Farage: I talked about no-deal Brexit when I met president
DONALD TRUMP and Nigel Farage discussed the merits of a no-deal Brexit during a meeting earlier this month, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.
Mr Farage has disclosed that in the March 2 meeting he told the US president – who had just walked out of his North Korea talks without an accord – that no deal was better than a bad deal.
The two men met at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington DC, a gathering of rightleaning politicians.
Mr Farage told The Telegraph: “I was talking to him about Vietnam, where he had said that a bad deal was on the table so sometimes you have to walk. That was the exact quote from Trump.
“I said in the case of [the] Vietnam [summit] that no deal was better than a bad deal and I gave my opinion that the same principle applied to Brexit.”
Mr Farage would not be drawn to publicly comment on Mr Trump’s exact response, but said: “I think if you read the comments from his ambassador in London, I don’t think it takes much reading between the lines.
“This American administration firmly believes in the nation state, not supranational structures and it is hugely keen on the defence, security and indeed business relationships that exist between our two countries.
“And I think it’s fair to say they see Brexit as a great opportunity.”
Mr Trump has been critical of Theresa May’s Brexit deal, warning it will limit the scope of a US-UK free trade deal, but he has not gone so far as to publicly call on Britain to leave the EU without an agreement.
If the US president were to announce support for a no-deal Brexit it would be politically damaging for Mrs May, who is struggling to convince Brexiteers in her own party to vote for her proposals.
Key members of Mr Trump’s administration are believed by UK officials to be fiercely Eurosceptic.