‘Don’t let Donald Trump’s Britain become Nigel Farage’s Britain’. So spluttered a typically hyperbolic Sir Ed Davey during his Lib Dem conference speech yesterday. In a further sign that the Reform UK leader lives rent-free inside the minds of liberal Britain, Davey made a series of wild accusations about Farage – including that he wants to privatise the NHS, roll back gun laws and ‘tacitly support’ racism and misogyny. In response, Farage accused the Lib Dem leader of being ‘obsessed’ with him and offered to pay for a psychiatrist.
For all America’s influence over our culture, it is worth remembering a salient fact: the UK is not the US
And yet, despite the over-the-top nature of Davey’s claims, his central point is correct: Nigel Farage risks looking just a little too chummy with Donald Trump. Reform UK might be riding high in the polls, but the Republican president enjoys no such support among British voters. Just 19 per cent of Brits have a favourable view of Trump compared to 69 per cent who view him unfavourably – including 47 per cent who are ‘very negative’.
Support for the US president is naturally highest among Reform’s existing voter base. Make Britain Great Again caps were everywhere at the party’s recent conference in Birmingham and two thirds of current Reform voters say it would be a good thing if the UK government was more like Donald Trump’s. But the challenge for Farage is not how to keep his rank and file happy, it’s how to reach into Middle Britain and make Reform go mainstream.
Farage understands this, most of the time. It’s the reason he’s tacked left on the economy, with calls to nationalise steel companies and pledging to scrap the two-child benefit cap. It’s also why he’s consistently avoided allowing the likes of Tommy Robinson to drift into the Reform orbit. But when it comes to Donald Trump, Nigel Farage has a blindspot. Whether it’s out of misplaced loyalty to the man he calls a friend, or simply his innate sense of mischief, Farage can never quite manage to distance himself from the president.
Only this morning, when speaking to my LBC colleague Nick Ferrari, he refused to criticise Trump’s claim that paracetamol use during pregnancy can lead to autism. He absurdly argued the president had ‘no influence’ over the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show. And when asked about Trump’s past comments suggesting Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating cats and dogs, he replied ‘I think Trump, generally, when he says these things is proved to be right’.
These are not the answers that will convert Middle Britain to the Reform cause. For all America’s influence over our culture, it is worth remembering a salient fact: the UK is not the US. Reform is at its weakest when it mimics elements of the American whackjob right. Most Reform insiders will tell you it was a major misstep to platform Aseem Malhotra, an advisor to Robert F Kennedy Jnr, who used the party’s recent conference to link the King’s cancer diagnosis to the Covid vaccine. So why didn’t Farage take the simple step of refuting Trump’s unfounded autism claims when given the opportunity this morning?
The Reform leader has also been too slow to condemn Trump for his handling of Ukraine. Last June, he said to the BBC’s Nick Robinson that the West had ‘provoked’ the war in Ukraine. The comments stalled Reform’s momentum during an otherwise successful campaign. And yet Farage doesn’t seem to have learned his lesson. Earlier this year, after their Oval Office shouting match, he took the side of Trump over Zelensky – claiming the Ukrainian president had been ‘rude’ and suggesting Zelensky should have ‘thought about’ wearing a suit to the meeting.
When appearing before US lawmakers earlier this month, the Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin labelled Nigel Farage a ‘Putin-loving, free-speech imposter and Trump sycophant’. Farage laughed it off, but there’s a reason his opponents in the UK have now latched onto it. It’s not rocket science: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are deeply unpopular with British voters. So it isn’t ‘based’ for Reform to pander to them – it is electoral suicide. Ed Davey’s right: Farage has a Trump problem.
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