a base in, in the way that we traditionally think of political parties having a base.

It wasn't a mass membership party with activists and branches and the like a-around the country.

What it did have was volunteers that were a hangover from previous Farage projects.

So someone like Gawain Towler, who was, um, Nigel Farage's comms guy all the way back to the UKIP days in, in the late 2000s.

Um, and Yusuf was brought in to turn Reform into a more substantial election fighting and winning machine.

Um, other colleagues in Reform credit him with, um- Helping Reform get nearer to that goal.

Mm.

So Restore, for those listeners who don't know, was the result of a split within Reform.

So the Reform MP Rupert Lowe left the party after a row with Nigel Farage.

Rupert Lowe has had eight posts on X since the beginning of 2026 reposted by Elon Musk.

And each one of those posts has reached more than 10 million views.

That is actually quite significant in terms of broadening the reach and profile of Rupert Lowe and Restore.

And also because Twitter is a monetized platform for those who want to monetize their content on it, it's made Rupert Lowe the highest earning MP on X. He's earning tens of thousands of pounds a year from posting, even though in terms of followers, he has far fewer followers than Nigel Farage, for instance.

but it's much more significant in the

pressure that that puts on Reform UK.

But history tells us that the far right, like Franz von Papen, never is able to tame Hitler, if you get my meaning.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

And I mean, you bring in the comparison with fascism from the interwar period there.

And that's something that I write about in the book.

And my take on all of that is that I think quite often when we talk about right-wing politics today and the rise of whatever you want to call this new movement that is now there in most liberal democracies around the world, we get very hung up on arguing over how much is this like fascism from a century ago? And that conversation can tend to go around in circles because there are good arguments to say, well, it doesn't share lots of features of, say, Mussolini's fascists in Italy in the 1920s therefore it can't be the same kind of movement and lots of good reasons to say oh yes but actually look at what they're doing or look at how it relates to the mainstream or look at the effects it's having and so on and for me what's important is that you kind of spot the similarities in a way that's actually useful to understanding what's happening now and ideally like how you can then actually stop it succeeding and I think the kind of key overlap between far right politics today and that kind of classic historical fascism of interwar Europe is in the way it appeals to the emotions above anything else.

And I think that above all, what it's trying to do is appeal to a very destructive form of resentment that like, as you say, it's about getting people riled up and telling them that national revival is going to come via taking revenge on a series of named enemies both sort of internal enemies and external enemies you know so it's always about the external threat in combination with the treacherous actions of an elite or some other kind of enemy within so The discourse around immigration in Britain and in the US and in Western Europe is just full of this, you know, on the right.

There's a civilizational threat or like as Tommy Robinson is now putting it in terms of like that great replacement conspiracy theory.

Yeah.

I mean, for me, that feels like the biggest gap and the biggest void and the reason that Farage gets to sort of run away with this stuff.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I think mainstream politicians, uh, because they've been caught on the hop really by, by these big, you know, the fragmentation of British politics, but also the ways that our forms of communication have changed radically.

They're just not able to kind of emote and use emotion and connect that to a kind of rational argument and political argument in the way that politics always needs to, um, effectively anymore.

They're kind of stuck, particularly a politician like Starmer, like you say, low agency, and this is exactly what I mean.

Like, sounds like a spectator.

You know, I was appalled when I saw this.

It was bigger than ever.

Would it be right to say, though, that you view those effects of neoliberalism as the sort of necessary background conditions for the rise of the far right, but that it was the, uh, the financial crisis, itself a result of the turn towards finance capital and the market under neoliberalism, that then radically enhanced the, uh, popular appeal of the far right and enabled the breakthrough that we've since seen?

Yeah, I think it's absolutely the case that the financial crisis of 2008 prepared the ground for a resurgence of far right politics.

And something I was doing in the new book, because my narrative in the book basically starts around 2008 and brings us up to the present, and because that's also the period over which I have been writing about this subject, I was looking back to those early years and not only thinking about, well, what happened then that, that would help us understand what's happening now, but alsoW- what did I perhaps get wrong at that point, or did, do I think about things differently to how I did then and, and, and why is that? And I think at the time I slipped into what I felt was something happening m- more broadly on, on the left, which was to assume that there was this script that everybody was gonna follow after the, after the financial crash of 2008, where, you know, you'd have this global financial crash, you'd have tough economic times, and then you would see the rise of far-right movements quite, quite rapidly and that resembled those of interwar Europe.

