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This is The Guardian. Today,

0:11

we take a trip to the seaside on

0:13

the trail of Nigel Farage. Ryan

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month. Slows. Full terms at mintmobile.com. I'm

1:01

going to get 30, 30, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, Esther

1:06

Adley, a senior news writer at The Guardian,

1:08

has been spending a lot of time at

1:10

the seaside recently. I'm

1:12

standing at the end of Clacton Pier in Essex,

1:15

where a crowd of several hundred people have been

1:17

gathering for a little while, waiting for

1:19

the arrival of Nigel Farage. A

1:22

couple of weeks ago, Nigel Farage, who

1:24

just reappointed himself leader of the

1:26

Reform Party, came to the coastal

1:28

town of Clacton on Sea in Essex. He

1:38

was there to stand as an MP, his

1:40

eighth attempt at getting to Westminster, and

1:42

he set about trying to woo the locals. And

1:45

you know the problem? These

1:47

people, unlike you in Clacton, they're

1:50

not genuinely patriotic people. They don't believe

1:53

in Britain and the British people the

1:55

way you do. But am I right

1:57

in thinking, is this not the... Faraj

10:00

not welcome here. And

10:02

they were being kind of heckled by

10:04

some of the members of the crowd.

10:07

I also met a woman at that rally

10:09

who was no fan of Faraj. She was

10:11

a labor activist. She'd grown up in Clackton,

10:14

and she said a lot of the people

10:16

who were living in the town now had

10:19

moved there quite recently from Alsvank. The rhetoric

10:21

that man spews is absolutely vile. I've

10:23

lived here from a child who grew up in

10:25

this town. This is an amazing

10:28

town. The people that stand around here, never

10:30

even came from this town. They've all come into

10:33

the town to create their own little Brexit safe

10:35

haven. Do you mean they've moved here? Yes, they've

10:37

moved here. Right, right. They've

10:40

moved. They've moved here. Right,

10:42

right. Esther,

10:51

it certainly sounds as though Faraj, for better

10:53

or worse, has made his mark on Clackton.

10:56

But for those of us who've never been there, can

10:58

you tell us about it? What's it like? It's

11:01

a very nice little seaside town.

11:04

Similar to many around Britain, probably had

11:06

its Victorian heyday, and it's not

11:09

really been thriving to the same degree since.

11:11

But it doesn't feel when you're there that

11:13

it's terribly on its uppers. A

11:15

lot of the people who've moved here have come from

11:18

London, and people will tell

11:20

you that's looking for a sort of

11:22

more nostalgic way of life. Now that

11:24

can have sort of anti-immigrant overtones, but

11:26

it's also that people have retired to

11:28

the seaside. There's a slower pace. It's

11:30

very genteel. It's a small town, and

11:32

the constituency is much bigger than the

11:34

town. There are several other small

11:37

towns like Frinton, Walton on the Nays,

11:39

which are perhaps probably slightly better off,

11:41

and lots of villages. Because it's quite

11:43

a rural constituency as well, with farming

11:45

quite a big issue in this part

11:47

of Essex too. Tell

11:49

us about its political history. This

11:51

is really a Tory part of the country.

11:53

The boundaries have changed, and it was part

11:56

of a bigger constituency, which had a Labour

11:58

MP in the Blair years. but

12:01

it's been solidly Tory, apart

12:03

from 2014 when the Tory

12:05

MP Douglas Carswell defected to

12:07

UKIP. I'm today leaving the

12:10

Conservative Party and joining UKIP. The problem

12:16

is that many of those at the top of

12:18

the Conservative Party are simply not on our side.

12:21

Of course they talked the talk before elections,

12:23

put on so many issues on modernising our

12:25

politics, on controlling our borders, on less government.

12:28

They never actually make it happen.

