dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Nigel Farage could be ambassador to US if Trump wins, says ex-foreign secretary

Radical idea ‘not totally outrageous’ says David Owen, as UK concern grows about second Trump presidency

Adam Forrest

Political Correspondent

34 minutes ago

Nigel Farage could be the next UK ambassador to the US if Donald Trump wins the presidency, ex-foreign secretary David Owen has said.

Lord Owen said appointing the ex-Brexit Party leader to the job to help keep Mr Trump onside was “not a totally outrageous suggestion”.

The former cabinet minister said Mr Farage could initially be sent out to Washington to help persuade the Republican to keep the US inside Nato if he wins a second term.

Lord Owen – Labour foreign secretary between 1977 and 1979 – said if may even be necessary to hand the hard-right politician one of the country’s top diplomatic roles.

“We’d better send old Farage out there to persuade Trump [about Nato],” he told the News Agents podcast. “I would certainly.”

He added: “I would hope it could be done without making him ambassador, as some people have suggested – but it’s not a totally outrageous suggestion.”

Mr Farage previously claimed that he “could be very useful” when the idea of him becoming ambassador to the US came up upon Sir Kim Darroch’s resignation in 2019.

When preparing to enter the White House, Mr Trump claimed that his friend would do a “great job” in the role. The then-Brexit Party chief raised eyebrows by meeting the president-elect at Trump Tower during the interim period in November 2016.

Lord Owen – who quit Labour in the early 1980s to form a rival party that eventually became the Liberal Democrats –said his American wife was convinced Mr Trump was going to win November’s presidential election.

He also called on Joe Biden to make way for another Democrat to run against the Republican favourite. “He’s got a few more months, but he should say to the people, ‘I’m getting a bit old, we need a vigorous thing.

“And the Democrat Party ought to have an open nomination conference and elect somebody who is more vigorous and will beat Trump.”

It comes as Boris Johnson said a second Trump presidency could be a “big win for the world”. In his latest Mail column, the former PM mocked the “hysteria” in Britain about the prospect of Mr Trump’s return to the White House.

He mocked Church of England, the BBC and “much of the UK establishment” for a “caterwauling orgy of nose-holding abhorrence” – claiming Trump’s success in the polls had “driven some people to the brink of virtue-signalling derangement”.

Mr Johnson said his old ally was not a “would-be dictator”, despite his role in inciting a riot which saw the unprecedented attack on the US Capitol building.

And he claimed that Mr Trump’s “sheer unpredictability” made him an asset in acting as a “major deterrent to the enemies of the west” – claiming the republican would not turn his back on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Lord Owen criticised Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda deportation plan – but predicted that the UK would leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the Strasbourg court which oversees the agreement.

Asked whether he believes that the UK might have to withdraw from the ECHR, Lord Owen said: “Yes, because they are now telling us how to conduct our immigration policy.”

He added: “And they’re using powers that have never been used before just recently on our immigration policy… It’s like all these human rights and lawyer things. You give lawyers a yard, they’ll take a mile.”

Lord Owen said David Cameron took the job as foreign secretary because he was “bored”. And he said he had “reservations” about Labour leader Keir Starmer because “I don’t like his record”.

He cited Sir Keir’s decision to work under Jeremy Corbyn, and talking a leading role in “trying to stop the [Brexit] referendum decision being passed by the House of Commons”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-trump-us-ambassador-b2481994.html

Zelensky sends message to Donald Trump after claim he could stop war ‘within 24 hours’

Oliver Browning

4 hours ago

Volodymyr Zelensky has invited Donald Trump to visit Kyiv, following his assertion that the former US president could stop the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours if re-elected.

The Ukrainian president made the comments during an interview with Channel 4 News which aired on Friday night (19 January).

“Please, Donald Trump, I invite you to Ukraine, to Kyiv. So, if you can stop the war during 24 hours I think it will be enough to come,” he said.

“Maybe Donald Trump has a real idea and he can share it with me.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/donald-trump-ukraine-war-zelensky-b2481944.html