The Nigel Farage Interview: UK Reform Leader Talks Trump, Trade and UK Economy

Nigel Farage is poised to attend the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump. The architect of Brexit, Farage won a seat in Parliament after 30 years and his Reform UK party are currently second in opinion polls in the UK. But do his economic policies add up and what benefits might his close ties to Trump bring for the UK? Farage says Reform UK isn’t anti-immigration and advocated a mixture of tax and spending cuts as he sought to put a more moderate face on his insurgent party in a bid to take it from the political fringes to challenge for power.  In a half-hour interview with Bloomberg’s UK Politics Podcast, Farage, who in July won a Parliamentary seat at the eighth time of asking, accepts his party’s economic plans came with a “big initial cost,” denied they’d wreak the same sort of market havoc as the seven-week prime minister Liz Truss’s ill-fated mini budget of 2022, and advocated for sectoral trade deals with the US.  He also repeats his offer to help Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government in its relations with the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, a personal friend, and labels Tesla owner Elon Musk — who recently called for Farage’s ouster as Reform leader — a “hero” for buying the social media platform Twitter, now X, and promoting free speech.  He sits down with Caroline Hepker and Will Shaw on the Bloomberg UK Politics podcast to discuss immigration, taxes, Elon Musk and AI. Chapters: 00:00:00 - Introduction; Nigel Farage on Reform UK's place in British Politics 00:02:58 - Relationship with Trump, his cabinet; offer to help to Labour on US trade ties 00:06:27 - Farage on Elon Musk 00:09:14 - Farage: "I'm not against migration!" 00:12:08 - "Rachel from accounts" won't fix UK economy 00:16:45 - Reform UK's policies do involve a 'big initial cost' 00:18:11 - Farage on cutting benefits, 'hard work is good,' we do want to cut benefits 00:20:32 - Farage on tax cut plans: 'I'm not Liz Truss' 00:24:34 - Farage: We need to learn from American business culture, not Europe -------- Follow Bloomberg for business news & analysis, up-to-the-minute market data, features, profiles and more: http://www.bloomberg.com Connect with us on... Twitter: https://twitter.com/business Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bloombergbusiness Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bloombergbusiness/