12:30

And what's interesting about Clackton is

12:32

that this is the only constituency

12:34

that has ever elected a UKIP

12:36

MP at a general election. It

12:39

has given this time a real kind of political

12:41

status. Farage said at his speech when

12:44

he came, without Clackton Brexit might not

12:46

have happened and Douglas Carswell called this

12:48

the time that delivered Brexit. And

12:52

after the Farage circus moved on, you stayed

12:54

on in Clackton. What questions were you wanting

12:56

answers to from local people? Well if you

12:58

just talk to people in the crowd at

13:01

a Nigel Farage rally you're going to get

13:03

a particular view. And what we

13:05

wanted to do was really spend a bit more time

13:07

in the constituency and talk to people right

13:09

across the constituency and seek to

13:11

really understand their views, what was

13:14

important to them, not just

13:16

what they thought of Nigel Farage but also what would

13:18

make a difference to the way they were going to

13:20

vote in the election. Tell me about

13:22

JWIC. I've definitely heard about JWIC. It's one of

13:24

those sort of tarmac places that you

13:26

hear about in the news. Exactly. It's a

13:29

suburb of Clackton just to the west

13:31

of it and it was originally built

13:33

as beachfront holiday cabins. And you can

13:35

imagine in different parts of the country,

13:37

maybe South Devon or somewhere like that,

13:39

this would be prime real estate. It's

13:41

on a lovely stretch of beach right

13:43

on the beachfront but it

13:46

is an incredibly poor few

13:48

streets. These little cabins

13:50

that would have been built as

13:52

temporary accommodation. They probably weren't built

13:54

with infrastructure in mind, with services

13:56

in mind and it has

13:58

been repeatedly identified. as

14:01

one of the poorest districts

14:03

in Britain and frankly

14:05

is pretty shocking to visit. Mm-hmm

14:07

and I know that you're a keen knitter and you went

14:09

to meet some of your own kind didn't you? I did

14:11

yes. Graham

14:15

said you kindly were right. We're

14:17

not little friends. I

14:20

did. I was kindly invited to come

14:22

along to a group called a Knitter

14:25

Group which is a group of about

14:27

maybe 30 or 35 women

14:29

who meet regularly in

14:31

a community center in

14:33

Jaywick. I was feeling very annoyed

14:35

that I hadn't known I could have brought my

14:37

own. So you could have brought your knitter in

14:39

with you? I could have picked up a few

14:42

tips because I'm... And it's a group of older

14:44

women, retired women who some were crocheting, some were

14:46

knitting, some doing cross stitch. And

14:48

were they politically engaged? Yes very much

14:50

so but not necessarily party politically engaged

14:52

but it turned out that they had

14:55

been talking about Nigel Farage of course

14:57

in their own social groups,

14:59

in their Facebook groups, the

15:01

community groups. And one woman said

15:04

that unfortunately sort of dominated

15:06

everything. He's polarizing. Yeah. And

15:09

the town after the election have got to go

15:11

back to being how we were and at the

15:13

fibre and it's like if we were just having

15:16

a go at each other we'd just pass

15:18

it. Yeah. Well

15:21

I talked to quite a few of the women

15:23

there and you know the Farage support is there very

15:25

much so but I sat with another group of

15:28

five women who were just

15:30

really unhappy that he'd come.

15:33

And he's just throwing up trouble which

15:36

we've got to live with after the event. Because

15:38

are we going to see him if he doesn't

15:41

win? She wanted to

15:43

see him. One of them

15:45

said he's really dividing the town. Every single thing

15:47

is going around politics and I and it's just

15:49

rubbish. They felt that it

15:52

was making people feel divided in their

15:54

own family groups and social groups. They

15:57

tried to steer their local community Facebook groups away

15:59

from the city. talking about Farage and say, can

16:01

we talk about Jaffa Cakes? And these women did

16:03

not all agree, there was one Labour voter among

16:06

them, somebody else who was

16:08

definitely not going to vote. But of those five

16:10

women that I sat and chatted to for half

16:12

an hour, none of them were going to vote

16:14

for Farage. And do you know what, I could

16:16

be quite mercenary. If they say that they're going

16:18

to give, raise my pension, they could have my

16:20

vote. Who's they? Anyone. Anyone.

16:24

They're not Nigel. I can't do Nigel.

16:26

I can't do anyone this racist. And

16:29

they were all pretty unimpressed by the fact that

16:31

he'd come to Clackton, felt that he would sort

16:33

of slightly cynically chosen them. And I asked them,

16:35

did they think he was exploiting some of the

16:37

problems in the area? And they all felt that

16:39

very strongly. Do you think

16:41

that Farage is sort of exploiting

16:44

the poverty in the area? Yes.

16:47

Oh, yeah. There's a reason he's coming. He

16:49

doesn't live in the area. Is he nice?

16:51

Is he? He's not part of the community.

