16:50

Nigel Farage has been in parliament today – not, obviously, as an MP, or even as a newly-created peer-made-prime minister to deliver Brexit, the slightly eccentric suggestion made this week by the Times columnist Melanie Philips.

Farage was a guest speaker at an event held by the rightwing Bow Group thinktank to welcome Donald Trump, who won’t himself get within a few miles of parliament while he’s in the UK.

The former Ukip leader-turned US TV pundit is, as you might expect, not too impressed with the Chequers Brexit plan, and predicted politicians did not understand how it would not be seen as credible. He said:

I think they just still don’t get it. They don’t understand the motivation and the reasons that people voted for Brexit. They grossly underestimate just how reviled that Chequers agreement is … British elected politics has not yet caught up with where the country is. But it will at some point in time. My own view is that if Mrs May stays as prime minister she will pretty much destroy the Conservative party.

Elsewhere, Farage showed how his tenure on Fox News and links with US conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones of Infowars have perhaps coloured his own view. He hinted that the mugging of former UK ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer could have been carried out by anti-Trump forces - even though the police do not believe this. Farage said: “The police said that they suspect it is a robbery, but nothing was stolen. So we’ll find out in time what the true motives were.”