Subscribe to The Spectator and get 12 weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage,

unrivaled books and arts reviews, and so much more, all for just £12.

Not only that, but we'll also send you a £20,000 Amazon gift card absolutely free.

As a subscriber, you'll also be able to listen to all our other podcasts, ad free,

including quite right, the new podcast with

me, Michael Gove, and our assistant editor, Madeline Grant. Go to www.combe.combe.combe.combe

forward slash voucher to claim this offer now. Terms apply.

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Oskedvinson, and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman and James Heel.

And today we're going to be talking about the battle over Nigel Farage's mind.

Now, James, you've written this week in the magazine about the people that are influencing Farage's thinking. So tell us, what does

the inside of Nigel Farage's brain look like? There's a wonderful illustration done for this

week's piece, which has sort of things of Latin terms for the Westminster Arms, the Maga Cap,

all these sort of various influences

and cultural expressions which are imprinted on Nigel Farage's mind. I think, look, there's an

interesting kind of dichotomy there where half of reform is saying, it's all about his instinct,

he's a great leader, he knows exactly. The other half is that he's actually, you know,

talking to lots of different people. Some truth is somewhere in between. There are some interesting kind of differences, which sort of touch on the piece.

Sort of those who are quite sort of Christian, for instance. Danny Kruger and James Orr, the latest hire, are both quite into that kind of national conservatism, which has been very in vogue in America.

Others such as Zia Yusuf come from this from a more tech and business perspective. He was very much involved with the crypto announcement earlier this year. And then there are also people who are just there covering the phenomena like Matt Goodwin, who I understand has had some influence in the migration policy, which the party has announced. His substack is read by people in Reform UK headquarters. And really, it's just the classic thing of sort of, you've got a very close team around Farage, you've then got some people in the party. We clearly trust with certain briefs. And then outside that, there's a whole network of think tanks that are sort of springing up. Every time there's a different kind of political trend, they tend to come along with new leaders. and so reform is attracting their own ones because one of the things that drives in animates reform is that sense of being outsiders, not doing anything much with those who are sort of tainted, as they say it, by the last conservative government. So hence why, I think places which are rebranding and sort of have maybe some connections to reform are the ones sort of benefiting from this phenomena. This guy, James Orr, is quite an interesting character, sort of patron of J.D. Vance

over in America. Can you tell us a little bit about him? So my understanding is, so James

Orr has been speaking for many months to people behind the scenes and was a very important role

...