16:53

Basically, he's a pain in the butt. I'm

16:57

overtly opposed to racism. I

17:01

think everybody, I think people should be

17:03

allowed in that country. They can enrich

17:06

it. And

17:08

they're coming because they want a better life. Don't

17:10

we all want a better life? And

17:13

so you say that none of the women were

17:15

planning to vote for Farage, but were they keen

17:17

on the alternatives? None of those women

17:20

felt any great enthusiasm for any of the parties

17:23

in truth. I mean, one of the women who

17:25

said she was an instinctive Labour supporter didn't

17:28

have any great love for Keir

17:30

Starmer. I feel there's

17:32

a champagne socialist. He

17:36

has his suit made in Savile Road.

17:38

He doesn't know how we live. We

17:41

just want someone to know what's going on. He

17:44

should go again to do the things. He's someone

17:46

of the people. He's really

17:48

not connected with many people in

17:50

Clapton based on the conversations that

17:52

I had been having. And

17:55

several of the women said they would probably vote.

17:58

Tory once said she would vote for

18:00

him. for whoever she thought was most likely

18:02

to beat Faraj, but there's certainly not much

18:04

enthusiasm for the Tory government or for Rishi

18:06

Sunak's party either. We know this, that

18:08

there is a sort of sense of alienation

18:11

from the political class,

18:13

but it was really very

18:15

strongly detectable. Even

18:17

among people who have a political interest and

18:19

are politically engaged, there felt like a real

18:22

disconnect between these people and the topics that

18:24

they were talking about, which are the same

18:26

things that the politicians are talking about, but

18:28

they just didn't seem to have connected

18:31

and accepted that the mainstream parties were

18:33

speaking to them. Who

18:46

else did you meet in JWIC? Right,

18:49

hi, how are you? All right, doctor.

18:53

This is amazing. I always say, oh, it's

18:55

beautiful. You're pretty beautiful, aren't you? Right

18:58

down on the beachfront, we met a man

19:01

called Barry who was leaning on his porch,

19:03

on his wooden house that was

19:06

literally right on the beach. A

19:08

really beautiful situation to have your

19:10

home, but this is an extremely

19:12

poor area. We come here in 2020. Right.

19:15

2020. And

19:18

how long are you sort of here from somewhere

19:20

else or are you collecting people who've ended up

19:22

here? No, I come from Jolly Harlow.

19:24

And Barry told us that he

19:27

is very involved in the local

19:29

community. He runs a local community

19:31

digging group that helps sort of improve

19:33

verges and community gardens. He's involved in beach cleaning.

