‘I don’t know, I haven’t sat in the negotiations but a completely different mind-set is needed.’
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage appeared clueless after his policy pledges were grilled in more detail on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, admitting he just ‘did not know’.
In what was an excruciating interview for Farage, the arch-Brexiteer’s car crash interview went viral online, summing up all that is wrong with populist politics, slogans instead of solutions, which fall apart under the slightest bit of scrutiny.
Farage was asked by Kuenssberg how much his proposals would cost to part nationalise the water industry.
Kuenssberg said: “How much of taxpayers’ money would you be prepared to spend, to take half of the water industry into public control.”
Farage said Reform would not bail out any existing bond holders or shareholders, to which the BBC presenter asked if shareholders would have to give their companies to the taxpayers’ free, to which Farage failed to provide a clear answer.
Kuenssberg then pushed once more and asked: “How much of our viewers’ money would you be prepared to spend on that because the credible estimate would be it would be about £50bn”.
Farage refused to answer and said: “I don’t know, I haven’t sat in the negotiations but a completely different mind-set is needed.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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