CONTRARY to reports, Donald Trump has not gone cool on Nigel Farage.
Quite the opposite in fact.
Reporting of late has attempted to paint the President and his pal icing their once-flourishing situationship.
Gone, they say, are the glory days that saw the Reform boss back the Don way before his shock first victory in 2016.
No more campaign rallies, and goodbye to the selfies and thumbs up all round — to much delight and cackling from hip types and bulls**t artists.
But sadly for the haters, that remains wishful thinking.
In fact, I hear the President is keeping more than a beady eye on what’s going on in Britain. And when he talks to a Brit, his first question is often: “How’s Nigel getting on?”
Swiftly followed by, “Do you think he can really do it?”
And after the minor earthquake on the British Right this week, I suspect the answer to that is an ever-increasing “Yes”.
Robert Jenrick’s defection from the Conservatives to Reform was a hot mess.
It had it all; treachery, backstabbing, bitchy social media posts, glow ups, dressing downs and good old farce.
The moment he was two minutes late to his own pity party — leaving new squeeze Nigel gawping in front of the cameras and wondering out loud whether he’d been stood up — was a clip for the ages.
I’ve said it before, but after days like Thursday it bears repeating; the only difference between British politics and its delicious satire The Thick Of It is no one on the show goes round saying “God, this is like a scene from The Thick Of It”.
They say you can’t polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter, which was what Tory chief Kemi Badenoch just about managed to do with the body blow of her leadership rival jumping ship.
Snitched on by a spotty youth in his own team, the Tories stole the march on Bobby J’s big moment — but when Conservatives and their cheerleaders insist it was a moment of strength, they sound a bit like poor old Theresa May insisting she was “strong and stable”.
But for all the hilarious titillation of the Westminster psychodrama this week, when the dust settles the theatrics and optics will pale in comparison to the tectonic shift that has just taken place.
Jenrick has been on a journey. He was once a dripping wet Cameron, lobby-fodder remainer.
A grown-up Tory Boy who had been a member since 16.
He’s never let me forget that I once called him dull in these pages back in 2014.
Although thankfully I think he has forgotten his rather mean nickname Robert Generic also first appeared in The Sun when he arrived on the scene as a fresh-faced centrist that year.
The first signs of life emerged following his return to Cabinet after being sacked as a disappointing Housing Secretary in 2021 amid getting his fingers burnt in a dodgy donor scandal.
Resurrected by Rishi Sunak to be Borders minister, Jenrick turned on his pal over dither and delay on immigration and dramatically quit.
He says he was radicalised — or “red-pilled” as they call it in the US after that scene in The Matrix — at the Home Office.
The out-of-control officials, the useless, woke Blob, sent him round the bend as he attempted meaningful reform to our spectacularly stuffed immigration system.
And his leadership campaign in late 2024 was a wake-up call for many on the Right as to quite how damaged the Tory brand is after years of inaction in power and a country more than fraying at the edges.
However it seems 56 per cent of Tory members did not buy Jenrick’s Damascene conversion, or did not like his direction of travel to the Right.
And he says he’s been trying to wake up his old party for 18 months to where the public are. His blistering take-downs of the legal world since have only cemented a reputation as reformer with a small ‘r’.
Now he’s Reform proper.
Critics say it was a lustful quest for the top job and sour grapes for losing to Kemi, but history is littered with people who have attempted to oust Farage in whatever party he is leading.
No one sane joins Reform with expectations of becoming its leader.
But then again Jenrick is 44, to Farage’s 62.
Howls of rage
Either way, I see Jenrick’s journey increasingly reflecting large parts of the British public.
Fed up, overtaxed, under- represented and ignored for too long, their howls of rage like Brexit, and cries for change in 2019 and 2024, all but ignored.
What was once branded far Right — to want control of our borders and that those that come here play by our rules — is now a mainstream and acceptable political standpoint.
Naysayers sneer but I suspect a fair few Brits see a bit of their own political journey in Robert Jenrick — Labour voters who, through the gateway drug of Brexit, ended up backing Boris and now Reform.
Sensible mainstream right-of- centre Tories who realise that playing nice is not going to cut it any more. Sideline sitters getting involved in politics and voting for the first time.
They have all been similarly radicalised by being ignored for too long by a wilfully blind political and media elite.
And now, like Jenrick, they are doing something about it, and making some noise.
So his choice of destination and backing for Nigel Farage to take the keys of No10 should not be downplayed.
The slow drumbeat toward power for Reform got a lot louder this week.
“IF JD Vance runs for president he’s going to be our nominee, and I’ll be one of the first people to support him,” Marco Rubio said last month.
I wrote late last year that the Vice President has the 2028 Republican nomination sewn up on the back of the US Secretary of State’s comments.
But have I – and Marco – been too hasty?
Just two weeks in and Rubio is already having a helluva 2026. Once derided by Trump as “Lil Marco”, Rubio is emerging as one of the most influential and successful foreign policy chiefs in modern times.
And the wins are racking up, from toppling Maduro and taking the communist regime in his parents’ native Cuba to the brink, to aiding and abetting the uprising in Iran and tentative peace in the wider Middle East.
It’s no surprise that White House staff mention him as the next Henry Kissinger in terms of the power and influence he is building up.
And more and more people are publicly urging Rubio to run in 2028, despite his public protestations of loyalty to pal JD.
The old Reagan rump of the Republicans would certainly have his back.
Trump has publicly vocalised his support for a dream joint ticket of Vance and Rubio, but has never said which way round it could be.
Conventional wisdom says the VP would get the blessing . . . but some smart money is starting to move the other way in DC.