19:36

In fact, he was out with his dogs picking

19:38

up rubbish when we first spotted him. And

19:40

he's involved in a food bank, a really,

19:43

really connected community that looks out for each

19:45

other. But when I

19:47

asked him about politics, he didn't

19:49

really have much of a view. Have

19:51

you seen Mr. Faraj who's going to run here? He wants

19:54

to be your empty. No, he didn't run. He was

19:56

in a bus when I see him. You've

19:59

got a guy. line, all right, I'm gonna have

20:01

to work hard to keep up with you. He

20:03

said he'd voted in the past but he had

20:05

to ask his wife what party that was and

20:08

I asked him all these problems that

20:10

you're dealing with locally that you're obviously very involved

20:12

in, would you ever ask an MP for help

20:14

with that? And he said no, it would never

20:16

occur to him to do that. What

20:18

can the government do here to

20:20

help people like? No idea what they

20:23

can do down here. Right,

20:25

so just no faith in politicians to sort out

20:27

the issues that he sees in the community. No

20:31

faith in politicians whatsoever it seemed and

20:33

when I asked him who he blamed

20:35

for all these local problems that he

20:37

was dealing with he said immigrants. So

20:39

as far as you're concerned the problems are, that's

20:41

the cause of the problems? Most

20:44

of the problems now, yeah, before we had

20:46

all these immigrants coming over we

20:49

never really had many problems. Right,

20:53

okay, so that that scapegoating of immigrants

20:55

has really worked its magic

20:57

on him. That's pretty depressing to hear

20:59

and as you've already outlined

21:02

there really hasn't been very much immigration to

21:04

Clacton at all. Did you manage to

21:06

meet any immigrants while you were there? Yes,

21:08

there are migrants in Clacton. When

21:11

did you leave Iraq? The

21:14

first time it was 2000. And

21:17

that was in the peak of a

21:19

lot of turmoil in that part of

21:21

the world. Yeah, and did you come

21:23

here? I met two brothers Miran and

21:25

Jamal who had originally come from

21:27

Halabja in northern Iraq and

21:31

their Iraqi Kurds. Jamal had been a head

21:33

teacher at home and was now working in

21:35

a kebab shop in Clacton and Miran his

21:37

brother was a journalist and they

21:39

had sort of flared from Islamists and taken

21:41

a roundabout journey as people often do and

21:43

eventually come here. Jamal said he

21:46

found Clacton a nice place to live, he said

21:48

it's nice and quiet. Did you find this a

21:50

friendly town or people? They are friendly

21:52

actually. I like coffee shops,

21:54

other people, shopping. They're very

21:56

kind actually. Have you? I've never met any like

21:59

a... He

22:01

said, if you don't go looking for trouble, you

22:04

won't find trouble. That's my opinion. And

22:06

he's now raising three kids who are English. But

22:08

his brother, Miran, meanwhile, is still

22:11

an asylum seeker and he's nervous.

22:14

That make you feel nervous? Yeah,

22:16

of course. People come

22:19

here to have a safety

22:22

or something else. He

22:25

had read about Tory plans to send asylum

22:27

seekers to Rwanda and he was really concerned

22:29

about it. So you can see both

22:31

the success story of people

22:33

who've come and settled here and

22:36

meanwhile the precarity of some other people who've

22:38

come into this country who know that their

22:40

position is still very uncertain. You've

22:42

said that there are some very rural areas of

22:44

the constituency and did the people that you spoke

22:47

to in the countryside also raise immigration as being

22:49

a big issue for them? Hello.

22:52

Hello. Hi. Hi.

22:55

Sorry to barge in. How's your mind? With Francie

22:57

David. Yes. I'm very excited.

22:59

We met a farmer called David Lord, a

23:02

third generation arable farmer, and his farm is

23:05

about two or three miles from the beachfront in

23:07

Jaywick. It's so close to the center of Clacton.

23:10

They've got wheat, barley,

23:12

rye, oats and potatoes.

23:14

And he raised a few concerns that are really

23:16

big issues for farmers in this election. We've

23:19

been pushed as an industry. We've

23:22

been pushed by our current food

23:24

model, which has supermarkets basically driving

23:26

down price the whole time. We've

23:29

been pushed to operate on such fine margins that

23:31

when something comes along like climate change or

23:34

lack of viable

23:36

workers, it's

23:39

putting people off. And it

23:41

is literally a life at a job.

23:43

Costs are going up. They feel they've

23:45

been let down on trade deals and

23:47

they feel they really need support to

23:49

deal with changing climate and to move

23:52

to sustainable farming. But one of their

23:54

big concerns, he said, is immigration. We

23:56

need workers, he said. We need

23:58

workers. Basically, we haven't got. We

24:01

haven't got workforce now. There's several

24:03

local potato farmers around

24:06

here who have relied the

24:08

last 20 years on a sort

24:10

of Eastern Bloc workforce and

24:12

they're now not arriving. They're not

24:14

coming here now. They have this really

24:16

annoying thing of calling them unskilled

24:18

workers. Well, to me they're

24:20

really skilled workers because they're the ones that are

24:24

putting in hours of manual labour, which is

24:26

a skill that acts on a perseverance, which

24:29

unfortunately a lot of British

24:32

people now don't want to do. And

24:35

does he see those concerns being addressed by politicians?

24:38

The sounds that we're hearing from certainly

24:40

two of the political parties being

24:42

very anti-immigration, we

24:44

need those migrants. We need an immigration

24:47

policy that allows the right people

24:49

to come to do

24:51

the work that we need. Well, he said

24:53

he feels he hasn't heard enough from

24:56

the Lib Dems or Labour on

24:59

this critical labour shortage and the other

25:01

issues facing farmers. He's still waiting to

25:03

hear more, but he said

25:05

he hadn't heard enough from them. Wasn't overly

25:08

impressed by the Tories, but thought it may

25:10

well be a case of better the devil

25:12

you know for farmers in this area. So

25:14

when you see somebody

25:16

who is arguing very passionately for zero

25:18

net migration, not very far away, a

25:20

couple of miles away, if that, for

25:23

you personally, what are the emotions? It

25:25

makes me a bit sad really because he's

25:27

playing on the fears

25:29

and worries of people which

25:33

it's not paying

25:35

attention to the facts. And it's also

25:37

really sad because most of

25:39

those opinions are from the older population and actually

25:42

it's the younger ones that really are going to

25:44

be most affected by this. Coming

25:49

up, have the Tories got a

25:52

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Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. With the price

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of just about everything going up during inflation,

26:42

we thought we'd bring our prices down. So

26:45

to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer,

26:47

which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile

26:49

unlimited, premium wireless. How did you get 30-30?

