Donald Trump makes strange claim Nigel Farage 'won' UK general election

Donald Trump has claimed that Reform UK leader Nigel Farage actually "won" the 2024 UK general election because the way the British voting system works denied him.

Britain uses a first past the post voting system, where constituents vote for a political candidate to represent them and the candidate with the most votes in that constituency wins a seat in Parliament.

Parliament is made up of 650 seats with each constituency being represented by an elected minister, an MP, not by the overall share of the vote.

For example, because of this, Liberal Democrats got 12 per cent of the overall vote yet won 72 seats, whereas Reform UK got 14 per cent of the share and won only five seats.

However Reform UK's share of the vote was still some way behind Labour, who won 412 seats with a 34 per cent share, and Conservatives who picked up 121 seats with a 24 per cent share.

The leader of the party with the most seats is the UK's Prime Minister.

Donald Trump (right) claimed Nigel Farage "won" the 2024 UK general election / Christopher Furlong, Getty Images & Angela Weiss, AFP via Getty Images

Trump was asked at a press conference on September 26 if he'd rather Farage, who was successful in being elected as an MP at the eighth attempt, have a bigger role.

"I think Nigel is great, I've known him for a long time, he had a great election too, picked up a lot of seats, more seats than he was allowed to have actually, Trump said.

"They acknowledged that he won but for some reason you have a very strange system over there.

"You might win them but you don't get them. Nigel is a fantastic person."

In the 2016 US election which Trump won, although he won 306 votes compared to Hillary Clinton's 232, Clinton received 48 per cent of the vote whereas Trump won with a smaller 47 per cent share.

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