Why Farage should – and shouldn’t – be UK ambassador to Trump

It is very kind of Nigel Farage to offer his services as a kind of intermediary between our government and the new American president. Keir Starmer certainly needs one, because protest though he might, nobody believes the line that Donald Trump is hugely impressed with the Labour government or that JD Vance has a new best friend in the magnificently dim David Lammy.

For eight years, Labour has behaved abominably towards Trump, flinging at him every conceivable insult, a number of its MPs demanding he not be allowed into the country and finally dispatching 100 morons to try to wrest the election in favour of Kamala Harris (that went well, didn’t it?).

In short, they have behaved with the kind of insulting petulance you might expect from a 13-year-old child. Nor do I think that the old, familiar, stinking oil slick which is Peter Mandelson will necessarily commend himself to anyone in the incoming Republican regime.

I don’t doubt Farage would do a reasonable job, either. He is more astute than the Labour front bench put together. But should he be doing it? And there’s the rub. Because I fear that Farage’s yearning to be in Washington DC rather than the agreeable Thames-side resort of Clacton-on-Sea spells trouble for Reform. He has bigger fish to fry than either copiously attending to the needs of his electors, or attending to the needs of a party from which he has stood down as leader every time something more exciting has hove into view. Without Farage, there is effectively no Reform. But does he have the diligence and patience to stick with it?