Nigel Farage met Donald Trump at the president-elect’s Trump Tower in New York on Saturday evening - and used the meeting to talk about installing a statue of Winston Churchill in the White House.
The Ukip leader is the first foreign politician to meet Trump since he beat Hillary Clinton at Tuesday’s election.
Following the hour-long conversation, the two right-wing populists, who have railed against the global elite, posed for a photograph in a golden elevator.
“It was a great honour to spend time with Donald Trump. He was relaxed, and full of good ideas. I’m confident he will be a good President. His support for the U.S.-UK relationship is very strong. This is a man with whom we can do business,” Farage said.
He added: “I was especially pleased at his very positive reaction to the idea that Sir Winston Churchill’s bust should be put back in the Oval Office”.
Although President Obama has begun the transfer of power to Trump. Leading Democrats have not forgotten the campaign run by the Republican which they said “emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America”.
As the meeting between Farage and Trump took place, thousands of anti-Trump protesters marched through the streets of New York. Many are angry that while Trump won the electoral college - Clinton won the popular vote.
British critics of Farage and Trump were unimpressed with the meeting. Shashank Joshi, a Senior Fellow at the security think-tank RUSI said it was “dismaying and appalling that he would meet Farage before a representative of the elected British government”. He added it appeared there were “no adults on transition team” and “allies should be worried”.
Labour MP Karl Turner was more direct in his response.
Trump spoke to Theresa May on the phone last week and said he wanted to meet the prime minister “as soon as possible”.
Downing Street has dismissed the suggestion the UK government would use Farage as a intermediary to deal with Trump - describing the Ukip leader as an “irrelevance”.
Farage provoked outrage last week when he joked about the possibility of Trump, who has boasted about sexually assaulting women, sexually assaulting May.
On Sunday, The leader of France’s far right National Front said there is not a “hair’s breadth” between it and Ukip. Marine Le Pen told the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme it was “ridiculous” for Farage and others in Ukip to pretend otherwise.
Le Pen, who has led a number of polls ahead of next spring’s French presidential election, denied that her party is racist, claiming that was a charge from the “elites”. She predicted her election as French president next year will be the third act of a “global revolution” which has seen Brexit and Donald Trump’s seizure of the White House shake the world.
An emergency EU foreign ministers’ meeting called to discuss Trump’s shock US election victory has been snubbed by Boris Johnson. The move highlights the widening gulf between London and the continent over how to respond to the new US president-elect after a senior German politician warned May was “delusional” if she believed the incoming Republican administration would give the UK a good trade deal.