Former Labour spin chief Alastair Campbell has warned the UK is not “on the radar” with the US in the way many think following Donald Trump’s election.
The ex-Tony Blair aide claimed the US President-elect would be less inclined to build relations with the EU after Brexit, and urged Theresa May not to “inflate” Nigel Farage’s ego any further after his Trump Tower meeting.
Speaking on ITV’s The Agenda, former Chancellor George Osborne also suggested the PM won’t “contract out” foreign policy to the Ukip leader.
Farage became the first politician outside the US to meet Trump this weekend, but Downing Street made clear it will not be using Farage as a go-between across the Atlantic, telling journalists the Prime Minister did not need a “third person” to help her talk to the next US president.
On the ITV show, Campbell warned:
“I don’t think that we’re on the radar in the way that we think we are. I actually think the fact that Theresa May was the 11th leader in the world whose call he took ... I just think that would have shocked her.
“I actually think us coming out of the European Union will make us less interesting to Trump. In the end, if he is a pragmatist, if he is actually is going to sort of try to do the job properly, he’s going to look where power is.”
Asked, if he were PM, would he hire Farage to build bridges with Trump, Osborne said:
“Absolutely not, I mean Theresa May is a very sensible person who is not going to do that. The British Prime Minister or the British Government cannot contract its foreign policy out to Nigel Farage.”
He also made the case for a “soft” Brexit, and that the relationship with the US was less now important. “For the first time really the most important decisions over the next few years are going to be about our relationship with Europe, not about our relationship with the United States.”
