Nigel’s night out with Donald Trump
ANY doubts about Nigel Farage’s importance to future Anglo-American relations have been forgotten after a photograph emerged of the former Ukip leader sitting down for dinner with President Trump.
Mr Farage joined Mr Trump at one of the US leader’s luxury hotels – the Trump International in Washington – just days after they jointly addressed US conservatives at a conference.
Pictures captioned “Dinner with The Donald” showed the British politician at the table on Saturday night with the President’s daughter Ivanka, her husband and senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and Florida governor Rick Scott.
They were posted on Twitter amid rumours that Theresa May is to increase her attempts to woo the President with an invitation to address the Tory conference in October.
Yesterday Tory chairman Patrick McLoughlin avoided answering questions on the invitation saying that decisions about what was happening at the conference have not been made yet. Mrs May has resisted calls to make Mr Farage Britain’s envoy in Washington but the former Ukip chief has been employed by Fox News and has deepened his already close relationship with the most powerful democratic leader in the world.
Earlier on Saturday, Mr Farage appeared to back the President’s aggressive dismissals of the media, telling American broadcaster Fox’s Business Network programme they were “losing this battle big time”.
In his own broadside, he said: “They are simply not prepared to accept that Brexit happened, that Trump happened. They kind of want to turn the clock back and what they don’t realise is they are losing viewers, they are losing listeners, they are losing this battle big time.”
Mr Trump has become the first US President to decline to attend the annual Washington Correspondents dinner and on Friday his spokesman Sean Spicer blocked media organisations critical of the new administration from a press briefing.
FORMER Ukip leader Nigel Farage was back in Washington sitting down to dinner with President Trump, along with Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, top presidential aide Jared Kushner. It is clear Mr Farage enjoys a rapport with the President and even if he will not be our ambassador in Washington (as Mr Trump hoped) he can be a useful link between Britain and our old (though now rather unpredictable) ally.
Although he is no longer running Ukip, Nigel Farage is still a substantial figure on the British and world stage. If his skills and talents can be used then the British Government should be sensible enough to make the most of them. To ignore him looks churlish.