And with the exception, I mean, if we're thinking about Europe here, with the exception perhaps of Greece, where you did see an actual Nazi movement, Golden Dawn, become alarmingly large within the space of a few years, that isn't what happened, and it's certainly not what happened in, in Britain.

What you saw instead was, was the momentum moving away from the most extreme parts of the far right and giving rise to, to Nigel Farage who, as we mentioned before, is, is a quite different type of politician.

The reasons why are first of all because although rampant forms of free market capitalism, I think, do produce the kinds of resentments and inequalities that are conducive to reactionary right-wing politics, most of the time the political center is actually very good at containing and co-opting those things.

With hindsight, I think that while the 1930s were a kind of useful, instructive story for us in, over the past 15 years, the crisis of the 1970s was, was just as important, where, you know, again you had a period of crisis, you had the splintering of the right and the emergence of a, of a far-right party to the right of the, um, the traditional center.

[laughs]

How would you describe that relationship? Because it has been critical to the expansion of Restore, hasn't it?

Restore and Rupert Lowe have had the very enthusiastic backing of Elon Musk.

Elon Musk obviously is the proprietor of X, for a long time has used that platform to spread his own views on race, identity, quote unquote wokeness and so on.

But since the beginning of 2025 has really latched onto Britain as a place where he wants to push his ideas to intervene in politics.

He's done at least half a dozen posts since, uh, Restore launched as a political party a few months ago, uh, most of which have had over 10 million views each.

He'd already been quite a supporter of Nigel Farage and Reform UK before then.

But from 2025 onwards, he's taken this line that Farage is, as Musk put it, weak sauce, that Farage is too mainstream now.

What do you think the effect of having a party like this in British politics is?

Yeah

... international politics and have reported from other countries as well.

Um, so the BNP, um, are a party that came from that fascist tradition that I described earlier.

You know, they, they were founded by neo-Nazis, uh, people who had a huge admiration for Hitler in, in the wake of the Second World War, seeing what his politics had led to and thought, "Yes, we like that.

We want to recreate that in post-war Britain." Um, the BNP existed for several decades on that basis and, politically speaking, had very little success.

Um, it was involved in open racist violence, racist rhetoric, street rallies, and so on.

Uh, but at the turn of the millennium, a new leader, Nick Griffin, took charge of the BNP and decided to revamp its image and pursue an early version of what we would now call right-wing populism.

Tell us, you know, beyond the fact that one was led by a white face and one by a brown face, which is interesting given the trajectory of, of the society, tell us why those governments were so different.

What really is it that's making this quite so, if not entirely new, certainly a raised level of threat, perhaps?

Yeah, so, I mean, just to talk, first of all, about that comparison with the 20th century.

Obviously, this is something, again, that we all love to kind of argue about.

And, I mean, it's important to think about these things.

And, you know, for the last decade at least... you know, with the big breakthroughs for right wing populism in different parts of the world, that question of always, you know, to some people, it reminds them of fascism of the 20th century.

And then what ensues is a kind of heated debate about, well, is this or isn't this like fascism? And I think that debate often gets stuck in a kind of form of sort of historical box ticking, you know, that the game is to try and tick off as many features that resemble a movement from, from a century ago or almost a century ago, you know, whether that was in Germany or Italy or elsewhere, and you have to get to as many boxes ticked off as possible.

And then, and then you reach your decision about what's happening now.

So how much is the theatre around reform important? And, you know, does that not mean that there's such a big difference between being able to fight election campaigns, but then actually what would happen if and when they enter government?

Why don't you start off by responding to these historic losses of the Labour Party?

Yeah.

Thanks, Amy.

So, absolutely right, this has been a real disaster for the Labour Party.

Um, it wasn't quite as disastrous as had been predicted a few weeks ago, um, but they've sunk to new lows, um, electorally, um, around Britain.

So as well as losing hundreds of councilors in England, um, they lost, uh, very badly in the elections for the Welsh Parliament, which were happening at the same time.

