began on the lithjune, early, very early, before, their fieldwork began before i declared i was in the race. oh, so you could do better than that? let me bring you up to date. fully up to date, 0k? we're filming this today — last night at 5 o'clock, two separate companies came out with polls, and they're all playing catch—up now, they all recognise something is happening out there. on one poll last night, we were tied with the conservatives on i9%, on a second poll that came out last night, we were leading the conservatives 19 to 18, so that map suddenly looks very different. well, it looks even... it's still, whatever happens, is a tory wipe out. of course, of course. now what i really want our viewers to know is that is your objective, you are happy if the country turns red and we get a huge labour majority. what last night's polls show is we're going to win seats, a good number of seats, but it could become a very substantial number of seats. very important that people recognise this, even if i had not thrown myself into this campaign, the conservatives were doomed anyway. a very large chunk of their 2019 vote feel literally betrayed by the party and what i'm saying is this, starmer�*s going to win, and we all know that now, it's just a matter of, you know, by what margin. who is going to be the voice of opposition to a labour government with a big majority? a split divided conservative party or me? and i'm saying it's going to me, you know... you're saying more than that aren't you? well... i was intrigued, when your manifesto, you call it a contract, came out, there is nigel farage standing in front of 10 downing street. what you're saying to people is, i'm no longer than chat show host, i'm no longer that guy running for parliament, expects to lose again, i want to be your prime minister. is your aim to do what your friend donald trump's done in the united states, there he is, to take over the right of british politics, and then to take power? well, there isn't a right of british politics, it's gone, disappeared. i mean, we've had iii years of conservative government, they may as well change their name to the sdp. it's been high tax, big state, more control of our lives, damaging period for the 5.5 million men and women running small businesses, they've not even been vaguely conservative, low tax, free market. and on the big one, and the big one is immigration. you know, when you think that since the conservatives came to power, our population's risen by 6 million and you wonder why you can't get a gp appointment, you wonder why the roads are clogged, you wonder why you can't get a house. yeah, i'm going to talk to you about immigration and what you might do about it. but before we take you through some of the issues for the future, just as i did with mr starmer, sir keir, just as i did with mr sunak, i want to talk about your record. now you've not been in office, so you don't have a record, but you do have a record ofjudgements, important judgments you've made. let's look at the man who you said was the statesman you most admire. no, i said i... vladimir putin. hang on a second, isaid i disliked him. but you said you admired him. isaid i disliked him. but you admired him. ..as a person, but i admired him as a political operator because he's managed to take control of running russia. well, the quote was right, the statesman you most admire. and you did it after he seized crimea. this is...about the same time, maybe — no, before actually, actually before. this is the nonsense, you know, you can pick any figure, current or historical, and say, you know, did they have good aspects? and if you said, well, they were very talented in one area, then suddenly you're the biggest supporter. yeah, no, but you're right about that, mr farage. yes, yes. ..and i'm not making that point, of course, we could take anything you say out of context. i'm doing it for a different reason — you want to be prime minister, that's what you want to be. mm—mm. and this is — europe is at war. ah. now when the war happened, the big war, when vladimir putin sends his troops across the border in �*22, you blamed the west, not him, you said. right. on a tweet, "it was a consequence of eu and nato expansion" ..i�*lljust read it to you, then you can react, that, on a tweet, "it was a consequence of eu and nato expansion" yes. is that a judgment you stand by? right, i'll tell you what you don't know, i stood up in the european parliament in 2014 and i said, and i quote, "there will be a war in ukraine". why did i say that? it was obvious to me that the ever—eastward expansion of nato and the european union was giving this man a reason to his russian people to say, "they're coming for us again," and to go to war. but you were echoing him. i was — sorry? you were echoing him, that's what putin says. no, no, no, sorry, i'd been saying this actually since the 1990s, ever since the fall of the wall. so has he! but, hang on a second, we've provoked this war. you know, of course it's his fault, he's used what we've done as an excuse. but we provoked the invasion of ukraine? yes, and very interestingly, once again, 10 years ago when i predicted this... by the way, i'm the only person in british politics that predicted what would happen, and of course everyone said i was a pariah for daring to suggest it. george robertson, former labour cabinet minister, who went on to become the secretary general of nato has in the last couple of weeks, said the war is a direct result of the eu expansion. ok, but i'm asking you about this because it's yourjudgment, you want to be prime minister. well, myjudgment... let me ask you about someone else you... myjudgment has been way ahead of everybody else�*s in understanding this. 0k, you've made the point. i want to ask you about another leader that you've said you admired, let's take a look at liz truss, another leader that you say you