Nigel Farage, the new leader of the Reform party. Holly Valance, the Australian pop princess and Neighbours star turned darling of the far-right. Woody Johnson, the New York Jets NFL owner who previously worked as Trump’s ambassador to the UK.
These are just some of the 100 or so guests expected to gather in Chelsea or Knightsbridge for a glitzy Donald Trump fundraiser this evening. The event, set to be hosted by Valance at a private residence in west London, has already clocked up $2m (£1.57m) in donations and has been billed as a reception and dinner with the former POTUS’ son, Donald Trump Jr, and his fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a lawyer and former Fox News host.
Trump himself, busy on the campaign trail in the US, may well appear virtually — as he did for Farage’s 60th birthday party, a similarly star-studded bash attended by Valance and many of the same faces, back in April. “It was pretty boisterous”, says one attendee who spotted everyone from former PM Liz Truss doing the conga alongside "bad boys of Brexit" Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore, to a slowly-melting ice sculpture of the former Brexit Party leader.
It was as though they’d blinked and it was 2016 again, say several of the 200-or-so politicos, journalists, socialites and business people gathered in the Boisdale restaurant in Canary Wharf at the time, where singers were seen wearing a Make America Great Again (MAGA) caps and several guests sported cardboard cut-out Trump masks. Will Truss and her merry band of Trumpettes make a similar appearance on the other side of town tonight?
How much the guest list for tonight’s fundraiser will overlap with Farage’s knees-up is not yet known, but the ramping up of Trump-themed events across the capital certainly speaks to growing support for the former POTUS on this side of the Atlantic. Current opinion polls say Trump is hot on Joe Biden’s heels in the race to become the 47th president of the United States in November — and with Farage a surprise new candidate in the race for the UK election in July, perhaps it’s no wonder that he and and his fellow right-wingers are choosing to keep the fake-tanned Republican leader increasingly close.
“I would rather have Trump than Biden,” Truss said in February as a new poll found that 31 per cent of Conservatives would prefer a Trump victory to a Biden one in November, compared to 24 per cent of overall British voters. Fellow Tories Jake Berry, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson have followed suit, with Johnson saying Trump’s renewed leadership could be “just what the world needs” if he backs Ukraine. The former UK PM will be golfing at Mar-O-Lago before we know it, suggest commentators — though he might need to fight Farage for that spare seat in that golf cart first.
Farage — the Brit who insiders believe Trump is most likely to consult if he returns to the White House — has already made one visit to Trump’s Florida residence this year, when he jetted into the US in March for a whirlwind tour. Before standing as Reform leader, he’d already tipped himself for an ambassadorial or special envoy role to Trump in Britain, suggesting that he’d be willing to work alongside a Labour government as a trade envoy if Trump does get elected. “Nigel's friends have been talking up the idea,” say allies. “He could be a special envoy to the UK and, interestingly, to the European Union. Trump thinks it's essential Farage is on the front line.” So who else is on the guest list at tonight’s Trump fundraiser? Why is such a considerable chunk of the Tory right backing him? And who else seems to be making it into the ex-president’s London power base ahead of his 2024 run?
Valance is perhaps one of the more surprising names on tonight’s fundraiser host list — but insiders say her attendance is of little surprise. The 41-year-old former pop star and her husband Nick Candy, the British billionaire property tycoon, have become regular faces on the right-wing political circuit in recent years, attending Boris Johnson’s wedding to Carrie in 2021 and known to host wealthy right-wingers including Leave EU founder Arron Banks, GB News owner Paul Marshall and former US ambassador Woody Johnson at their seven-bedroom Cotswolds mansion. Her first association with Trump came in 2022, when she was pictured standing alongside Trump, Farage and her husband with the caption, “Great dinner at Mar-a-Lago.”
In the years since then Valance has declared that gender identity discussions should not be allowed in schools and called climate campaigner Greta Thunberg a “demonic little gremlin high priestess of climatism”. This weekend rumours swirled that Valance might even stand as a candidate for Reform, and though she quickly confirmed she had decided against it, she hasn’t shied away from her intention to vote for for Farage’s party. Earlier this year, she went as far as suggesting she had played a part in Farage’s decision to stand, saying she had been “in his ear” during the early stages of the election campaign. “I have been whispering in his ear for a long time,” she said. “He is the face of Reform. Richard [Tice] has done a great job and they are a great team. Hopefully now we will be stronger and we will see what we can do at this next election. I’m a paid up member.”
Others set to attend tonight’s fundraiser alongside Valance include Richard Grenell, a former acting director of US national intelligence who served as the US ambassador to Germany and has been tipped as a possible future international envoy for Trump. George Glass, the US ambassador to Portugal under Trump, and Duke Buchan, his ambassador to Spain, are also set to attend the fundraising event, as is Scott Bessent, a key Trump fundraiser who’s been tipped as Trump’s future treasury secretary.
