The U.K. must appoint a self-made entrepreneur as the next ambassador to Washington in order to rebuild relations with the Trump administration, according to Britain’s best-known Brexit campaigner.
Nigel Farage, head of the Brexit Party, has been a regular visitor to Washington, developing ties with President Trump and his team as part of what he sees as a shared, populist movement.
They met on Tuesday morning when Trump urged him to work with Britain’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, to deliver Brexit.
Farage said a crucial part of that project was to replace Sir Kim Darroch, who resigned as ambassador after the leak of cables in which he described the Trump administration as “inept” and “chaotic”, with a figure from outside the usual British establishment.
“Anybody that is a self-made entrepreneur that is doing the job and is happy to put something back into the world,” he said during a wide-ranging interview over pre-dinner drinks at the Trump Hotel.
“You can’t sit down and talk to Wilbur Ross and to Donald Trump if you come from that British civil service background. They are just miles and miles apart.”
Farage, 55, has himself been floated as a possible ambassador — by none other than Trump himself immediately after his 2016 election victory — and was installed as an early favorite with some bookmakers in Britain.
But he rules himself out. “That ship has sailed. If I could have come here three years ago, I would have loved it. You would have loved it. We would have had a lot of fun,” he said with a cackle of laughter, “but even if it was offered to me, I couldn’t accept it because I would be walking away from a political situation that we have to see through.”
Johnson, 54, is expected to form a government on Wednesday afternoon, charged with making good on his promise to leave the European Union on Oct. 31.
Farage said the coming days would show whether Johnson was serious but that he stood ready to launch his own “shadow trade talks” with Washington if insufficient progress was made on building the relationships needed by London in a post-Brexit future.
His new political grouping emerged as the biggest party in Europe-wide elections in May, making him a potential kingmaker in a British general election which could come before the end of the year.
Farage said he was also in the U.S. to endorse a new organization, World 4 Brexit, which would allow businesses in America and the rest of the world to advertise the benefits of trade without EU controls.
“It’s a big positive campaign that Brexit opens up doors,” he said.
Johnson is expected to make a meeting with Trump one of his early priorities, perhaps visiting the U.S. next month.
Farage said there was no time to lose, three years after the British public had voted to leave the E.U. The choice of ambassador would be crucial to the project, he added.
“We have had three wasted years. God knows what it has cost to keep Darroch and the team here. They have achieved nothing. They have had zero access. It has been an absolute disaster,” he said.
“They will try to make Boris pick someone else who has spent 30 years in the civil service and they should go right outside that box.”