admired. millions of people, remember the mini budget, you're laughing but you said on the day of the mini budget, twitter�*s very helpful, "today" you said, "was the best conservative budget since the 1980s". yes. is that the judgment of someone who deserves to be prime minister? well, she wanted to get rid of ir35 rules, which are damaging the self—employed. she wanted to change corporation tax, back to a more sensible level. there were a lot of things here that were pro—growth and pro—business. the one big mistake she made, she didn't have any cuts in spending. interestingly though... but she was on the right track, liz truss? what was interesting about that was the day before the budget, the bank of england raised interest rates 0.5%. so some of the thinking was right, the delivery was wrong, the timing was appalling. yeah. let's turn to the biggest judgment you've probably made in your career, you know, if you were knocked down by the number 10 bus. which has happened before! ..on the way out of the bbc, no doubt on your tombstone it would say, the man who brought us brexit. yeah. it's a failure, though. no, it's not a failure, but we failed to deliver. it can't be a failure, we've left the european union, we're now self—governing, the question is then, what do you do with it, and there are... it was your words, brexit has failed, you said. well, that's half... again it's half the sentence. brexit has failed, those who voted for it believing that immigration numbers would be reduced. no, brexit failed. and you went on, on newsnight last year. "we haven't benefitted from brexit economically". now i promise you, we're going to come to immigration, let's talk about the economy, it has failed, in your words, economically. our overseas trade has changed and it's quite good in many ways. in that we're now doing more business with the rest of the world than we've ever done before and we've actually gone, since the brexit vote, from being the world's seventh biggest exporter to the world's fourth biggest exporter. that side of things is fine. just pause a second, it's interesting that stat, because you've used it a lot, so i looked into it. yeah. is the trade in exports — sorry, is trade up or down in goods? no, its services that we are booming in. yeah, exactly. and the trading goods, the things you told people in those... that's down, not up isn't it? well, do you know why? what's up, trading gold and trading financial services. our net zero policies have deindustrialised britain and that's one of the reason why we're not exporting goods, we're manufacturing less, and that's a separate debate but something i feel very strongly about. yeah, we'll come to that too. where the economics has failed is, and i'm back to that £5.5 million, you see i'm old—fashioned, i believe that growth doesn't come from half a dozen big multinationals, that virtually own our political parties in terms of their thinking. it comes from the actions, the simultaneous actions of millions of people taking risk. but the only trade up is in financial services, which is ok for the city boys like you, that's where you made your money in. well, financial services. in the financial services. but it's not so good for the people who wanted to leave the eu to be better off, they're not better off, are they? financial services are in bristol, they're in cardiff, they're in birmingham, they're in manchester, insurance companies etc. financial services, the city's quite a small part of financial services in terms ofjobs. my point is this, there were two realistic expectations from brexit, one, we control our borders and reduce the numbers coming in, they've exploded, they've trebled, to numbers you can't even believe. and secondly — and that's because of a conservative government that didn't even try, because their big backers want cheap foreign labour. stick with the economy for the moment. yeah, and secondly, it was a realistic expectation, indeed when rishi sunak became prime minister, he was going to scrap 4,000 eu laws, he then binned that policy. so we've not seen the simplification of regulation. yeah, i hearyou. it's true. but your words, a year ago stand. you might blame someone else for it, but you were passionate for brexit, you said brexit�*s failed, you said, we haven't benefitted from brexit economically. the cab driver who brought me here said, "you tell nigel, i voted leave and i regret it, because people like me are no better off". i'm afraid that is what the conservatives have done with it and that's why. it's always someone else�*s fault. if you put me in charge, it'd be very, very different, but of course they didn't do that did they? well, let's imagine you in charge. and the conservative party never believed in brexit, they never believed in it, they picked it up as a political opportunity, and they failed to deliver. deregulation and immigration were the gains that we could have had, we haven't had them because of the conservative party. well, let's talk about immigration, and let's imagine you in charge, here we are, we've got your contract here... and this effectively says... that contract says something different. that contract makes very, very clear, and i said this when i promoted it, we are not going to be in government, but... ah... no, hang on. the liberal democrats... not trying to wriggle out of what's in here, are you? certainly not. the liberal democrats last time round, jo swinson, vote for me, i'm going to become prime minister, it wasn't credible in any way at all. 0k, understood. what i'm arguing is these are the ideas, these are the policies, these are the debates, that we'll fight and campaign on for the next five years. sounds awfully like to me that you're trying to wriggle out of some of the detail. i'm not wriggling out of anything. no, no, let's do the detail, because it'll be clearer. so, immigration. yeah. now you made a really big claim on