Nigel Farage’s open admiration for Donald Trump may boost his profile abroad but risks alienating British voters, for whom Trump remains deeply unpopular, says Eliot Wilson
If it is true that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, then Nigel Farage can mark last week down as an unalloyed success. He travelled to Washington DC to appear as a witness in front of the House Judiciary Committee to talk about “Europe’s threat to American speech and innovation”, the status of free speech and the implications of the Online Safety Act 2023.
The Reform UK leader did not hold back. He drew on the controversial case of Lucy Connolly and the arrest the previous day of Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan, warning that the latter’s experience “could happen to any American man or woman who has said something online that the British government doesn’t like”. The very principle of free speech in Britain was in great danger, he maintained.
“I come from the land of Magna Carta, the mother of parliaments. It doesn’t give me any great joy to be sitting in America describing the awful authoritarian situation we have sunk into. At what point did we become North Korea?”
Farage then posed for the obligatory photograph opportunity for those in favour standing next to President Donald Trump as the latter sat at the Resolution Desk in the Oval Office. Farage claims he and Trump are good friends, although some have suggested that the relationship is more keenly felt on Farage’s side than on the President’s.
British politicians who are able to squeeze on to the much larger stage of American politics know that the impact is much more resonant and the publicity vastly greater. For the leader of a party with only a handful of MPs, no matter how well it is performing in the opinion polls, to be welcomed to the White House and photographed with the president shows remarkable leverage.
Anyone who has worked in communications or reputation management will know, however, the adage about bad publicity is not entirely true. While some opportunities can be exploited whatever the circumstances, there are naturally times when being in the spotlight comes with significant disadvantages and potential damage – just ask Prince Andrew.
A risky strategy
It is here that Farage is taking a risk. Whatever the true nature of their relationship, and to what degree it is in fact mutual, Farage is clearly fascinated and dazzled by Donald Trump. Perhaps it is the electoral success, or the glittering allure of wealth, or Trump’s complete absence of a filter between his brain and his mouth, meaning his words are allowed to tumble forward in a careless torrent. Trump is not a man who thinks through longer term consequences.
In this respect, though, Farage is failing to embody the electorate whose instincts and desires he often discerns with great precision and acuity. Reform UK recently registered its highest level of support in an opinion poll, reaching 35 per cent, leagues ahead of Labour and the Conservatives. But Donald Trump remains a toxic figure to many British voters. A YouGov poll last month showed that 78 per cent of those surveyed had a negative opinion of the US President, with only 17 per cent indicating they regarded him favourably. A net approval rating of -61 dwarfs even Sir Keir Starmer’s unpopularity.
Reform UK voters are much more positive about President Trump, but even they only favoured him by 52/41. And those were people who had voted for Farage’s party in 2024, when its share of the vote was less than half that shown in current opinion polls. Voters from every other party – those whom Farage must convince to swing behind him at the next general election – regarded Trump with varying but severe levels of disapproval.
Farage is in danger of the mistake which has often bedevilled those on the left, of becoming fixated by American politics, which are louder, brighter, brasher and more vibrant, and subconsciously translating their tropes and tactics to the UK. Certainly the British electorate has many concerns which are also seen in the United States: immigration, economic performance, the sense of a dysfunctional or remote state, a perceived liberal elite. And Farage is highly attuned to the concerns of those voters.
But there is very little evidence that Britain wants its own Maga movement. Donald Trump is a leader of utter volatility and caprice. He has risen to power at least in part by making voters feel able to express their worst and crudest feelings without worrying about practical solutions. While he has a substantial body of devoted acolytes in the United States, they are much rarer abroad. If Nigel Farage cannot see that, if he is blinded by the intensity of the Trump phenomenon, he runs the risk of a poisonous association which could do him real damage with the voters of Britain.
Eliot Wilson is a writer