British Prime Minister Theresa May has said on Tuesday that there is “no vacancy” for the position of ambassador to the U.S. after president-elect Donald Trump endorsed eurosceptic leader Nigel Farage for the job.
But Farage, who is head of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and was the first British politician to meet Trump in person after his election victory, is still pushing for the job.
May’s office had offered a swift rebuff to Trump’s recommendation, which was highly unusual considering that each country appoints its own overseas representatives and the role in question is already filled.
“There is no vacancy. We already have an excellent ambassador to the U.S.,” a government spokesman said.
But Farage contends that his loyalty to Trump before his win, compared to many high-level British politicians who have only tempered their criticism of the president-elect since his shock victory, makes him the ideal candidate for the job.
After Trump tweeted that his ally “would do a great job” in the role, Farage claimed that the “political revolution of 2016” sparked by his successful campaign to leave the European Union requires a new order in Britain – and that the British prime minister is blocking it.
In a bid to bolster his chances, Farage penned an article on Tuesday for far-right news site Breitbart, whose former executive chairman Stephen Bannon has become one of the most controversial picks so far in Trump’s new administration.
Farage wrote on the U.S. site that he would “do anything to help our national interest and to help cement ties with the incoming Anglophile administration.”
He criticised that “those who were openly abusive about Trump now pretend to be his friend.”
Farage joked in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election that he would like a role in Trump’s administration.
But since meeting Trump in New York, he has been gunning for an official job as go-between.
After May’s first phone call with president-elect Trump, a spokesman for May announced that they discussed maintaining a close relationship similar to that of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and that Farage was not mentioned.
