Like most things in politics at the moment, it all started with a gaffe from Nigel Farage.
Appearing on American podcast The Benny Show, Reform’s leader casually declared that he would like to see a ‘trade’ done with Donald Trump over the Chagos Islands.
Asked about how he would have dealt with negotiations, Farage said: ‘I’d have gone in and said: “Right, you know what, mate? Chagos, it’s yours. Diego Garcia, in perpetuity, the most strategic American military base in the world, which it is.”
‘Outside mainland America, Diego is the most important thing America has for nuclear subs, for long-range bombers, for all of it. I’d have said: “Right, I’m guaranteeing you that. I’m giving up on this surrender. In return, just please stop talking about the Falkland Islands.”'
Kemi Badenoch, understandably, couldn’t believe her luck.
‘Giving away British territory in return for someone keeping quiet is not a deal. It is humiliating,’ she stormed. ‘There is no pride in our country in the way he talks about us. This is careless, loose talk from a man who wants to be responsible for Britain’s national security.’
Courtesy of Reform’s largesse, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has been gifted her very own Love Actually moment, writes Dan Hodges
Reform leader Nigel Farage casually declared on American podcast The Benny Show that he would like to see a ‘trade’ done with Donald Trump over the Chagos Islands
At this point Farage could have cut his losses, admitted his blunder, explained he meant to have said that Trump could have the air base – rather than the islands themselves – and moved on. But instead, he flew into a paroxysm of fury.
‘Kemi is lying again. She just can’t help herself,’ he raged on X.
Raheem Kassam, his US-based political guru who has close ties to the Trump team, took to social media to deliver the racial slur: ‘Lying Kemi caught lying again! Classic Nigerian scammer.’
But the most significant reaction appeared to come from the Trump administration itself. Within hours, it was reported that an unnamed ‘senior US official’ had declared: ‘We are confused at why Kemi Badenoch is attacking Nigel Farage. I’m surprised by the idea a Conservative government would not let us access that base. That’s shocking to me.’
In the last months of his benighted premiership, when Keir Starmer was casting around for something, anything, to save himself, he hit on the idea of a ‘Love Actually’ moment. This referenced Hugh Grant’s fictional British Prime Minister, who stands up to a bullying US President and reverses his political fortunes.
Given that Starmer was at the time involved in assisting the US to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, his plan – like all the others – came to nothing. But now, courtesy of Reform’s largesse, Kemi Badenoch has been gifted her very own Love Actually moment.
Asked about how he would have dealt with negotiations, Farage said: ‘I’d have gone in and said: “Right, you know what, mate? Chagos, it’s yours"'
Publicly, the Conservative Party is playing down the row. But privately Badenoch’s team is cock-a-hoop.
Firstly, they believe that the speed of the Trump administration’s response is evidence of direct collusion between Reform and some minor people on the fringes of Trump-World. Which is fine by them.
‘It’s clear some of Farage’s guys have been stirring this up. Yes, they’ve only been talking to some bag-carriers. But you can hardly pose as a patriot when you’re seen to be actively colluding with a foreign state against the leader of His Majesty’s Opposition,’ one Shadow minister pointed out.
But, more broadly, they have taken a strategic decision that putting some discreet but clear distance between themselves and the MAGA movement is now the optimum political strategy.
At precisely the same time the Chagos row was flaring up, Tory chairman Kevin Hollinrake was touring the TV studios. Asked on Sky News about Trump’s diesel deal with Vladimir Putin, Hollinrake replied: ‘We’ve got to stand shoulder to shoulder with Zelensky... the US has got to decide whose side they are on. And it should not be Putin’s.’
Partly, this decision is based on polling. Now, Donald Trump’s approval rating among British voters stands at -75. Not so much subterranean as nudging the white-hot heat of the Earth’s core.
US President Donald Trump’s approval rating among British voters stands at -75
But there is also a broader calculation being made. Andy Burnham is pursuing an increasingly radical Lean Left strategy. Each of his statements and policy offers is designed to appeal to disillusioned liberals, Green voters and socialists who felt betrayed by Starmer’s Ming-vase incrementalism.
This disparate progressive coalition is also hungry to see Burnham taking a stand against Trump. But the diktats of international diplomacy are binding the Prime Minister’s hands.
At Prime Minister’s Questions, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey invited Burnham to condemn the US President’s appeasement of Putin. But he was forced to decline.
‘What I have to do in my role is try and repair bridges so that the support comes back, and therefore I should, at this moment in time, be careful in terms of laying the ground to bring people back together. That is the role I intend to play. It is the right role for me to play in this moment,’ the Prime Minister replied, reluctantly.
So Kemi Badenoch, boosted by a succession of polls showing a clear post-conference bounce, has an opening. She is not bound by diplomatic niceties to avoid criticism of the Americans. Nor does she have to be too alarmed about the situation she will inherit if she becomes Prime Minister herself.
In two years, Trump’s term of office will end. By that point, Burnham will have called a snap election, a decision he will only take if he has a very strong chance of winning it. Or Badenoch’s rising popularity will have scared him off.
Either way, on any realistic timetable, she will not be entering Downing Street until long after Trump has shuffled off to tend to his Presidential Library in Florida.
Nigel Farage will continue to bind himself to the Godfather of the MAGA movement. Indeed, some people believe his increasing number of appearances on high-profile US podcasts are part of a renewed attempt to raise his profile in the States in preparation for an imminent departure from his role as Reform leader.
But Kemi Badenoch is right to pursue a different path. The Trump brand is now irreversibly toxic.
His political fortunes are in terminal decline, with the Republicans bracing themselves for heavy losses in next month’s mid-term elections. And if, as expected, he loses control of Congress, his final years in office may well see him becoming even more erratic and unpredictable.
So it doesn’t matter about MAGA’s noisy but increasingly ineffective social media presence. Or the fanaticism with which Trump is viewed by a small number of zealots on the far-flung outposts of the British Right. The Conservatives should keep their distance.
In the iconic Love Actually scene, Hugh Grant confronts Billy Bob Thornton’s predatory President by telling him – in full view of the world’s media – ‘A friend who bullies us is no longer a friend. And since bullies only respond to strength, from now onward I will be prepared to be much stronger. And the President should be prepared for that.’
Yesterday, some White House underlings attempted to bully Kemi Badenoch into silence. And the leader of His Majesty’s Official Opposition doesn’t ever take kindly to that.