Who else will attend is likely to emerge over the next 24 hours — all eyes on social media for those MAGA cap selfies — but the guest list from Farage’s bash certainly offers a clue. Among the attendees cheering Trump at the event in April were the multimillionaire Matt Fiddes, a former bodyguard of Michael Jackson who runs a successful martial arts school business and owns the largest privately-owned property portfolio in Devon, and British businessman Arron Banks, the former Leave campaign donor and one half of the so-called ‘bad boys of Brexit’ who has previously been a guest at Trump’s ritzy Mar-a-Lago club. With Banks previously praising Trump for connecting with voters on an emotional level because “facts don’t work” and retweeting pictures of Trump’s appearance at the Farage party, his return to politics certainly isn’t out of the question for the Brexit donor.
Oh look, it’s our favourite anti-elite heroes! Pictured in a gold lift. With Donald Trump. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/i3S224kooJ
— Chris Gill 〓〓 🇪🇺🇺🇦 (@ninefor22) December 28, 2018
If it’s loyalty that Trump chooses to prioritise when forming his inner circle across the pond, several other Londoners could be in the running. British blogger and activist Raheem Kassam, a former chief advisor to Farage who once mounted a bid for the UKIP leadership, appeared alongside Farage and Banks in that now-notorious gold lift photo at Trump Towers in 2016. He has since worked as editor of alt-right news site Brietbart News and now serves as editor-in-chief of right-wing blogging platform The National Pulse, for which he interviewed Trump as recently as last autumn — a career highlight he has pinned proudly to the top of his Instagram grid.
Also in that famous gold lift photo was Andy Wigmore, another key cog in the Leave EU machine and the other half of the ‘bad boys of Brexit’. The former diplomat and ex-competitive shooter, who once represented Belize in the Commonwealth Games, has since retired from politics, reinventing himself as an arable farmer in Buckinghamshire (and part-time film extra and ‘lab rat’ for the Covid vaccine), but commentators say he could be back in a flash if Farage does take on an envoy role to Trump 2.0.
Trump’s recent fundraisers across the pond have also offered a key window into his UK inner circle. The former POTUS has been busy assembling a loyal team of key donors in the States and several of those in attendance have London links. Among them is billionaire hedge-fund tycoon Robert Mercer, a long-time friend of Farage’s and conservative mega donor who was another key cog in the UK’s Brexit campaign back in 2016 after he offered the free services of his advertising business Cambridge Analytica. Both he and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, also a Republican megadonor, had previously told friends they had no plans to support Trump’s 2024 campaign, but commentators say their attendance at two key fundraising events earlier this year suggests a rekindled relationship with the former POTUS.
The same might not be said for David Cameron — another ghost of 2016-politics-past — who failed to persuade Trump to push through $60bn in military aid for Ukraine during their Mar-a-Lago meeting back in April. But it is certainly looking true for a growing number of his fellow Conservatives. Truss, Johnson, Berry and Rees-Mogg are among those to have expressed support for Trump since he launched his comeback, with commentators saying his values and tactics seem increasingly aligned with that of certain Conservatives at a time when their party is in the midst of an identity crisis.
Trump’s UK inner circle doesn’t solely comprise of the old faces, however. Mayoral hopeful Susan Hall might not have been among the conga line of famous figures at Farage’s bash, but she has long declared herself a Trump fan and could certainly be a boost to his campaign if something dramatic changes and she is elected as mayor of London next month.
So will Keir Starmer and his left-wingers feel an increasing pressure to cosy up to the former POTUS in the coming months? If David Cameron’s recent Mar-a-Lago stopover is anything to go by, quite possibly, say insiders. Indeed Starmer himself — a staunch critic of Trump’s policies, most recently his “bad faith” criticism of Nato — has admitted that a Labour government would “have to make it work” if Trump once again became president.
Whether he likes it or not, making that relationship work might just look like a trade envoy in the shape of someone like Nigel Farage. Farage suggested the gig himself a couple of months ago, saying he’d be “very interested” to take the role of an intermediary between Trump and an incoming Labour government if the former POTUS does become president.
“There needs to be some sort of envoy between an incoming Labour government with people like David Lammy – who’s probably going to the foreign secretary, who’s been really quite abusive about Trump,” he said, adding: “There’s no way around it, our relationship with America on defence is absolutely crucial. In terms of trade, we are still the biggest foreign investor in America, they are the biggest foreign investor here.”
Not everyone will agree with Farage on the former statement, but few would disagree with him on the latter. Although Farage as Labour trade envoy seems pretty far-fetched, if Trump does get elected for a second term in November, Farage, Valance and their merry conga-line of MAGA supporters might just be the ones having the last laugh after all.
