Is Labour calling Nigel Farage racist?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Labour politicians are upping their attacks on Nigel Farage and Reform UK in Liverpool.
Rachel Reeves took to the conference stage to brand Farage "the single greatest threat to our way of life". And over the weekend, Keir Starmer levelled the accusation that Reform's policy on deporting migrants with indefinite leave to remain was "racist".
The shift in tone is not without risk - with the tabloids already accusing the PM of labelling voters more generally who are concerned about migration as racist.
But so far at party conference, cabinet ministers appear to be more comfortable defining themselves against their enemies and making the moral case for Labour in government.
Is that what the party activists, and the public, need to hear? And are there still inherent contradictions with that Labour is saying about its plan in office?
Later, Lewis and Jon speak to Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary also vying to be deputy leader of the party. She had a major announcement today about bringing back maintenance grants to some working class university students - and she came over to the News Agents stand to talk about that, Nigel Farage, Andy Burnham and the case she's making for deputy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.0 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:12.8 | The single greatest threat to our way of life and to the living standards of working people |
| 0:18.3 | is the agenda of Nigel Farage and the Reform Party. |
| 0:23.1 | Whatever falsehoods they push, whatever easy answers they peddle, however willing they are to tear |
| 0:30.5 | communities and families apart, they are not on the side of working people. |
| 0:37.7 | That is Rachel Reeves in her keynote speech defining herself by what Labour is not. |
| 0:45.1 | They are not reform and they are finally taking aim at the insurgent Nigel Farage. |
| 0:51.6 | Over the last 24 hours we have seen a gear shift in how Labour are talking about their opponents. |
| 0:58.0 | They know who they're against, but do we know who they're for? |
| 1:02.0 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:09.0 | The Newsagents. |
| 1:10.0 | It's John. It's Lewis. |
| 1:11.9 | And we are in Liverpool, on the banks of the Mersey, at the Labour Party conference. |
| 1:18.0 | And if it's Monday lunchtime, the Chancellor of the Exchequer must have just spoken. |
| 1:21.9 | And she has. |
| 1:22.8 | And we've seen the low point for Rachel Reeves when she was in tears in the House of Commons |
| 1:28.2 | and the economic outlook doesn't seem to be getting much better but she was trying to paint |
| 1:33.8 | a sort of optimistic picture about the future whilst at the same time saying god there are some |
| 1:40.2 | bloody difficult decisions ahead this is a conference this is a party which has come to Liverpool. |
| 1:46.0 | I think desperate for some answers about where the party's been and where the parties go. |
| 1:52.0 | Looking for definition, political definition from both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, |
... |
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