Farage follows the MAGA manual

NIGEL Farage's visit to Washington this week wasn't just about dabbling in American politics.

- CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN

He was diving into the MAGA swamp and dragging its poison back across the Atlantic to unleash on Britain.

His latest stunt, strutting into Washington to appear before Donald Trump's Republican cronies, wasn't about exporting the best of Britain or furthering UK interest in the States - quite the opposite.

It was about importing America's culture wars and division into our way of life.

The Reform leader is thumbing through his old pal Trump's playbook and following it word for word: exaggerate, inflame, play the victim, then scream about "tyranny" until people are too angry to think.

He was not in the States to defend liberties. He was there to light fires and then point to the smoke as proof that Britain is broken.

At the heart of his performance is Lucy Connolly, the woman who posted a racist tweet calling for asylum hotels to be torched. The law is clear: incitement to racial hatred isn't "free speech", it's a crime. She was jailed for 31 months, and the courts applied the law as intended.