NIGEL Farage should be involved in the government’s Brexit negotiations and the UK should be prepared to leave the EU with no deal, Donald Trump has told The Sunday Times, as he embarks on his ‘regime change’ visit to the UK today.
On Saturday, Trump said Boris Johnson would be an ‘excellent’ Conservative Party leader.
He told The Sunday Times that the UK should walk away if it does not get what it wants from EU negotiations.
‘If you don’t get the deal you want, if you don’t get a fair deal, then you walk away.’
On paying a £39bn ($50bn) divorce bill he said: ‘I wouldn’t pay $50bn. That is me. I would not pay – that is a tremendous number.’
He urged that Nigel Farage take part in the UK negotiating team with the EU.
Trump insisted: ‘One of the advantages of Brexit is the fact that now you can deal with the number one country by far.’
Breaking with diplomatic convention, Trump said the leader of the Brexit Party – an arch-critic of prime minister Theresa May – ‘has a lot to offer’ to negotiations with the EU, and should be included.
‘Think how well they would do if they did,’ he added.
On Jeremy Corbyn, he was asked if he would share US intelligence with a Corbyn government. The US president said: ‘I would have to know him, I would have to meet.’
Jeremy Corbyn commented that Donald Trump’s support of Boris Johnson is an ‘entirely unacceptable interference’ in British politics.
The Labour leader said the next prime minister ‘should be chosen not by the US president’.
Corbyn said in a statement: ‘President Trump’s attempt to decide who will be Britain’s next prime minister is an entirely unacceptable interference in our country’s democracy.’
In an interview in the Oval Office ahead of his state visit to Britain this week, Trump warned Corbyn that he was ‘making a mistake’ by failing to make America a friend because of the close co-operation on military and intelligence affairs between his country and Britain.
