A beaming Nigel Farage raised a clenched fist as Donald Trump gave him a shout-out at a pre-election rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. “He’s always been my friend for some reason,” Trump told the crowd. “He liked me, I like him. He’s shaking it up over there. He was the big winner of the last election in the UK. He’s a little bit of a rebel but that’s good. Don’t change Nigel.”

Despite a cordial dinner between Trump and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy last month, Farage is Britain’s public figure closest to the President-Elect and in a unique position to bolster ties with the new administration. The question for No 10 and Foreign Office is whether they will hold their nose and let him.

In 2016, Trump suggested to former Prime Minister Theresa May’s government that Farage be made ambassador to the US. This suggestion was publicly rejected out of hand, but prompted some teeth gnashing in private, as diplomats evaluated whether their own networks could match the intimacy of the two men’s longstanding relationship.

Farage appears to have abandoned any hope that idea could be resurrected. Instead, one of his allies told i the Reform UK leader and MP could lobby in private on behalf of the Government to assuage the risk from the US’s plans to impose a tariff on imports.

“Labour can’t be seen to use Nigel in public for obvious political reasons, but he can help set up a secret, sensible backchannel, the ally said. “Nigel can keep a secret and there are some sensible people in government who presumably can keep a secret too.”

“The........

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