Nigel Farage has hailed Donald Trump as the “bravest man that I know” hours after contradicting the US president’s claim that Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a “dictator”.
Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington DC, the Reform UK leader claimed that Trump’s political comeback in the United States is driving a resurgence for right-wing populist parties across Europe.
A longtime friend of the US president, having campaigned alongside him since 2016, Farage insisted that the issues that defined Trump’s election bid in 2024 would shape the next UK general election.
“We’ve seen the massive increases in crime, gang crime, dramatic increases in sexual crime against women”, Farage said.
“And yet nobody in the European establishment is prepared to put their hands up, to recognise the depth of the problem and to say sorry to their people. British taxpayers have had enough.”
Looking back, Farage claimed that the “political thunderbolt” of Brexit in 2016 had sent “a wave across the Atlantic” that contributed to Trump’s first election victory later that year.
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Following Trump’s return to the White House, Farage added, “that wave is coming back”.
The former UKIP leader said: “This is all going to blow back and help us. We are now topping every opinion poll in Britain, and we are going to win the next general election.”
He went on to hail the president as the “bravest man that I know”, citing the string of criminal investigations and two assassination attempts that accosted Trump ahead of the US presidential election in November 2024.
“This man has come through it braver, stronger, wiser than at any point”, Farage said.
Earlier on Thursday, Farage had rejected Trump’s claim that Ukraine’s president Zelensky is a “dictator”.
The Reform leader sought to minimise Trump’s comments, claiming they should not be taken “absolutely literally”.
“You should always take everything Donald Trump says seriously. You shouldn’t always take things that Donald Trump says absolutely literally. I think that applies very much in this case”, Farage told GB News.
He added: “Let’s be clear. Zelensky is not a dictator. But it is only right and proper that Ukrainians have a timeline for elections.”
The Reform UK leader did not mention the Ukraine war or Trump’s stance on it during his CPAC speech.
Liz Truss, the former prime minister of 49 days, also addressed CPAC this year, using her speech to call for a Trump-style “MAGA” movement in the UK.
“We now have a major problem in Britain that judges are making decisions that should be made by politicians”, Truss said.
She claimed that the judiciary is “no longer accountable” because of reforms by her predecessor Sir Tony Blair, who gave power to an “unelected bureaucracy”.
She said: “There’s no doubt in my mind that until those changes are reversed, we do not have a functioning country. The British state is now failing, is not working. The decisions are not being made by politicians.”
Truss added: “The same people are still making the decisions. It’s the deep state, it’s the unelected bureaucrats, it’s the judiciary.
“And I think what ultimately will happen, what I hope to see, is a movement like you have in the US with Maga [‘Make America great again’], with CPAC, with all these organisations, that ultimately pushes change we all want. We want to have a British CPAC.”
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for all the latest news and analysis.
