Nigel Farage has said he could be “useful as an interlocutor” between the Labour Government and Donald Trump.
The Reform UK leader said he has “a great relationship” with the US president-elect and knows people he believes will be in Mr Trump’s administration for “quite a long time”.
Speaking to the PA news agency at a Reform event near Exeter, Mr Farage described Mr Trump as a “pro-British American president” who gives the UK “potentially huge opportunities if we can overcome the difficulties that the whole of the Cabinet have been rude about him”.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the Government will be keen to build bridges with Mr Trump before he returns to the White House after a row over Labour activists campaigning for Kamala Harris, and controversy over comments previously made by Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
If the Government choose to use me, I would do that not because I support the Labour Government but because I believe in something called the national interest
Mr Farage told PA: “I’ve got a great relationship with Donald Trump but equally I know many of the other senior figures who will be in this administration and I’ve known them for quite a long time.
“It seems to me that with a Labour Party and a Republican Party who disagree on so many things – who are such fundamentally different people – that I might be useful as an interlocutor. Unofficially, behind the scenes, to try and help mend some of those fences.
“If the Government choose to use me, I would do that not because I support the Labour Government but because I believe in something called the national interest.”
On Friday, Mr Farage said the UK should “roll out the red carpet” for Mr Trump.
He said: “Whether you like Trump or not, this is the important point that in terms of intelligence-sharing, in terms of defence, in terms of investment, in terms of trade, America is our most important relationship.”
Mr Trump’s election win spells uncertainty over the future of US backing for Ukraine.
Mr Farage said on Saturday that a “peace negotiation is a very good idea”.
“Whether it succeeds or not, actually doing it is the right thing,” he added, and later described the conflict with Russia as “like the Battle of the Somme with drones”.
Mr Farage was speaking ahead of his keynote speech at the Reform event. It is the second regional conference he has attended in two days, after Friday’s gathering of Welsh Reform backers.
Addressing supporters on Saturday afternoon, he said his party believes “optimistically that we can win power”.
He said: “The time has come for a new political force in this country that stands up for its fishermen, that stands up for its farmers, that stands up for free speech, that stands up for controlling its borders, that stands up for decency, that stands up for who we are as a nation.
“That stands up for all of our traditions, that believe in the British people, that believes in who we are.
“We believe in those things, we also believe optimistically that we can win power and turn this all around.”
