Does Farage really want to be Prime Minister?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How does Reform go from political insurgents to a government in waiting? Political editor Tim Shipman gives an insight into his interview with Nigel Farage, which you can read in The Spectator’s Christmas edition. In the background at party headquarters, discussions are under way to work out how Reform would bring sweeping changes to the British state, looking at the model of the American system of executive power. But once handed the reins of power, would Farage actually enjoy the day-to-day business of being prime minister?
In the meantime, how are Reform MPs finding Westminster? Tim reveals the unlikely relationship between Reform and the SNP, and how respect shown to the Lib Dems is not reciprocated. Plus, would the Conservatives ever work with Reform?
Lucy Dunn is joined by Tim Shipman and James Heale.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Give something clever this Christmas. |
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| 0:07.9 | And we'll send you a bottle of our very own English sparkling wine worth £48 £48, absolutely free. |
| 0:15.3 | Have a bright and sparkling Christmas with the Spectator. |
| 0:17.7 | Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash Christmas. |
| 0:26.6 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm Lucy Dunn and today I'm joined by James Heel and Tim Shippman. |
| 0:33.6 | Our Christmas issue is now out featuring names as diverse as Bonnie Blue, the Queen, |
| 0:40.2 | and Nigel Farage. And it's Nigel that we're going to be talking about today. Tim, |
| 0:45.2 | you have done an interview with the reform leader in the Christmas edition this year. What did |
| 0:50.2 | you learn about Nigel Farage, the person? Well, I think he, it's interesting. |
| 0:55.5 | I've seen a lot of people who are on the cusp of what they think is going to be a massive year, on the cusp of power. |
| 1:03.3 | But power seems still tantalisingly a long way away for Farage. |
| 1:07.7 | We talked before the last election about that whole image of Keirstama trying to cross a slippery floor, holding a Ming Vars in order to get to the win and get the victory over the line, get the majority, all of that. |
| 1:21.1 | Reform, in a sense, have picked up the Ming Vars quite early in this parliament, and they've got quite long way to go. |
| 1:26.9 | So there is a huge sense of excitement. There is a great sense of pride in Farage about what they've done and how far they've come and how they're gearing up and how they're professionalising. He took me around his office the whole thing. You know, we went in and out of every room. There's a tea towel of Herman van Rompuy in one room. There's a whole |
| 1:45.1 | room of people drumming up candidates in another, a job forage used to have to do himself, |
| 1:50.0 | and now doesn't. There's basically a TV studio. They're building a podcast studio. They've got |
| 1:54.8 | an enormous whiteboard with all of the key contests for the coming year on it. They've got a |
| 1:59.6 | smaller whiteboard with council |
| 2:01.1 | by-elections that week. So they're all across everything. It's, you know, there's a lot of young people in there. There's a lot of energy. And the man himself, I think, is quite excited about it all. But at the same time, there's a, you can't, you know, you look him in the eye and there's a slight sort of air of mild concern that this might all be |
| 2:18.9 | something that just collapses at some point. And the question is, you know, in his mind, |
| 2:24.4 | how does he scale up, you know, what has always been an insurgent kind of outfit into something |
... |
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