Capitol Hill appearance ‘gave me no joy’, Nigel Farage says

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said his appearance before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill this week gave him “no joy”, but stressed “the big message got through”.

At the hearing on Wednesday, the Clacton MP likened Britain to North Korea over the UK’s approach to civil liberties.

He raised the arrest of Irish writer Graham Linehan for comments on social media about transgender people, as well as the jailing of former childminder and wife of a Conservative councillor Lucy Connolly for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers in the aftermath of the Southport murders last year.

He denied proposing that Washington threaten the UK with trade sanctions amid scrutiny of his suggestion that the White House use “diplomacy and trade” in the battle for free speech.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph on Friday, Mr Farage described the UK’s Online Safety Act as “using a sledgehammer to miss the nut altogether”.

He said: “As I told my American friends and critics, it gave me no joy to fly from the land of Magna Carta to sit in the US Congress describing the awful authoritarian mess we have now sunk into.

“We need to find a better way to make children safer without making adults less free.”

Mr Farage said he talked to President Donald Trump “about how the Government and the European Union seem determined to shut down legitimate debate in a way that poses a great risk to our democracy and social wellbeing at home, and to economic relationships around the world”.

The Clacton MP also described a back-and-forth he had with Democrat representative Jamie Raskin during the hearing as “political games”, adding: “They can say what they like, that’s what free speech is about.

“Whatever their differences, Republicans and Democrats on the committee believe strongly in their First Amendment right to free speech and will do all they can to defend it.

“The big message got through and everybody in the room could see the danger to US-UK relations.”