Nigel Farage: 'Broken Britain', national identity and lessons from Trump
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson
BBC
4.6 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A frank conversation with the leader of Reform UK.
Nigel Farage has put his party on a "general election war footing" and says he is preparing for power.
What has his party still got to learn before they're ready?
Who is he referring to when he talks about putting "our own people first"?
And what made him change his mind and return to politics?
Senior Producer: Daniel Kraemer Producer: Flora Murray Editor: Giles Edwards Sound: Ged Sudlow
This episode has been subject to a Corrections and Clarifications note: https://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | On Newscast, we are not in the business of telling you how to think. |
| 0:11.5 | We get the brightest minds from across the BBC to chat through the biggest stories. |
| 0:16.1 | You should leave feeling smarter about all the bonkers things in the news. |
| 0:19.7 | Listen to Newscast every day on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:23.1 | Hello and welcome to political thinking. |
| 0:25.6 | The crisis the Prime Minister faced this week, the attempted coup, |
| 0:29.3 | was all down to the performance of one man. |
| 0:32.8 | No, not Kirstama, Nigel Farage, my guest this week, |
| 0:36.5 | whose new party reform UK has been ahead in the opinion polls for months and which Labour fears could rob them of any chance of winning the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections and English local elections. |
| 0:49.1 | There's even talk of a party with just eight MPs forming the next UK government. Unthinkable, absurd even, just a few |
| 0:58.7 | months ago. Nigel Farage, welcome back to political. Thank you very much. You smile because |
| 1:03.6 | what, it's two years since we had a conversation here. Yeah, we sat here two years ago. We talked about |
| 1:07.6 | life and thoughts and where politics was going and in particular, |
| 1:12.0 | you know, had Brexit delivered the things that I'd spent quarter of a century fighting for. |
| 1:17.1 | And you called yourself, I don't know if you remember, an ex-politician. Yes. Well, I was. I mean, |
| 1:22.8 | I'd got off and I was doing GB News, which I thoroughly enjoying, getting a lot of invitations to speak in America, which was enjoyable, quite lucrative, not much pressure, my own boss, a bit more free time. |
| 1:40.0 | I'd, when we last spoke, just turned 60, first couple of grandkids. I mean, you know, I was in semi-retirement, really. Were you, though? Because you know, I asked you whether you were going to run for Parliament. And, of course, there are certain questions that politicians take a choice whether to answer or not. I didn't know. You really didn't know. No, I really didn't know. You weren't just having me odd in this. No, no, no, no. I genuinely didn't know. Yeah, we're talking February 24. So we're talking before that July election. Yeah, I genuinely didn't know. I was sort of making of mind. I mean, I, when we spoke last time, I just come out of the jungle. And whatever we think of, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here on ITV, you know, 11 million people are night watch it. |
| 2:20.0 | It reaches an audience beyond. I just come out of the jungle. And whatever we think of, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here on ITV. |
| 2:19.4 | You know, 11 million people a night watch it. |
| 2:24.0 | It reaches an audience beyond the normal political audience. |
| 2:34.5 | I was also at that moment kind of taking off on TikTok with a young sort of 13 to 24 year old type audience. |
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