This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

A senior adviser to Donald Trump has confirmed that the president-elect met UK Independence party leader Nigel Farage, saying the two men discussed “freedom and winning”. Farage later indicated he and Trump had discussed the placing of a bust of Sir Winston Churchill “back in [the] Oval Office”.

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Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager in the last months of the presidential campaign, left Trump Tower in New York two hours after Farage had been seen to arrive on Saturday.

“All these meetings are incredibly productive,” Conway told the Guardian. Farage had previously spent time with Trump, who regularly invoked Brexit as an example of the success coming his way, at a campaign rally and after a presidential debate. Inside the tower, Conway told reporters: “I think they enjoy each other’s company.”

The interim Ukip leader is the first British politician to meet Trump following his election victory. The meeting is likely to cause concern in Downing Street, following reports that the “special relationship” between the US and UK could be more difficult to maintain under the new president.

Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, was only the 11th world leader called by Trump after his victory on Tuesday.

On Saturday evening, Farage sent a tweet that was accompanied by a picture of the two men smiling broadly in front of a pair of gold doors:

Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) It was a great honour to spend time with @realDonaldTrump. He was relaxed and full of good ideas. I'm confident he will be a good President. pic.twitter.com/kx8cGRHYPQ

He added: “[Donald Trump’s] support for the US-UK relationship is very strong. This is a man with whom we can do business.

“Especially pleased at [his] very positive reaction to idea that Sir Winston Churchill’s bust should be put back in Oval Office.”

Farage was referring to a running rightwing sore over the alleged removal by Barack Obama of a bust that was kept in the Oval Office by George W Bush, and whether such an alleged action made the current president anti-British. Foreign secretary Boris Johnson, a leader with Farage of the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, wrote in April that it did.

Saturday’s intrigue began at 1.50pm local time, when Farage walked into the lobby of Trump Tower, the Fifth Avenue skyscraper in which Trump lives and from which he runs his business empire.



Trump and key advisers have been meeting at the building since the president-elect’s return from Washington DC, where he met Barack Obama and Republican congressional leaders on Thursday.

Asked by reporters seeking news of plans and appointments if Trump had invited him, and if he was helping with the Republican’s transition to the White House, Farage said: “We’re just tourists.”

Farage met and served Trump on the campaign trail, speaking for him at a rally in Mississippi in August and working the post-debate spin room after the second debate against Hillary Clinton, in St Louis in early October.

His arrival at Trump Tower came just after film-maker Michael Moore left the building, which was surrounded by a heavy New York police presence but open to the public at lobby level.

Moore attracted attention when he walked into the lobby at 1.10pm, as a 10,000-strong protest march neared. “I just thought I’d see if I could get into Trump Tower and ride the famous escalator,” he said, adding that he was broadcasting his visit on Facebook Live. Police subsequently stopped the protest march a block away, at East 55th Street, and closed the lobby to the public.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nigel Farage waits to ascend in a Trump Tower elevator. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Earlier, speaking on Fox News, Farage said Trump must meet May to mend fences between the UK and the US. Farage said May’s team had been “quite rude” about the president-elect, but that Trump had “got to meet her”.

“Trump is an anglophile,” he said. “He understands and recognises what our two great nations have done together, between us, and thank goodness we’re coming to the end of an American president who loathed us.

“One of the things we can do between us is a sensible trade relationship, cut tariffs. We’re massive investors in each other’s countries. There’s a brighter future.”

Asked to comment on the Brexit referendum, Farage said it had given “ordinary little people the chance to say what they thought”.

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“Brexit was the first real kick back against the liberal establishment, which has dominated with its friends in big business and the big banks, dominated the world for the last couple of decades,” he said.

“What we have to do is follow the example given to us over 30 years ago by Reagan and Thatcher. They both won counter-revolution elections … they made the world a better place.”

Farage was in Florida earlier this week for a private meeting. Earlier on Saturday Ukip sources said no firm meeting was scheduled with the president-elect, but said Farage would be delighted if the opportunity arose.

Farage has also suggested that “insulting” comments senior Tories made about Trump may have been the reason for May coming so low down on the president-elect’s list of foreign leaders to call.

Farage’s remarks came after it emerged that the prime minister’s two joint chiefs of staff had attacked Trump on social media before taking up their current posts. Fiona Hill posted last December: “Donald Trump is a chump,” while Nick Timothy wrote in March: “American politics was depressing enough before Trump took off.”

Farage claimed this week to have been “the catalyst” for Trump’s rise. In turn, Trump often referred to Brexit on the campaign trail, likening his predicted victory to the shock result in the referendum on membership of the European Union.

In an interview with TalkRadio from Spain before he left for the US, Farage said he was “the catalyst” for the downfall of “the Blairites, the Clintonites, the Bushites and all these dreadful people who work hand in glove with Goldman Sachs and everybody else, have made themselves rich and ruined our countries”.

He also joked about the idea of Trump sexually assaulting May when he met her, and described outgoing president Barack Obama as a “creature”. Asked about Trump’s possible future behaviour after he was accused of a series of sexual assaults, which he denies, Farage added: “If it comes to it, I could be there as the responsible adult role, to make sure everything’s OK.”

A Downing Street source said Farage’s activities in the US were an irrelevance to the British government. “He has no role whatsoever. We won’t be talking to him,” the source said.

Meanwhile, Axel Schafer, a senior member of Angela Merkel’s Social Democrat coalition, said May was delusional if she thought she could broker a good trade deal with Trump.

Schafer told the Times that the likelihood of a speedy and preferential trade agreement between the UK and the US had changed. “Even before Tuesday the chances were rather low, now the hope for this kind of deal seems delusional,” he said.

The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, described Trump’s election as a “global wake-up call” that showed that Britain must take back control from the billionaires bankrolling the Tories.

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Corbyn accused the president-elect of targeting the fears of people who feel left behind by the economic change of globalisation. He said that instead of giving them solutions, he had shifted the blame to other sections of society.

“We have no idea how Donald Trump proposes to ‘make America great again’, and Theresa May’s Tories offer slogans, but no solutions, for most people in Britain,” he said.

“We won’t tackle the damage done by elite globalisation just by leaving the EU. We won’t ‘take back control’ unless we take on the corporate vested interests that control our energy, our transport, and have infiltrated our public services.

“One thing is for sure. Neither billionaire Donald Trump nor the billionaire-backed Tories have any interest in giving people back control, or reining in the predatory excesses of a globalised free-for-all,” Corbyn told Labour’s south east regional conference in Kent.