Trump Hoping to Meet With Nigel Farage on State Visit to U.K.

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U.S. President Donald Trump is aiming to meet with Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage during his state visit to the U.K. in what would be another snub to the British government, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Trump has already broken protocol by weighing into the U.K. government’s internal contest to choose a new prime minister, praising the favorite Boris Johnson. The president said last week that he could meet both Johnson and Farage during his three-day state visit to London, which starts on Monday.

Some of the president’s officials are working to set up a meeting with Farage, which could take place on Tuesday, the person said, adding that nothing has been formally scheduled yet.

Farage told the U.K.’s Daily Express newspaper that the prime minister’s office had banned him from meeting Trump. But the president has told his officials he is inclined to ignore that ruling and fix a meeting anyway, the person said.

Trump and Farage share an anti-establishment agenda and have championed each other’s causes. Their friendship is a sore point for Britain’s ruling Conservative party. 

Farage’s newly formed Brexit Party hammered the Conservatives in May’s European Parliament elections, cashing in on the government’s failure to deliver on the promise to take Britain out of the European Union.

Farage has a long record of hurting the Tories with his popular brand of euro-skepticism and his campaign against EU membership was a crucial factor in shifting the political debate in the years before the Brexit vote in 2016.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tim Ross in London at tross54@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, James Amott, Crystal Chui

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