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How did you get 30-30? How did you get 30-30? How did you

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month. Slows. Full terms at mintmobile.com. Esther,

27:11

I guess one option for voters like David,

27:14

the farmer that you spoke to, would be

27:16

to vote for the incumbent in this race.

27:18

Giles Watling. He's the Tory MP and he

27:21

won a 25,000 vote majority

27:23

in Clacton in 2019. Can

27:25

you describe him for me? I

27:28

first came here in 1957. I

27:30

ran the local theater in Frinton and

27:33

we had a holiday home when I was a

27:35

boy here. So I can legitimately

27:37

say I was part of the community. Yes. On

27:40

the face of it, Giles Watling should be going

27:42

into the election incredibly confident. And until a few

27:44

weeks ago, I'm sure he probably was. He won

27:46

72% of the vote in 2019 to get that

27:48

majority. So

27:52

it's worth saying he was unopposed on the right.

27:55

There wasn't a UKIP candidate or another right wing

27:57

candidate against him. But he's

27:59

what you would consider a sort of.

28:01

old-school, Tory, charming and slightly thespy. Because

28:03

when I first got elected, I

28:06

had made the decision that I wasn't going to climb the

28:08

greasy pole, I wasn't going to be a minister or a

28:10

whip unless something in the

28:12

cultural field came up, because my background

28:14

is theatre, you may know, as

28:17

an actor, producer, director, writer, what have you. He

28:19

was an actor before, and he points to

28:21

some minor parts that he played in a few 1980s TV dramas,

28:25

including Aloha Lo, Grange Hill.

28:27

He's a long-term resident. So

28:30

he's advocating a return to

28:33

what he called gentle conservatism.

28:36

And did you get a sense of how

28:38

he's feeling about Nigel Farage rocking up and

28:40

raining on his parade, and seriously putting in

28:42

jeopardy the chances of him being reelected? He

28:45

said he was going to challenge Nigel Farage's

28:47

populism by just pointing to his record. He

28:49

says that he's brought a lot of money

28:52

into Clackton. There certainly has been quite a

28:54

lot of investment in the constituency over the

28:56

past few years, which Jaz Watling says

28:58

adds up to about £100 million. And

29:01

there are schemes in place for improvements

29:03

at the hospital, a big development at

29:05

the Clackton Library. And Rishi Shunak was

29:08

actually in Clackton in October, looking at

29:10

some of the development that's happening there

29:13

from the government's long-term plans for towns and

29:15

the levelling up fund. So there is money

29:17

that's being spent here. And Jaz Watling said,

29:19

I'm going to point to that and hope

29:21

people can recognise that I'm working on behalf

29:23

of Clackton. Can you say

29:25

that he's a proponent of gentle conservatism? What

29:28

is that? I don't think I've heard that term before.

29:30

What I would like to see, coming from my point

29:33

of view, is a return to

29:35

something we've had for many decades

29:37

in this country, was gentle

29:39

conservatism. People

29:41

caring for each other, looking up at each other, but yet

29:43

getting on keeping this

29:46

country at the top. I

29:48

think what he means by that is a sort

29:51

of return to the

29:53

shi-tor-y, gentle,

29:56

good manor's way of doing things. And

29:58

I think that that's probably... what Giles

30:00

Watling would want to return to

30:02

a sort of civilised way of campaigning. The

30:04

problem is that's not the fight that Nigel

30:06

Farage is in. He's a street entertainer, he's

30:08

a passionate orator, he's trying to raise the

30:11

people's army as we know and that's certainly

30:13

not what Giles Watling considers he's doing. And

30:16

where does Watling stand on immigration? Well

30:19

he describes himself as a centrist Tory,

30:21

he's not on the right of the party.

