As the us turns away from britain, could farage be our envoy? | thearticle

​Joe Biden standing down removes the last person at the top of US politics who knows Britain well. Some on the Right are viscerally hostile to the UK. JD Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate,

said recently that after Sir Keir Starmer’s election victory, Britain could be the “the first truly Islamist state that will get a nuclear weapon”. On the Democrat side, there is no

hostility but little interest either. Kamala Harris, the Vice President and likely Democratic candidate, briefly met Rishi Sunak last autumn when she attended an international conference on

AI in London. But not since Tony Blair stood on the White House balcony to tell the media of his undying support and affection for Bill Clinton, on the day he was impeached over Monica

Lewinsky, has there been much tendresse between the leaders of American and British politics. Barack Obama has surely not forgotten how Ed Miliband, then Leader of the Labour Party, refused

to support military action to stop the massacre of Muslims in Syria. He thus forced the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, to drop out of planned US-UK-France strikes, just as French and

American warplanes were about to take off. Syria was a foreign policy failure for all three countries. Donald  Trump is famous or notorious for many things, but fidelity to wives, aides, and

old friends is not one of them. He famously endorsed Britain’s most unfaithful politician, Boris Johnson, as a “Britain Trump” when the UK voted for Brexit. One of his aides, Steve Bannon,

rushed to Europe to endorse Brexit. He tried to set up a school for European Rightist politicians near Rome. But Bannon’s choice of far-right politicians to support — such as Marine Marechal

Le Pen, niece of Marine Le Pen, and Éric Zemmour, a proponent of the “Great Replacement” ideology of an Islamic conquest of the West, who recently spoke (along with Suella Braverman) at a

Brussels gathering organised by the pro-Putin Hungarian PM Viktor Orban — was more than the market could bear. Even Catholic cardinals condemned Bannon — and his school for European

mini-Trumps never opened. Once safely in the White House, Trump soon dumped Bannon. He now languishes in prison. Europe’s most faithful Trump follower has been Britain’s Nigel Farage. In the

glory days of Brexit, there were photos aplenty of the two men together. But today Farage does not appear to feature on the Trump A-list. Earlier this month the Clacton MP, finally elected

to the Commons in his seventh decade, rushed to the Republican National Convention at Milwaukee when he heard of the assassination attempt on Trump. Farage gave interviews left and right

claiming that this was a solidarity mission to be with his international political soulmate. But so far there is no evidence the two men ever met at the Republican Convention, or that Trump

even knew (or cared) that Farage was in town.   Liz Truss also attended the Republican Convention, as did Boris Johnson. Both spoke to empty rooms. Johnson got a quick thumbs-up photo with

Trump in a hotel suite kitchenette, but no photo, not even a selfie, has emerged of Trump with either Truss or Farage. ​Trump doesn’t do losers and Johnson and Truss are now the biggest

losers on the global hard Right spectrum. Brexit has turned into an economic millstone around the UK’s neck. Its failure  helped bury Tory candidates and even brought the Liberal Democratic

Party back to life. Farage is a compulsive selfie poser, but a comprehensive search of US sites can find no photographic evidence that Farage even met Trump at the Republican Convention. So

instead the Farage self-promotion machine has been touting the idea that he would be a very good UK ambassador in Washington if Trump wins. Really? Leaving to one side the fact that Sir Keir

Starmer would be more likely to name Jeremy Corbyn to the UK ambassadorship in Washington, Farage does not have a single quality that might make a good ambassador. I worked as a Foreign

Office minister under Blair with different UK ambassadors in Washington. They very rarely get face-time with the President, other than when the UK Prime Minister comes to town. The UK

already has an experienced, respected, well-connected Ambassador in Dame Karen Pierce. She has also been UK Ambassador to the UN so knows New York as well as Washington political diplomacy

and its denizens. She is skilled at  networking with both parties across the aisle. The Republican Party’s UK spokesperson, Sarah Elliott, told Camilla Tominey of GB News: “The Republican

right now are actually very much Labor-focused, in the sense they had the President of the Teamsters Union speak at the Republican National Convention. “Maybe a more traditional Labour

representative would work better with these Republicans,” she added. This is not much help to His Wannabe Excellency, Nigel Farage, who is not a regular on trade union picket lines in

England. Even worse for Farage, Ms Elliot told GB-News: “It’s very important who we appoint [as UK Ambassador], actually. David Miliband spent a lot of time in the United States, he might be

a good choice.” David Miliband! The very incarnation of Europhile Blairism, who works tirelessly on behalf of refugees across the globe — against whom Farage fulminates equally tirelessly

and Trump never stops denouncing. The best ambassador is rarely a high profile political animal, but a cunning, smooth, wily man or woman, who has a professional grip on 1001 technical

problems that can mess up relations between the two countries, from trade to Ukraine. Rent-a-quote populists, who can’t even get a selfie with Trump, should stay at home and leave diplomacy

to the professionals. _ Denis MacShane worked as a PPS and Minister in the Foreign Office, 1997-2005. _ A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering

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