Trump let Nigel Farage break coronavirus travel rules ‘in the national interest’. Whose interests are those?

The heady days of the 2016 are over for the US president, but Farage's latest brand of populism is a real and present danger for economically crumbling post-Brexit Britain

As a Twitter follower of Nigel Farage – I like to hear challenging voices from outside my bubble, you know – I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him pop up on Saturday. Yet I was. These days he’s usually to be found looking grim and windswept on the south cost of England, on one of his (illegal) twitchy “illegal migrant”-spotting expeditions that seem to be for him what ornithology is to other men: an irresistible urge to get out the binoculars, rush to the coast and self-identify some rare type of visitor to our shores.

Not this weekend. Farage was in some obviously glam sun blessed corner far away, beaming, thumbs-up: “In the USA, only twenty four hours from Tulsa,” he exclaimed on Twitter. Thanks to a recent lockdown quiz question, I’d learned that Tulsa is in Oklahoma – and that meant 24 hours from a Trump rally.

Farage had, of course, defied the British Foreign Office advice not to travel abroad during the coronavirus pandemic “unless it is essential”. He could, I suppose, claim it was a humanitarian mercy dash to cheer his old buddy up. And that appeared to work, because the United States government had relaxed its own travel restrictions to let this particular migrant in because it was considered in the "national interest" – which, in this case, means trying to put a smile on the face of Donald Grump.

I suspect that the leader of the Brexit Party won’t be bothering with a 14-day quarantine when he gets back to the UK either, though I understand Oklahoma is not yet cironavirus-free. It wouldn’t be a great look for Farage, to find himself the asymptomatic super spreader at the source of the second wave.

But it’s no longer like the old days now. Back in 2016, when The Donald was running for president, Farage and the Brexit referendum win used to be hailed as the heralds of radical change. Nigel was invited to turn up and do a turn. After Trump won, he and the other self-styled “bad boys of Brexit” were photographed in the golden womb of the Trump Tower. Why, the US president even suggested that his pal be appointed HM Ambassador to Washington DC.

Heady days, but long gone. Now even Trump himself can’t fill a stadium, Farage wasn’t even a warm-up routine (he was relegated to a panel appearance), and the polls suggest that Trump is about to be trounced by “sleepy Joe” Biden, who’s even older than he is. Nigel’s mate will, before long, no longer be the most powerful man in the world but a washed up reality tv star, a political aberration with a reputation in the toilet.

Still, Trump has the fame and fortune to look after himself. What can possibly be next for Farage?

Despite playing a reasonably canny game before the last election, the Conservatives didn’t need him and he is not holding the balance of power in the House of Commons. Brexit is “done”. His long-held dream of a grand coalition of the Conservatives, Brexit Party (originally as Ukip) and the DUP is over. He is as far away from power and influence now as he was when he first lost his deposit in a British parliamentary contest (Eastleigh by-election 1994; 1.7 per cent of the poll). He’s even lost his shock jock gig on LBC Radio.

Given that Boris Johnson’s government seem to be cheerfully leading us into a no-deal Brexit on World Trade Organisation terms, Farage cannot realistically cry “betrayal”. Brexit has made him jobless.

Or maybe not. Don’t think we’ve heard the last of him. Like Enoch Powell, Joseph Chamberlain, Tony Benn and Aneurin Bevan, Farage is one of the very few figures who never became prime minister (or any of the other “great offices of state”) but left his mark and altered British society. Like it or not, Brexit would never have happened without him.

Farage has political gifts. My worry is that they will now be deployed in an even more pernicious direction. Already, he is back pushing the immigration issue with his gimmicky trips around the channel. Recently, he used his limited access to media to invite the former Aussie premier Tony Abbott to explain how Australia’s navy stopped their rickety migrant boats (by turning them round, with force).

Brexit will not, and never would, stop the pressure of migration from outside the EU. Ministers want a Australian-style points system, which could mean high migration; Farage now wants an Australian-style gunboat system.

Sooner or later the coronavirus pandemic will pass, and a more normal politics will return. After Brexit, Britain – with a badly damaged economy, high unemployment and a sense of bewilderment – will provide the ideal incubation conditions for a new, dangerous Farageism.