Nigel Farage, the Honourable Member for Trumpland (and also Clacton), staged a rare visit to the Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday to crow about his mate Donald’s re-election as US president.
Since his election as an MP at the eighth attempt, the Reform UK leader hasn’t been around much. He did pop up during the summer riots by far-Right thugs to spread misinformation about the shocking killing of three girls in Southport.
Farage hasn’t been holding in-person surgeries for his constituents on the Essex coast. At first he said that was on the advice of the Speaker’s office, because of unspecified security threats.
He was forced to backtrack when Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s staff said they had no record of giving him such a warning. In fairness, it must be hard for the godfather of Brexit to stay on top of his correspondence, given how often he’s been over in the United States.
Farage was back for PMQs after his latest trans-Atlantic foray to be by his friend’s side for the US election. He’d quite like to be the next UK ambassador in Washington, to put his Trump-whispering skills to the test on the ground.
That’s been emphatically ruled out by Downing Street - but he had some advice to offer to Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs, urging the Prime Minister to “mend some fences” with the president-elect, “given that the whole of his Cabinet have been so rude about him over the last few years”.
The PM noted the infrequency of the Clacton MP’s trips to his nominal workplace.
“He’s spent so much time in America recently, I was half expecting to see him in the immigration statistics,” he said, to the delight of the Labour benches and the chastened Cheshire grin of Farage himself.
Sir Keir stressed that he had already congratulated Trump after the Republican’s defeat of Kamala Harris, and was keen to work with the new administration.
Trump’s election does pose undoubted challenges for the Labour government, not least on Ukraine given the incoming president’s hostility to extending any more US aid to the government of Volodymyr Zelensky to fend off Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
The PM, fresh from an Armistice Day trip to Paris to see French President Emmanuel Macron, stressed that Britain had been “resolute and strong in our support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression”, and that he was in touch with other leaders “about how we put Ukraine in the best and strongest possible position”.
Closer to home, Sir Keir also paid tribute to Southport MP Patrick Hurley and his constituents for showing “extraordinary courage and resilience as they try to rebuild from the devastating tragedy and loss earlier this year”.
Indeed they have, while some agitators were accused of fanning the flames of the resultant mayhem.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones had his own advice for Farage this week.
He told Sky News: “I think he should focus on working with his constituents in Clacton, who deserve a bit of a full-time MP as opposed to a transatlantic commentator.”
