Joseph Robertson

uh today totally shocking but give me your first reaction to it please well and thanks for having me on again ben i think um you know politics in britain tends to go as we've seen in in sort of 100 year or 50 year cycles um there have been previous movements that have risen up or displaced the major party

achieve getting into power or when they do as we saw with the replacement of the Liberal Party you know the branching out between Whigs and Tories when that happens which happened last 100 years ago parties tend to disappear sometimes into a third or fourth position and we've only really got one or two examples of it in our history and

nothing quite on this scale.

I tend to lean towards jubilance at this news, not necessarily because, as you've outlined, you don't want reform to seem like Tory Party 2.0.

That's certainly not why I joined reform and why many others did so in the past.

But I think what we do need to recognise is that you can't really spell history without the word Tory.

And unfortunately, until the unit party is broken properly, and by that I mean the absolute demolition of the so-called right-wing Conservative Party, which actually has been more to the left of Blair for the last 15 years, you can't really achieve any progress.

I think Jenrick said it very well that there's no appetite

for the type of radical change that is needed in this country in that party anymore and so anything that hastens that demise I think is important.

So, I mean, Nadeem, I think first point to make is that he's unelected and will remain so unless he happens to go through party process and reform and become an elected official, which would mean that it'd have to be acceptable to the membership as well as other things, other tests that

from every candidate before they run.

So that's the first point to make.

I think for me, he has done exceptionally well in business and in other areas outside of politics.

I know he carries political baggage.

I certainly didn't agree with the way he handled, for instance, passports,

That kind of thing.

There's a lot of disgruntled noises from some factions, particularly libertarian factions, who feel that he was unfair to those.

However, what I would say is that he correctly sided with Liz Truss when she came into power.

He understands economics very well.

And the overall, you can't ignore someone like that when you look at their business acumen.