immigration. we've got the critique, so let's not go backwards again, let's talk about what you could do going forwards. you've said that you want to have no net migration and you said you could do it on day one if you're in power, not gradually, on day one. now let's be clear what no net migration really means. yes. it means that people only move here if other people have moved out, have left the country, effectively one in, one out, if you're going to have no net zero, is that right? yes, i mean it's not as simplistic as that, but yes. i mean, all the time, people are leaving all the time, people are coming all the time. what we do know, what we do know is that there's an argument that says we need more and more immigration because there are labour shortages, all right, that's one argument that gets put. i've got cases now of nurses who've been through university, who've been denied jobs in british hospitals because, because the nhs, with government support, have been employing foreign nurses and british ones qualified with big debt aren't being employed. that's one little... well, that brings us to the detail, doesn't it, which is, you say one in, one out — let me just ask the question if i can. but here's the biggest detail. let me ask you the question, right, because you'll have a chance. in this contract, it says that you'll make exceptions, you'll make exceptions for essential skills, particularly around healthcare. so does that mean, just quickly as time is short, nurses — they can come into the country? well, not until we employ the british ones, and for the british government to have been paying £1,000 per nurse for health trusts to employ foreign nurses. now can you believe the scandal of what's been going on here? let's go through — paramedics, midwives, pharmacists, carers for the elderly, they can all come in? we should... of course they can come in, but here's the point. that gets you to 320,000 last year. in terms of health visas, and here's the point, of all the work visas we've given out in the last two years, the record two years, 50% of the total numbers have been dependents. so yes, people come to work but they're bringing dependents with them and here is the big pitch of why this should be the immigration election — a 10 million increase in our population since mr blair came to power, a 6 million increase since the tories came to power, 85% of that directly down to government policy on legal, not illegal but legal migration. sure, but i'm trying to find out what you'd do, rather than what you'd say? so, there's a population crisis. what borisjohnson and the tories did, they lowered the levels. that's back then. what are you going to do? what i was asking you is how your system works? one in, one out is the effective thing. people can only come if other people have already gone. so, does that mean that if a company wants to employ computer programmers, we don't have enough of them, if they want a software developer, we don't have enough of those, or an architect, what about those carers? does some new body, working for nigel farage say, "look, sorry, mate, no visa for you until bob gets his dream home in spain?" if you get a job with cnn... what's the answer? right, hang on, if you get a job with cnn, you will get a one or two year work permit, you'll go to new york, you'll work for cnn. if you overstay your work permit by one day, they will smash your door down, put you in handcuffs and deport you from the country. we have been completely confusing work visas with permanent right to stay. is that what should happen here? do you know something? a work permit should be a work permit, should be a work permit. doors should be smashed down, people should be arrested and deported? you raised it! i'm talking figuratively! in america, they would do that. we don't quite do that here. just not quite sure i know how this system works. i know what you're cross about, but i don't know how your system works. well, i'll give you an example. students, overseas students, have brought with them 125,000 dependents. not their mums, as you said on the television the other day, their mums. it's not true, mr farage. it is true. you cannot bring your mother. you've never been able to bring your mother. you can bring who you like in this country. the rules have just been changed so you can't bring dependents. this is simply not true. we are so lax in this country, you can do what you like. nigel farage, it's not true what you're saying. well, it is, but anyway. you're saying it's true. yeah, pretty much, yeah. well, let's turn to the nhs, because you've been clear. particularly if you say, i need care, etc, yeah. you want to turn to the nhs because you've raised the issue about the nhs, let's talk about that. and you've been quite brave on that. you've made the point and you've done it in interviews with me over many years, that you've said look, the nhs doesn't work as it is now. we need to be brave enough you say, to consider a completely new system. would you be honest to admit what that might mean? in france, and you've often praised the french health system, you effectively have to take your wallet to go and see your doctor. there's a charge of 25 euros to go and see a family doctor. no, no, if you turn up, you don't pay that charge. if you don't turn up, you forfeit it. that's how the french do it. there's a 25 euro charge to see a family doctor. no, because you get it back. it's refunded. 