The Farage-Trump friendship has gone cold

When Donald Trump launched his unprecedented attack on Keir Starmer at the weekend – describing Britain as “our once Great Ally” and accused it of wanting to join a war he had already won – many saw the hand of Nigel Farage behind it.

The Reform leader, once again giving his constituency of Clacton a swerve at the weekend, had been boasting of plans to dine with the president on Friday night after apparently being invited to his Mar-a-Lago home. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey even referred to the dinner when he went on Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday morning to call for the King’s forthcoming visit to the US to be cancelled.

But it appears that it never actually went ahead – and that Farage’s friendship with Trump might have cooled entirely.

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The Reform leader told an event on Friday hosted in opposition to the government’s proposed Chagos Islands agreement with Mauritius that the president “has almost understood the deal… but I’ll be dining at Mar-a-Lago tomorrow night and I will reinforce the message”.

But the Financial Times has since reported that while Farage had been invited to the Florida residence it was by a member of the $20,000-a-year club and not by the president himself. Indeed, while Farage was at Mar-a-Lago, Trump was an hour’s drive away in Doral, a suburb of Miami, where he had been attending a meeting of Latin American leaders.

The FT reported that people close to Farage said there was no longer regular contact between the men and that Reform now had few direct links into a US administration the leader once boasted he could act as a “bridge” to, given his supposed close friendship with the president. Trump had instead prioritised forming his own ties with Starmer’s government, it said.

The cooling of the pair’s relationship appears to date back to Farage being spurned by Elon Musk, who served briefly and badly as head of Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency last year. Farage announced in December 2024 after meeting Musk at Mar-a-Lago that the billionaire was considering making a donation to Reform, but a few weeks later Musk wrote on X that “Farage doesn’t have what it takes” and needed to be replaced as leader. He has since thrown his weight (if not his money) behind Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain.