Nigel Farage wants to be American
The Politics Show
The New Statesman
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why does the Reform leader spend so much time in the US? Freddie Hayward has been speaking to him to find out.
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Winston Churchill had an American mother. Boris Johnson was a dual citizen. But if Nigel Farage makes it to Downing Street, he’ll have closer ties to the US than any other British PM.
That’s the argument of our correspondent Freddie Hayward, who joins Oli Dugmore on Daily Politics.
He's been speaking to Farage and the MAGA figures he calls friends to find out how the Reform leader hopes to bring Trump tactics to British politics - and rekindle the most "special" of relationships.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The New Statesman. |
| 0:05.2 | Winston Churchill had an American mother. |
| 0:08.1 | Boris Johnson was a dual citizen, but if Nigel Farage makes it to Downing Street, |
| 0:12.8 | he'll have closer ties to the US than any other British Prime Minister. |
| 0:16.9 | That's the argument about correspondent Freddie Hayward, who joins me in the studio today. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm Olly Dougmore, and this is the Daily Politics from the New Statesman. Freddie, you usually dial in from Washington. It is a pleasure to have you here in person. I'm very glad to be sat next to you. Your big story for the magazine this week is all about Nigel Farage as a truly transatlantic figure. Do Republicans see him as a sort of envoy for MAGA politics bringing it to European shores? |
| 0:45.2 | I think so, but they also see him as this profit-like figure. You have to remember the Brexit came before the 2016 Trump election. So it was almost a proof of concept. Brexit happens over the summer. |
| 0:53.1 | Farage flies over. He's sort of garlanded as this figure who had done what they were trying to do. |
| 1:01.0 | And Trump takes him on stage at this rally in Hudson, Mississippi, and proclaims him Mr. Brexit, and then he whispers to him afterwards as they embrace on stage that |
| 1:11.4 | they'll be friends for life. That's when the relationship between Farage and Trump was cemented. |
| 1:17.4 | But there is a much greater history, a much broader, deeper connection that Farage has with |
| 1:24.6 | America. It's just the photo of the golden door that we all know. But really, Farage |
| 1:30.7 | is being going out to America since the 80s. So he first flew out there in 1988. He was then |
| 1:38.4 | working for a French bank, but in the 80s and 90s he was working with American investment banks. And he fell in love |
| 1:46.2 | with it, essentially. I mean, reporting this story, it's quite clear that there is almost like a love |
| 1:50.6 | affair, a romantic idealisation of what America is. And that informs his politics, I think, |
| 1:56.9 | much more so than we understand. There's so much there that we'll get into over the course of the episode, the history, |
| 2:02.6 | whether or not his idea of America actually bears much of a resemblance to reality. |
| 2:07.6 | But let's just start with Farage in America today. |
| 2:11.6 | Yeah. |
| 2:12.6 | Is he a big name on the hill? Do people know him? |
| 2:15.6 | What sort of crowd size does he draw when he speaks |
... |
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