There’s much talk this morning about the faintly ridiculous idea of on-off Ukip leader Nigel Farage becoming the next US ambassador. The mole assumes this is a bad joke, but these days the boundary between political jokes and reality is increasingly blurred.
In an unusual intervention, the president-elect, Donald Trump, sent a late night tweet saying “many people” in the UK would like to see Farage in the role. Who these many people are, and how the billionaire knows what they are thinking, the mole is uncertain.
Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016
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Downing Street was quick to issue a statement saying there was no vacancy for the post of British Ambassador in Washington — Sir Kim Darroch, formerly the UK’s national security adviser and permanent representative to the European Union, took over the role in January of this year.
In an interview with Sky News, after his recent trip to Washington during which he became the first British politician to meet with the president-elect, Farage called for Darroch’s resignation. He described the ambassador as a “fanatical Europhile and part of the old regime” whose views would be “diametrically opposed to Trump’s”.
So, is the Ukip leader hankering after a Ferrero Rocher-filled life in the US? He has denied it this morning, telling BBC Breakfast that while he was flattered by the tweet, which he called “a bolt from the blue”, he did not see himself as a typical diplomatic figure. However, he did add slightly cryptically that “the world has changed”.
He also made a similar denial to Sky News, adding that he would like to play a “positive role” in relations between the US and UK.
What that means only time will tell but it is clear that this special relationship shows no signs of abating.