0k, in ireland, there's a 50 euro charge to see the gp. hang on, ireland doesn't have a health service anything like ours. you've got to ask yourself a question — what is the nhs for? and the original concept, the one we should defend totally now is that it's free at the point of delivery. the argument that i'm making — and by the way, very interesting, professor karol sikora, global cancer expert... he agrees with you. ..has said, "look, you know, nigel�*s thinking is right". the question is, how do we get there? everybody would say to you, the french have a mutual system where if you, out of your income, some of your money goes towards an insurance policy effectively, and if you haven't got the money, you don't pay, and those firms... let me be clear with you before you go any further, you pay the doctor and then you claim the money back. so, you do take your wallet to the doctors, because you pay and then your insurance gives it you back. it's a big change. unless... i'm just asking you whether you want to do that? well, it costs you nothing to go to the doctor, right, because you get it back, and the reason they do that, and by the way, british gp�*s have this problem, is people book appointments and don't turn up. so, actually, thinking about it, it makes sense. 0k, understood, it's quite a big change and you want to make it. now, in this manifesto, and this is why you suggest you might be... contract, contract! you can call it a contract, i'll call it a manifesto. horrible word. in this document, there are promises to spend more on health, more police, more soldiers and tax cuts for this group, tax cuts for that group, tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for the poor. everybody gets everything they want. it's like christmas when you open this. you told me the country was skint. yes, it is skint. that's what you said. so, how come you can afford spending of £140 billion a year which is 50% more than jeremy corbyn? well, the first point is the biggest pledge in there, apart from the freeze on immigration, apart from leaving the echr, so we can genuinely deport people who come to our islands. that's got nothing to do with money. the biggest domestic policy in there is raising the level at which people start paying tax to £20,000 a year. why? what, it all pays for itself? hang on a second. why? because there are a lot of people in this country living on benefits who don't want to be on benefits. i'm asking you where you get £140 billion a year. i'm just about to explain to you. that is massive. let me explain. the biggest expenditure is raising the threshold to £20,000. that means, if you're on benefits now and you go to work and work more than 16 hours a week, you're worse off. i still don't know where the money is coming from. well, number one, we will get people off the unemployment register into work. that's not going to raise you £140 billion a year. you were on i'm a celebrity, you should have been on fantasy island! 0h, get out of it. these figures are nonsense and you know they're nonsense. i'll tell you what is nonsense, real nonsense — the labour and conservative net zero policies, and why are we not debating it? well, we are, because i want to ask you about it. no, no, no, you won't debate it with them, they won't debate it with you, and this is the remarkable thing about this election is how few differences there are between labour and conservative. they are both committed to decarbonising the grid. the estimated cost, listen to this, the estimated cost is between £2 and £3 trillion. it's a ridiculous number. we're quite confident, quite confident, we can save over £30 billion a year, just by getting rid of this ludicrous commitment and going for a longer term plan of nuclear energy which is carbon free. that's why i want to ask you what underlies this if i may, on climate change. yeah. because you're making a big promise. it's mad. is your message to people watching this now, many of whom are very worried about climate change, hugely worried about it, is your essential message, "crisis, what crisis?" no, i do think, ever since the late 1980s that perhaps there's been a bit of hype around this and i think that perhaps is wrong. no wonder we've got people spraying stonehenge with orange powder, because all we ever talk about is fear rather than solutions. so, is david attenborough wrong and nigel farage is right? no, no, i'm not arguing the science. i'm arguing... well, you are. i'm not arguing the science. well, if you say it's not really a crisis, we don't really need to do anything about it... i didn't say that. i said, we spend too much time hyperventilating about the problem, rather than thinking practically and logically what we can do. you said climate change was a hype, mr farage. i heard you say it. do you still think what you used to think of the king? no, no, no, no, no, no. you said the king was an eco—loony. do you still think the king is an eco—loony? the king, he wasn't the king then, and i can't speak ill of the monarch obviously. but he did used to say... you said he was stupid. he did used to say that carbon dioxide was a pollutant which i thought was a very stupid comment. here's the point. if it's going to leave the planet to burn... no, no, no, no, no. ..it�*s not a bad word, is it? right, listen, we've deindustrialised. 0ur steelworks close, where do they go? india. the same steel gets produced in india under lower environmental standards and then shipped back to us. globally, by closing those steel plants, the amount of c02 put into the air has gone up. all we've done is to export the emissions. similarly with coal, there's an anthracite mine up in cumbria that could be opened. we're not going to open it. we are overtaxing the north sea. the tories have done this, not labour. chevron, after 60 years, have left. so, we will be using, even those who are most worried about this, will tell you, we'll be using oil and gas in 2050. my argument is... you believe david attenborough was wrong and the king was wrong, we're clear about that. no, no, no, that is not... no, no, the king is wrong to say c02 is a pollutant, that is wrong, clearly. we have to move on, mr farage. and if we go for nuclear energy, and you and i both know, rolls royce are making amazing strides with small moderate reactors, we will then have electricity production that produces zero carbon. understood. we have to move on, time is short. you have had one or two problems with candidates and what you say when you've had them, is you had problems with your vetting system. we understand, we don't need to repeat that and you say other parties have had them as well. well, the others have got betting scandals. the others in the last parliament were exposed as perverts, weirdos, i mean, goodness me. ok, let's talk about your candidates though, because you're in the room and they're not. you've had candidates calling immigrants a plague. you've had candidates who say muslims should be removed from the uk. really? you've had a candidate that claims africans have a low iq. why do you think that people with really extreme and unpleasant views rally to your cause? we've also had an awful lot of candidates being stitched up in the most extraordinary way with quotes being taken out of context. why do they rally to your cause? because i think the truth of it is, before i got involved, reform was virtual, in the sense that it had no... there was no national party structure. i'm asking you a slightly different question. i'm asking about you. they think, don't they, that you agree with them? no, they're not there because of me. no, no, no. you founded the party, you're the president of the party, you're the owner of the party. i have had no involvement with the day to day running of the party for over three years. these candidates were recruited before i said i was going to play an active role in the party, and frankly, they were so desperate for people to stand, that people stood and then we employed a big vetting company that didn't do the job. so, you can't run vetting but you could find £150 billion in public spending savings? i assure you, when the labour party go through those that apply, when the conservative party go through those that apply, they have to reject many. let me put to you what i think many people think. they think that the reason with these deeply... these people with deeply unpleasant and extreme views rally to your cause, yours particularly... no, nothing to do with me. they think it's because... those people believe that is what you really think and they listen to some of the divisive and provocative things you've said over the years and say, nigel is our guy. cobblers, absolute cobblers. you know, i talk about things that are worthy of debate. i often get shouted down and abused by the political class or media class and then you know what happens, nick? two or three years later, the things that i've said become mainstream debate and i've always been absolutely clear about this, and you look at — you know, take the brexit party for example, that won the european elections back in �*19, we were, not with any positive discrimination, the most diverse group in that european parliament. this is what i believe. i believe that regardless of race or religion or sexual preference, that everybody should be treated equally. i don't believe in group rights. i don't believe in dividing us up and i think, you know, martin luther king said, in that famous speech, "i want my kids to be judged not by the colour of their skin". i believe in meritocracy. yeah, you said you admired enoch powell, and you criticised the first non—white british prime minister for not understanding our culture. that's why people think you're divisive. he doesn't understand our culture, otherwise he would have stayed at d—day to honour the remaining remnants of that generation. but you said it about a non—white politician. no, no, no, no, no, no. let me finish this interview by asking you... he's too upper class. he's too detached. he couldn't go down the pub and meet ordinary people, you know that and i know that. let's finish by asking you a question for you to address the audience. you say in a way that you want to restore trust in british politics and what we've done over the last half hour or so is say, well, he's a putin admirer, he's a trump backer, he's liz truss... no, no, no, no. ..applauding, he's divisive. are you really the man to restore trust in british politics, really? that's a very metropolitan way of putting things. do you know what i am? i'm a fighter, i'm a warrior, i'm a campaigner. i stand up against big institutions when they behave badly, whether they're banks or out of touch bureaucracies based in brussels, and very often, i win. nigel farage, thank you forjoining me. next up in our interviews, the co—leader of the greens, adrian ramsay. hello, i'm rajini vaidyanathan. you're watching the context on bbc news. it was obvious to me _ that the ever—eastward expansion of nato and the european union was giving this man the reasonl to his russian people to say, i "they're coming for us again," and to go to war. the conservative party. never believed in brexit, they've never believed in it. they picked it up as a political opportunity and they've - failed to deliver. deregulation and immigration were i the gains that we could've had — i we haven't had them _ because of the conservative party. he's counting on a level of fury with the existing government — meaning that no one really pays that much attention to what he'd do if he was actually in office. 0ur panel tonight isjoe twyman, from the polling company deltapoll, and melissa sigodo, from the daily mirror. first, the latest headlines. the united nations says more than a million people in gaza are facing catastrophic levels of starvation by the middle of next month. israel is under pressure to allow more aid across the border, and doctors fear the situation will only get worse, especially for young children. tiktok says it offered the us government the power to temporarily shut the app down, in an attempt to address concerns politicians had over data protection and national security concerns. it was revealed in a legal submission, as tiktok fights a ban in america.