Why Farage is cosying up to the Maga extremists

Even though Donald Trump is loathed by the British public, Reform UK can’t stop showing off their MAGA credentials. In recent days, Nigel Farage has announced – in a stark about-turn – that he will be headlining Liz Truss’s CPAC GB, a London gathering of Trump super-fans convened by the disastrous former PM.

And, tomorrow, his home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf will be jetting off to Washington, DC, to address the architects of Trump’s second term agenda.

Yusuf will be speaking at the Heritage Foundation, the group behind “Project 2025”, the extreme right wing, 900-page document that has served as a blueprint for Trump’s authoritarian second act.

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According to the event’s description, Yusuf and Nile Gardiner, a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher who now runs the Heritage Foundation’s Thatcher Center, will be discussing “key transatlantic priorities, including mass migration, border security, deportation policy, and the broader challenge of safeguarding Western institutions and values.”

Even though Trump is broadly detested in the UK – and also, for that matter, the US – Reform has begun to align itself with Project 2025.

That document proposed restricting reproductive rights, bulldozing climate policies, decimating the asylum system, and dismantling the “administrative state” by replacing impartial civil servants with ideological loyalists. Farage has seemingly pilfered heavily from this playbook, even though, by implementing it in the US, Trump has made himself wildly unpopular.

But Reform has been cosying up to the Project 2025 crew for a while now. According to The Spectator, which under Paul Marshall’s stewardship is rapidly turning into Reform’s in-house magazine, key figures behind Project 2025 have been “shuttling between London and Washington” to bestow their wisdom on Farage.

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In particular, Farage has been forging close ties with an outfit known as the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the anti-abortion group that led the charge against Roe v. Wade. He’s also linked to the anti-climate Heartland Institute. Both groups contributed to Project 2025.

But why is Farage clinging on to US outfits stuffed with extremists, whose views are rejected by most of the UK electorate? Well, as the old saying goes, “follow the money…” DeSmog did just that – and discovered that, since being elected to Parliament in July 2024, Farage has received at least £52,000 in speaking fees and £12,500 in flights and accommodation for addressing pro-Trump events.

Of course, that’s pocket money compared to the £5m “gift” he received from Christopher Harborne. But Farage has never been one to turn down an extra few quid, no matter the political cost.