Donald Trump claims Nigel Farage took UK general election ‘by storm’ - despite winning only 5 MPs

US president Donald Trump’s speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday featured a number of bizarre moments, from offering up a weird pronunciation of the word ‘angry’ nobody asked for, to claiming Reform UK leader Nigel Farage took last year’s general election “by storm” – yes, even though there’s only five MPs from the party in the Commons.

Trump told attendees in Washington D.C. that Farage did “really well” in July’s election and that he has been the ex-Ukip leader’s friend “for a long time”.

“I wasn’t sure if I’m supposed to be his friend or not, but it never mattered to me, they did well and I’ve always liked him, but it’s easier to like him when he got the votes he got,” he said.

According to the House of Commons Library, it was 4,117,610 votes – to be exact. It gave Reform UK a vote share of just over 14 per cent, putting them in third place if you were just looking at the amount of people who put an ‘X’ in the box for a Reform candidate.

But UK politics works on first-past-the-post in every constituency, so while 4 million votes is a pretty big number, this only led to Reform securing five MPs.

Now we’re not political strategists, but we like to think success in an election – or, indeed, whether you took it “by storm” – is dependent on winning the most of the thing you need to form a government, and Reform failed miserably on that front.

Twitter/X users soon made that clear to Trump:

A second account said it was another example of Trump being "divorced from reality":

Trump continued: “They say he’s going to do even better this time - Nigel Farage.

“Thank you, Nigel, thank you. What a great guy.”

And while Trump’s claim about taking last year’s election “by storm” can mean different things depending on how you look at the data, his comments about Farage’s Reform UK being on course to “do even better this time” follows a poll earlier this month which found just a three per cent swing from Labour and the Conservatives to Reform could see the latter party surge to 169 seats.

Nick Lowles of the campaign group Hope Not Hate, which commissioned the MRP poll from Focaldata, told The Observer the findings should be “a wake-up call for everyone”.

Trump’s praise for Farage this weekend comes ahead of prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to Washington next week, and came a day before the Labour leader took aim at Reform UK’s policies during a speech in Scotland.

Speaking on the last day of Scottish Labour’s party conference in Glasgow on Sunday, Starmer said: “They want to charge people to use the NHS. They claim to be the party of patriotism, but they’re fawning over Putin.

“No, they are not the answer for working people in Britain.”

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