Why Nigel Farage’s subservient attitude towards Donald Trump should be a warning to patriotic voters

The alliance between Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, seen during a US presidential election rally in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2016, goes back a long way (Picture: Jonathan Bachman) | Getty Images

In a recent interview, the leader of the Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, was asked who he would prefer to have a pint with, US Vice-President JD Vance or Donald Trump? He opted for Trump. “I’d have to go with the boss at Mar-a-Lago,” said Farage.

Let’s stop for a moment and take that in. The man who may be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in a few years’ time views Trump as “the boss”.

This is the US President who has created mayhem across the globe with his attack on Iran, his threats to annex Canada, Panama and Greenland and his undermining of Nato and the Atlantic Alliance. His tariff wars have rocked world trade. Farage has publicly supported Trump’s Greenland ambitions. No doubt he has discussed this and many other matters with the Trump team on his regular trips to the USA.

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Tax cuts for rich, service cuts for poor

In America, Trump ignores court rulings, uses the Department of Justice to pursue personal vendettas against his perceived enemies, has sacked many of the most senior military leaders without credible explanations, has slashed health and safety rules for American workers, and removed safe drinking water funds from small towns.

There are countless other examples of Trump cutting federal support for America’s most deprived communities. In July 2025, Trump signed a law that sees tax cuts for the rich and big reductions in spending on Medicaid and Snap, the health and food subsistence programmes vital to millions of Americans having a tough time. This is the man Farage calls “the boss”.

Farage’s boss has reached into your own bank account and made you poorer. By attacking Iran while apparently being clueless about the ability of that country to close the Strait of Hormuz, Trump forced up the price of almost everything we need to survive – food, heat, light, transport and energy.

Inflation, which was coming down in the UK, has now risen and our economy stands in danger of being the most injured of any of the world’s leading nations. All this disaster starts and ends with Trump, the man Farage calls “the boss”.

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A question of sovereignty

This year, it will be a decade since the referendum that saw the UK vote to leave the European Union. Farage was at the very heart of the Leave campaign. He and Boris Johnson convinced a majority of voters in England that the UK needed to regain its sovereignty.

Sovereignty – the ability of a nation state to be free to do what it believes to be in its best interests – was as central to the Brexit debate as the cost of the NHS and the call to “take back control”. But wait a minute, if Farage gets the keys to 10 Downing Street, who will have charge of Britain’s sovereignty? Who will be “the boss”?

If Donald calls Nigel in No 10 and tells him he’s planning to invade Canada and wants the UK’s help, what does Nigel do? Does he agree to stand back and let Trump invade a Commonwealth country which has King Charles as head of state, or does he risk falling out with “the boss” to back Canada’s sovereignty?

You might think this is fanciful nonsense, but we never in our lives dreamed that an American president would talk about taking over Canada, which is a Nato member. Greenland is the sovereign territory of Denmark, another Nato member. We never in our lives dreamed that an American president would openly and publicly threaten Nato member states.

Where might Nigel’s loyalties lie? With the man he calls “the boss” or with the United Kingdom and Commonwealth? Nothing fanciful here.

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Brexit has made us weaker

It’s a fair question to ask about Farage’s judgment. Rather than make the UK more globally competitive and better able to withstand global economic shocks, Brexit has made us poorer and demonstrably weaker. Only we didn’t think the United States would be the main provider of the shocks. Once again, Farage has backed the wrong horse.

Farage lays the blame for the failure of Brexit at the door of others. Like Trump, he never accepts responsibility for his actions. It’s always someone else’s fault. Well, the Scottish and British people have had enough.

According to recent polling, 73 per cent of Scottish voters want to reverse Brexit. Last week, a study by Best for Britain found that more than half of UK voters want to rejoin the EU, while 61 per cent support the Labour government’s policy of “resetting” relations with Brussels.

The UK we live in now is wholly different from that of 2016. Since then, the country has had a flatlining economy, a pandemic that had a devastating effect on growth and household budgets, and a Liz Truss premiership that wiped billions from investment values and damaged the UK’s global reputation for financial prudence (and, by the way, Farage described Truss’s mini-budget as “the best Conservative budget since 1986”).

Our economic recovery has been hampered by Trump’s tariff wars. That Brexit is a constant drain on our economy is now denied only by economic extremists. Most sensible people look back ten years and see a world that was relative stable, growing economically and mostly at peace.

Now Trump and Putin have taken the world to war. The old world has gone. America, our ally for 100 years, can no longer be trusted. Yet, Farage sees Trump as “the boss”.

Be careful where you put your vote.

Martin Roche sits on the executive committee of the European Movement in Scotland