Labour has dominated Welsh politics, um, for over a century, and they're now, um, you know, trailing behind the Welsh nationalist party, uh, Plaid Cymru, and Reform, who've come in second.

If you can talk about who Farage is and what he represents.

Why don't you start off by responding to these historic losses of the Labour Party?

Yeah.

Thanks, Amy.

So absolutely right, this has been a real disaster for the Labour Party.

Um, it wasn't quite as disastrous as had been predicted a few weeks ago, um, but they've sunk to new lows, um, electorally, um, around Britain.

So as well as losing hundreds of councilors in England, um, they lost, uh, very badly in the elections for the Welsh Parliament, which were happening at the same time.

Labour has dominated Welsh politics, um, for over a century, and they're now, um, you know, trailing behind the Welsh Nationalist Party, uh, Plaid Cymru, and Reform, who've come in second.

If you can talk about who Farage is and what he represents.

Why don't you start off by responding to these historic losses of the Labour Party?

Yeah.

Thanks, Amy.

So absolutely right, this has been a real disaster for the Labour Party.

Um, it wasn't quite as disastrous as had been predicted a few weeks ago, um, but they've sunk to new lows, um, electorally, um, around Britain.

So as well as losing hundreds of councilors in England, um, they lost, uh, very badly in the elections for the Welsh Parliament, which were happening at the same time.

Labour has dominated Welsh politics, um, for over a century, and they're now, um, you know, trailing behind the Welsh nationalist party, uh, Plaid Cymru, and Reform, who've come in second.

If you can talk about who Farage is and what he represents.

Why don't you start off by responding to these historic losses of the Labour Party?

Yeah.

Thanks, Amy.

So, absolutely right, this has been a real disaster for the Labour Party.

Um, it wasn't quite as disastrous as had been predicted a few weeks ago, um, but they've sunk to new lows, um, electorally, um, around Britain.

So as well as losing hundreds of councilors in England, um, they lost, uh, very badly in the elections for the Welsh Parliament, which were happening at the same time.

Labour has dominated Welsh politics, um, for over a century, and they're now, um, you know, trailing behind the Welsh Nationalist Party, uh, Plaid Cymru, and Reform, who've come in second.

If you can talk about who Farage is and what he represents.

But how do you see the kinds of passions, the kinds of drives that produce and animate the far right?

Sure.

Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.

It's, it's a tricky thing to talk about, and, um, for a long time it wasn't something that I gave a lot of priority to in, in my work on, on the far right and right-wing nationalism.

Um, but I think it, it's, it's crucial for understanding what's going on now.

Um, so one of the reasons I wrote my new book, If We Tolerate This, is because I was trying to draw attention to this process of ideas that were once associated with, um, marginal and very extreme right-wing movements, um, being sanitized and, and, and mainstreams.

And, um, I think for me, what's important to recognize is that far right as a term refers to a collection of different right-wing nationalist movements, and at its simplest level it means kind of the, the bit of the right that sits outside of the traditional mainstream.

And does that give space to the far right? Is that what allows for sort of like also people who are sort of upper class coded, right, like Farage to come along and, you know, sell their wares, right? But is that the kind of the disintegration of the kind of classic centre-right party is the thing that allows for this new, more further right, far right political project to have an opening?

Mm-hmm.

But I think it's actually, it, it, it's very important that we do use it and also understand it precisely.

So I think, you know, for historical reasons, when you use the term far right or, or one of those associated terms, it, it often just conjures up the image of fascist movements, of, um, you know, interwar fascism in Europe in the 20th century, for instance, or groups of violent street activists as, as we have seen periodically in the UK, uh, over the decades since the Second World War.

But really that's only one part of this broader collection of right-wing movements that sit outside the traditional mainstream of politics.

So when I say far right, that's really what I'm referring to, and there's a good body of academic literature by, uh, political studies scholars and, and other experts to kind of spell out what that means.

Um, the most useful way of thinking about it that I've found is from a political scientist called Cas Mudde, who has written about far right politics in this broad sense for years and years, and he uses it as a kind of umbrella term to describe a range of movements that range from right-wing populists to neo-Nazis and, and fascists.

And by doing so, he's not saying they all think exactly the same thing, or they all use the same political techniques and methods.

Mm