Is Nigel Farage’s Ukraine gaffe the first mistake of his election campaign?
Has Nigel Farage made his first blunder of the election campaign?
His incendiary claim that the West provoked the war in Ukraine will be offensive to many people.
It may make some of those Conservative supporters considering switching to Reform UK on 4 July think again.
And a clarification in a late-night tweet appearing to row back from his earlier claims in a TV interview suggests he may have realised he went too far.
“I am one of the few figures that have been consistent and honest about the war with Russia,” he posted on X.
“Putin was wrong to invade a sovereign nation and the EU was wrong to expand eastward.
“The sooner we realise this, the closer we will be to ending the war and delivering peace.”
His earlier comments were straight out of the playbook of his friend Donald Trump.
But if it was his intention to provoke a row and gain him publicity, it may have backfired this time.
Mr Farage claimed in his interview he warned back in 2014, when he was a UKIP member of the European Parliament, that there would be a war in Ukraine.
He blamed the “ever-eastward expansion of NATO and the European Union” for giving Vladimir Putin a reason to go to war.
His critics will say it’s not just a conspiracy theory, but a dangerous crackpot theory of the sort Mr Trump would peddle.
It’s also a claim that ought to make those Conservatives who want to welcome Mr Farage into their party with open arms change their mind.
Pic: Reuters
His comments do appear, however, to have brought about a change in the way senior Tories have treated Mr Farage in this election campaign and made them wake up to his threat.
Until now Rishi Sunak and his senior colleagues have barely laid a glove on the politician who has vowed to destroy their party and take over as the official opposition to Labour.
Mr Sunak has – feebly – said he understands the anger of those Conservatives who are frustrated by his government’s record and are tempted to vote for Reform UK.
The most that cabinet ministers have said against Mr Farage up to now is that a vote for Reform UK is a vote to put Sir Keir Starmer in Downing Street with a “super-majority”.
That approach seems to have changed now.
James Cleverly, surely a leadership contender in the event of a Tory defeat, led the criticism, but even he could have gone further.
“Just Farage echoing Putin’s vile justification for the brutal invasion of Ukraine,” he said.
Really? Is that it, Mr Cleverly?
Sir Liam Fox, a former defence secretary, said: “The West did not ‘provoke this war’ in Ukraine and it is shocking that Nigel Farage should say so.”
It was Ben Wallace, the most recent former defence secretary, who – not for the first time – said what other senior Tories should have said in condemning Mr Farage.
He said the Reform UK leader was “voicing sympathy for a dictator who deployed nerve agents on the streets of Britain” – a reference to the Salisbury poisoning attack.
And in a jibe no doubt intended to rile Mr Farage, he said he was “more Chamberlain than Churchill”.
That should have the Reform UK leader choking on his warm beer.
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But it was Labour’s shadow defence secretary John Healey who launched the kind of stinging attack that we should have heard from Conservative cabinet ministers.
He denounced Mr Farage as a “Putin apologist” who “would rather lick Vladimir Putin’s boots than stand up for the people of Ukraine”.
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Maybe Mr Farage was being deliberately provocative with his comments and intending to provoke a political row.
After all, he craves attention and relishes controversy.
After Mr Sunak’s D-Day fiasco, for instance, he claimed the PM “doesn’t understand our culture” and portrayed himself as a champion of veterans and the armed forces.
Since he wrestled the leadership of Reform UK from Richard Tice, he has campaigned for more defence spending, increasing the size of the army and better housing for soldiers.
But his remarks will dismay the many Britons who have taken the suffering people of Ukraine to their hearts and in many cases taken the country’s refugees into their homes.
And so despite his appearing to justify his remarks in his tweet, his pro-Putin comments may have been a gaffe too far for undecided voters who have until now been sympathetic to his outspoken views.
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The return on Donald Trump to the G7 was always going to be unpredictable. That it is happening against the backdrop of an escalating conflict in the Middle East makes it even more so.
Expectations had already been low, with the Canadian hosts cautioning against the normal joint communique at the end of the summit, mindful that this group of leaders would struggle to find consensus.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney carefully laid down an agenda that was uncontroversial in a bid to avoid any blow-ups between President Trump and allies, who of late have been divided like never before – be it over tariffs and trade, Russia and Ukraine, or, more recently Israel’s conduct in Gaza.
But discussions around critical minerals and global supply chains will undoubtedly drop down the agenda as leaders convene at a precarious moment. Keir Starmer, on his way over to Canada for a bi-lateral meeting in Ottawa with PM Carney before travelling onto the G7 summit in Kananaskis, underscored the gravity of the situation as he again spoke of de-escalation, while also confirmed that the UK was deploying more British fighter jets to the region amid threats from Tehran that it will attack UK bases if London helps defend Israel against airstrikes.
Canadian PM Mark Carney is greeted by President Donald Trump at the White House in May. Pic: AP
Really this is a G7 agenda scrambled as world leaders scramble to de-escalate the worst fighting between Tel Aviv and Tehran in decades. President Trump has for months been urging Israel not to strike Iran as he worked towards a diplomatic deal to halt uranium enrichment. Further talks had been due on Sunday – but are now not expected to go ahead.
All eyes will be on Trump in the coming days, to see if the US – Israel’s closest ally – will call on Israel to rein in its assault. The US has so far not participated in any joint attacks with Tel Aviv, but is moving warships and other military assets to the Middle East.
Sir Keir, who has managed to strike the first trade deal with Trump, will want to leverage his “good relationship” with the US leader at the G7 to press for de-escalation in the Middle East, while he also hopes to use the summit to further discuss the further the interests of Ukraine with Trump and raise again the prospects of Russian sanctions.
“We’ve got President Zelenskyy coming so that provides a good opportunity for us to discuss again as a group,” the PM told me on the flight over to Canada. “My long-standing view is, we need to get Russia to the table for an unconditional ceasefire. That’s not been really straightforward. But we do need to be clear about what we need to get to the table and that if that doesn’t happen, sanctions will undoubtedly be part of the discussion at the G7.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (R) is greeted by Mark Carney as he arrives in Ottawa ahead of the G7
But that the leaders are not planning for a joint communique – a document outlining what the leaders have agreed – tells you a lot. When they last gathered with Trump in Canada for the G7 back in 2018, the US president rather spectacularly fell out with Justin Trudeau when the former Canadian president threatened to retaliate against US tariffs and refused to sign the G7 agreement.
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Since then, Trump has spoken of his desire to turn Canada into the 51st state of the US, a suggestion that helped catapult the Liberal Party beyond their Conservative rivals and back into power in the recent Canadian elections, as Mark Carney stood on a ticket of confronting Trump’s aggression.
With so much disagreement between the US and allies, it is hard to see where progress might be made over the next couple of days. But what these leaders will agree on is the need to take down the temperature in the Middle East and for all the unpredictability around these relationships, what is certain is a sense of urgency around Iran and Israel that could find these increasingly disparate allies on common ground.
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