This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Betts with my colleague, Joseph Sternberg, member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. He's in London. He writes political economics. And Joe mentions Nigel Farage, who's a colorful character, very easy to talk to a man who has opinions and is a professional

politician. He's a member of parliament now, and he's founded something called the Reform Party,

which tells you very little. However, Elon Musk, the well-to-do man out of America, who's

volunteering his time and efforts for President

elect Trump, something called Doge, has also praised the Reform Party and then you'd have to say

in some fashion said that Farage wasn't up to the task that's necessary.

So he's praised Farage's party and then he's unpraised Farage wasn't up to the task that's necessary. So he's praised Farage's party, and then

he's unpraised Farage. But I don't know. That's a bouncing ball. I don't know where we are today.

What is the Reform Party? And what explains Mr. Musk's interest in it and this sudden dispute with

Mr. Farage? Well, reform has become a major disruptive force in British politics, which frankly

might be one of the main things that is attracting Musk's attention to it.

Nigel Farage himself has been a political gadfly activist, a campaigner for a long time.

He was one of the chief architects of the Brexit campaign.

He's been behind various small political parties for a while, including at times we had the

Brexit party or UK Independence Party was a Nigel Farage movement. Most recently, it's been

Reform UK, which is trying to position itself as the true center-right party in the UK after the conservatives lost their way during their 14 years in power.

And reform has become a major political force. I mean, it achieved a startlingly high vote chair. I forget exactly what it was, but it performed quite

well in the national election that Britain had back in July last year, a proportion of the vote

that is much higher than its number of parliamentary seats would suggest. The conservatives are

clearly very concerned about competition

from reform. And one of the big questions in British politics right now is can you unite

the right to have a single unified party, whereas one or the other of them going to end up

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