30:23

He does talk about people who live

30:25

in the constituency and say

30:28

explain perhaps some of the views that they

30:30

have say well you have to understand these

30:32

are people who've moved from East London when

30:34

they've seen their communities change. He

30:37

says that people have moved to Clacton in search

30:39

of what he calls more homogeneity. So

30:43

people have, if

30:45

you like, migrated out of London to

30:47

this area but people have seen

30:49

their communities change in London. This is

30:52

what Nigel Farage is appealing to. They've

30:54

seen their

30:56

communities become multicultural and

30:59

that's not something that people like. You know, they

31:02

like their good old-fashioned homogenous streets where they

31:04

know everybody up and down the road and

31:06

I can see that. Yeah

31:08

so there's a sort of sense of nostalgia when

31:10

people move to the countryside, maybe

31:12

they've got memories of their childhood when

31:15

they visited its kids at

31:17

a time when Britain was a whiter and

31:19

more homogenous country. Exactly,

31:21

he said, we're fairly homogenous here I

31:23

would characterize us as good old-fashioned British

31:25

yeomanry class out here. People who work

31:27

hard all their lives and they've done

31:30

well they've bought a house in Bagley,

31:34

Bromford. That all sounds terribly genteel but of

31:36

course if you're someone who isn't British yeomanry

31:39

class that's a very quick way to feel

31:41

alienated in a community even if it's presented

31:43

with good manners. Yeah and for people of

31:45

colour that must feel incredibly exclusionary and insulting

31:48

do you think that Giles Watling has a chance of keeping

31:50

his seat? Well look

31:52

we know better than to trust the

31:55

polls don't we we've been burned in

31:57

recent elections where they've they've been quite

31:59

dramatically wrong on again. occasions, but the

32:02

polls predict that no, Charles Watning

32:04

is not likely to win in

32:06

collecting. Farage is the very clear

32:09

favorite there. And in fact, one

32:11

national poll last week put reform

32:13

ahead of the Tories nationally on

32:16

the share of the vote. That would be

32:18

a really, really significant result if that was

32:20

replicated at the election. This

32:22

week locally, one poll

32:24

suggested that Labour could even overtake the

32:27

Tories in collecting and move into second.

32:30

But based on my experience, they both

32:32

have a very long way to go

32:34

to beat Nigel Farage. I

32:36

actually met very few locals who were

32:39

planning to vote Labour. Esther,

32:41

it's clear from your visit to Clacton that you

32:43

met a diverse range of people, but that

32:45

also included some people expressed views that

32:47

a lot of people would find not

32:49

just upsetting, but actually racist. And

32:52

I wonder whether that made you reflect on what

32:54

it says about Britain in 2024

32:57

and particularly how immigrants have been so

32:59

successfully scapegoated for the failures of 14

33:01

years of Tory rule. Immigration

33:04

coming up so often definitely makes you think.

33:06

And, you know, there's no question that

33:08

in this part of the world, at least, it

33:11

is a major issue. Don't

33:13

forget, though, that Clacton is a really particular

33:15

constituency and that's why Nigel Farage has chosen

33:17

it. And so it's not

33:19

representative of the country and no one's presenting

33:21

it is. But it's interesting that

33:23

some of the views here that people are prepared

33:25

to hear their voice quite openly, you wouldn't often

33:27

hear expressed in polite conversations,

33:30

shall we say. So that's kind

33:32

of interesting that people feel

33:34

that they're able to say some of the

33:36

things here that that I don't generally hear

33:38

in my day to day life as often.

33:41

My sense after speaking to many

33:43

people was that, number one, they're

33:45

really alienated by the two mainstream

33:47

parties and they're relieved to hear

33:49

someone come along who they do

33:51

connect to. He speaks our language.

33:54

He's one of us. He understands

33:56

us. But, you know, Farage

33:58

is a charismatic politician, but he's also.

34:00

This is purely populist and a little

34:02

bit sinister. We know

34:04

Nigel Farage isn't just a cheeky chappy with a

34:06

pint and a flat cap. But

34:09

when he starts talking about raising an army

34:11

against the establishment who want to get this

34:13

country back, it starts sounding more and more

34:15

like his friend Donald Trump. And for that

34:17

reason, even if we do end up with

34:20

a large Labour majority nationally, I

34:22

think the mainstream parties know they will need

34:24

to keep an eye on Clacton and what

34:26

is potentially going to happen here. Esther,

34:29

thank you so much. Thank you. That

34:40

was Esther Adley. You can read her dispatch

34:42

from Clacton, as well as in-depth reporting from

34:45

all of the battleground seats across the UK

34:47

at theguardian.com. Quick

34:49

reminder before we go that Google Podcasts is closing

34:51

this weekend. So if that's how you listen to

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us, you're going to have to find a new

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platform. Just don't choose YouTube because

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35:00

final thing, a little plea from me. If

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you've got this far into the podcast, then

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I hope that you are appreciating our coverage

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if you can, please do choose to support

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35:32

episode description. Today's episode

35:34

was produced by Natalie Gauterna, Tom Glasser

35:36

and George McDonough. And it was presented

35:38

by me, Helen Pidd. Sound

35:40

design was by Solomon King and the

35:43

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