Donald Trump’s victory in the Presidential race is comparable to the “counter-revolution elections” of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Nigel Farage has said.
In an interview with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto on Saturday the interim leader of UKIP said that Brexit was the “first brick out of the wall,” but that Trump’s “dramatic victory” was the next brick to fall.
“It was the first real kickback against the liberal establishment that has dominated, with its friends in big business and big banks, the world for the past couple of decades,” Farage said.
“They’ve had everything their own way and my sense of it is that in Britain, America and elsewhere families at dinnertime have been saying: “what’s going on in this world? How are these people in charge?”What Brexit did was give ordinary, little people a chance to say what they thought and they want. And it’s now spread to America with this dramatic victory of Trump.
Responding to Cavuto pointing out “they demean you beforehand and they demean you and Trump after the fact,” and that the “dismissive coverage” hasn’t ended, Farage said: “No, and they won’t but what we have to do is follow the example, given to us over thirty years ago, given to us by Reagan and Thatcher.
“They both won counter-revolution elections. At no point did opposition criticism stop them and they just continued. And do you know what? They’ve made the world a better place. And that’s what we’ve got an opportunity to do.”
Farage said the British people are “absolutely thrilled” at Britain getting its independence back in the Brexit referendum, but that the fight wasn’t over yet.
“Do you know what, the media and elements of our political class were talking about the need to run the referendum again, that we should water down the deal.
“But actually when I go out around the United Kingdom and when I meet ordinary people they are absolutely thrilled at what’s happened and they said to me: ‘Nigel, if this government doesn’t deliver the Brexit we voted for we’re taking to the streets’. And there’s no way they can stop Brexit from happening because those seventeen and a half million people – they really believe it.”
But he dismissed the media, who refuse to give Trump a honeymoon period following his win.
“Just look at Wall Street,” Farage said. “The stock market has taken the view that actually Trump has got some great ideas. And I think that if he can make sure that in those first few months he cuts corporation tax, we start to see hundreds of billions of dollars being repatriated to the USA.
“The reason why the markets fell [before the election] is simple. Because everybody believed the narrative that Hillary was going to win their short-term trading positions would gear that way.
“Donald Trump has some good ideas. If he starts to get the economic measures in place then he can work on the rest of his agenda. But sending that big signal – that he’s pushing for jobs and for growth – do that, and then he can do what he wants.”
On reports that Trump is already backtracking on his promise to get rid of Obamacare, Farage was again relaxed.
“He’ll be pragmatic and if his stance changes a little bit on Obamacare – provided he brings the price of it down, it doesn’t really matter. Trump is an Anglophile. He understands and recognises what our two great nations have done together. Thank goodness we’re coming to the end of an American president who loathes us.
“[British Prime Minister Theresa] May’s team has been quite rude about Trump so there are some fences to be mended. We can have between us a sensible trade relationship and cut tariffs. We’re massive investors in each other’s countries. There’s a bright future.”