'Dinner with the Donald': Nigel Farage joins Trump's table at Washington hotel

Nigel Farage dined out with Donald Trump on Saturday night after managing to secure a last-minute invitation to join the US president for an evening meal.

The former Ukip leader was photographed sitting opposite Trump and alongside his daughter Ivanka, her husband and senior White House advisor Jared Kushner, and Florida governor Rick Scott at the president’s luxury hotel in Washington DC.

Posting the snap on Twitter, Farage wrote “Dinner with The Donald”. However, onlookers revealed that a place had only been made for him around the table at short notice.

Journalist Benny Johnson, who said the Secret Service “swarmed the place” before Trump’s arrival, had been keeping tabs on the group at the Trump International hotel.

Johnson, the creative director of online news outlet Independent Journal Review, wrote on Twitter: “Farage was not invited to this dinner. Squeezed in at last minute.”

Earlier in the day Farage had backed Trump’s treatment of the mainstream media, heaping praise on his political ally in a television interview. He told Fox News: “They [the media] are simply not prepared to accept that Brexit happened, that Trump happened, they kind of want to turn the clock back. And what they don’t realise is they are losing viewers, they are losing listeners, they are losing this battle big time and I’m pleased the president is not afraid to stand up to them.”

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington on Friday, Farage said the Brexit vote and Trump’s election had launched a “great global revolution”.

Addressing the audience, he added: “And it’s not going to stop, it’s one that is going to roll out across the rest of the great world.”

Farage said he was proud to have supported Trump in the election and blasted US mainstream media for being “in deep denial” about Trump’s victory, but said Americans as a whole will grow to appreciate their new leader. “Just as Brexit becomes more popular by the day, President Trump will become more popular in America by the day,” he said.

As Farage made further inroads to align himself with Trump, back in Britain Ukip was dealing with the fallout of the party’s defeat to Labour in the Stoke by-election.

The party’s deputy leader, Peter Whittle, admitted it may have been a mistake for leader Paul Nuttall to run for the party in Stoke Central so early in his leadership. Speaking on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show, the London Assembly member said voters may not have known Nuttall well enough, given he stood for election just 12 weeks after becoming party leader.

Nuttall, who Whittle said could not appear on the show as he had a holiday booked immediately after the election result, was placed second on polling day, barely increasing the party’s share of the vote despite Ukip’s pledge to seize power from Labour.

Whittle told Marr: “If there was one mistake we made, it was that maybe Paul shouldn’t have run so early. He’s only been leader for 12 weeks. People hadn’t got to know him well enough, I think.” He added: “We didn’t win this time – there are many byelections coming up.”

Whittle dismissed threats from Arron Banks, Ukip’s main donor, to set up another party unless he was made chairman, saying “there are other people” who would provide funding.

Banks has threatened to pull his funding unless he is made chairman so he can “purge” members and stop it being “run like a jumble sale”. Asked if he did not want Banks as Ukip chairman, Whittle replied: “It would be a very interesting conversation to have. I’ve always been very, very grateful for Arron’s contributions.”

He went on: “If Arron does take his money away, there are other people. Obviously I wouldn’t want that to happen. These sort of interventions are run-of-the-mill, they happen all the time within our party. It’s part of politics.

“I think the difference is, with us, people tend to see a kind of do-or-die situation in virtually every controversy.”