Trump and Farage show demonstrates the Brexit party’s dilemma

Once every generation there is a defining political romance which spans the Atlantic. In the Eighties it was the ideological partnership of Reagan and Thatcher, but we have a transatlantic double-team fit for the age of populism – the establishment bashing, double-breasted blazer donning duo of US President Donald Trump and Great Britain’s Nigel Farage.

Tonight, from 6pm on LBC Radio, Nigel hosted his friend and fellow terror of the elites, President Trump for a conversation about (you guessed it) Brexit, among other things. Whatever else the conversation was, it was a real coup not only for Farage, but also for LBC.

The conversation had a clubhouse kind of feel to it. If the sound of the phone line didn’t give away that Trump was calling from thousands of miles away, the tone of the chit chat might have fooled you that they were two pals catching up at the golf club boozer, one called “The Nineteenth Hole” or the “Ol’ Swingers’ Inn”.

When the conversation turned to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the President spoke as if he was building business bridgeheads in the locker room, telling his pal Farage that

“I know that you and him will end up doing something that could be terrific if you and he get together as, you know, an unstoppable force.”

When the President called Johnson “a fantastic man”, you could just imagine him patting his pal on the back while Nigel silently seethes with envy through wafting mists of cigar smoke and stale laughter.

There was even innuendo – in a line worthy of Sid James in any Carry On film, the President complimented Nigel on his negotiation skills: “I always thought you had a little bit of a magic wand, but they never used it. You know what I’m talking about.”

There was, of course, the expected Corbyn bashing, and he dismissed out of hand fears that any trade deal with the UK would lead to the privatisation of the NHS as a Corbynista ploy. He objected

“Not at all. We wouldn’t be involved in that no. It’s not for us to have anything to do with your health care system. No, we’re just talking about trade.”

Convivial banter and Corbyn bashing aside, Farage’s interview revealed some of the serious dilemmas which he is facing in the upcoming Christmas election. His conversation with the President comes at a time when he and the Brexit party are divided over how they should approach their campaign.

Farage was notably caught in a double-bind when it came to discussing Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal and the President’s personal praise for the Prime Minister himself. The President made it clear that he wanted more trade with Britain than was possible under Johnson’s deal.

“We want to do trade with UK and they want to do trade with us. To be honest with you… this deal… under certain aspects of the (Brexit) deal… you can’t do it, you can’t do it, you can’t trade…We can’t make a trade deal with the UK because I think we can do many times the numbers that we’re doing right now and certainly much bigger numbers than you are doing under the European Union.”

But he also expressed much admiration for Johnson’s resolve and negotiating strategies. He cautioned, with his typically expansive vocabulary: “Corbyn would be so bad for your country, so bad. He’d take you in such a bad way. He’d take you in such bad places.”

In his own irreverent, bumbling way the US President touched on the heart of the Brexit Party’s existential dilemma – whether to proudly fight on against Johnson in the election, risk splitting the Leave vote, and let in Jeremy Corbyn, or to swallow pride and do a deal with the Tories.

That, in the end, is the Brexit party question.