LONDON — Nigel Farage, Britain’s populist champion of Brexit, says he will campaign alongside President Trump during next year’s election if he is invited to help the 2020 effort.
Farage’s role in an against-the-odds Brexit referendum win in 2016 led to him speaking at a Trump campaign event in Mississippi last time around.
“We reached those people who have never voted in their lives but believed by going out and voting for Brexit they could take back control of their country, take back control of their borders, and get back their pride and self-respect,” he said with Trump standing beside him.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Farage, 55, said he was prepared to reprise the role.
“If I’m asked to. It’s as simple as that,” he said in his office close to Westminster, the center of British government.
“Never before in British history has anybody from the U.K. appeared on a platform in a U.S. presidential election, but they were a unique set of circumstances, and who’s to say where Brexit is going to be by then?”
But he said he would be working for the Trump cause next year, whether he was invited to join the president on stage or not.
“What I will do in the next American election is spend a lot of time in America, but I will be a talking head, commentator, debater giving a view from outside of America,” he said. “I’d be very happy to do that.”
Farage’s appeal to British voters who felt alienated by a ruling elite and his simple message that the U.K. should take back decision-making powers from the European Union helped deliver a narrow win for the forces of Brexit in June 2016.
Since then, the project has stalled as politicians struggle to agree what life after Brexit should look like.
Farage has reemerged with a new party, the Brexit Party, and is once again using his charisma and everyman sensibilities — he is famous for his love of a pint of a beer and a cigarette — to position himself as a political heavyweight.
His policies and style saw him forge a bond with Trump in 2016, when the then-candidate came out in favor of Brexit.
They remain in occasional contact and last week met during the president’s state visit at the American ambassador’s London residence.
Farage said Trump was well-positioned to win in 2020 with a strong economy, a list of promises delivered, and likely a Democratic opponent positioned well to the Left.
Farage is also planning to assemble a team of negotiators to begin talks with the White House on a free trade agreement between the U.K. and the U.S. amid fears that London is ill-prepared to leave the EU’s single market.
