Farage and Trump Discussed U.S. Backing ‘No Deal’ Brexit at CPAC

Brexit
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Jack Montgomery

Nigel Farage and Donald Trump discussed the U.S. giving its backing to a clean, “No Deal” Brexit at recent CPAC conference in Maryland.

The Brexit campaign leader, who endorsed President Trump ahead of his 2016 election win and is understood to have the American leader’s ear, is said to have urged him to back Britain making a clean break with the European Union at the conference, where both gave speeches.

“I was talking to [President Trump] about Vietnam, where he had said that a bad deal was on the table so sometimes you have to walk,” the Brexit Party MEP and former UKIP supremo told The Telegraph, referring to Trump’s recent decision to turn down a proposed deal with North Korea, rather than accept bad terms for the sake of being seen to seal an agreement of some description come what may.

“I said in the case of Vietnam that no deal was better than a bad deal and I gave my opinion that the same principle applied to Brexit,” Farage added.

The MEP was unwilling to disclose how the U.S. President had received his proposal, being unwilling to betray his confidence — but suggested that “if you read the comments from his ambassador in London, I don’t think it takes much reading between the lines” to glean the administration’s perspective on Brexit.

“This American administration firmly believes in the nation-state, not supranational structures [like the European Union]… I think it’s fair to say they see Brexit as a great opportunity,” he explained.

President Trump’s ambassador to the Court of St James, Woody Johnson, has indeed made a number of public overtures suggesting the United States is keen to use Brexit to strengthen British-American relations, noting that “Britain’s decision to leave the European Union takes your country into new territory… “But you are not heading there on your own. The United States is committed to standing with the UK through Brexit,” in an inaugural speech.

President Trump has himself hailed the possibility of Britain using newly regained powers to control its own international trade policy — currently surrendered to the EU’s central institutions — to strike a deal which would supercharge job creation on both sides of the Atlantic.

By the same token, Ambassador Johnson has warned that a Brexit resembling the deal currently proposed by Prime Minister Theresa May — which would see the EU continue to control British trade policy through a lengthy “transition” period and possibly much of its trade in manufactured goods and agri-products via a so-called “single customs territory” thereafter — would make a British-American deal all but impossible.

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