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What’s happening here, then?
Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick travelled to Heathrow Airport yesterday and unveiled a new pledge to get rid of Air Passenger Duty for families on short-haul flights.
Really? That’s what we’re breaking down this week?
Not exactly. Something else was on full display at Heathrow – Farage’s determination to keep the focus on anything except his friendship with Donald Trump.
It’s a bit of a tough ask for one of the country’s most prominent politicians to avoid talking about the most prominent news story in the world.
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And when the questions inevitably came in the press conference after the photo op, Farage struggled to describe the US President – one of the few public figures more loathed by Brits than Keir Starmer – as anything other than a tactical genius.
‘The last thing he’s going to do, or the last thing his colleagues in the White House are going to do, is to give the Iranians any idea of what their true intentions are,’ he said.
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This, apparently, is the galaxy-brain logic behind Trump’s inability to say whether he launched strikes on Tehran to encourage regime change, to knock out nuclear capabilities, or to snatch Iran’s oil.
Farage’s colours have been nailed to Trump’s mast for almost a decade, since the then-Republican candidate invited the then-UKIP MEP up to speak at a campaign rally in August 2016.
Is that a problem?
Inflation is on the rise again; petrol and diesel prices are spiking; predicted interest rate cuts this year are now unlikely to happen; UK growth forecasts have taken a massive hit; and energy bills are expected to jump back up this summer.
It’s not hard to argue that Trump is largely to blame for all of that, with his decision to join Israeli strikes on Iran at the end of February.
Keeping that in mind, he might not be the best man for a British politician to tie themselves to at this point in time.
In fact, a More in Common poll from January found that Farage’s support for Trump was the number one reason non-Reform voters gave for not backing the party.
And just to emphasise, that was in January – before any of the Iran stuff kicked off.
But again, is that a problem?
It’s a fair question. The campaigns for the Scottish Parliamentary elections, Welsh Senedd elections and English local elections are underway, and Reform is polling well for all of them.
After all, the party’s popularity comes from its position as a radical alternative to the UK’s more deeply ingrained options – the performance of incumbent politicians might be closer to voters’ minds than the personal relationships of a national leader.
Perhaps hammering those links would work better at the next general election, but that is set to take place in 2029 and Trump will be out of office by then.
Still, don’t expect Farage to be posing beside another big gold lift any time soon.
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