Three key lessons Nigel Farage can learn from Trump - Kelvin MacKenzie

That man is Nigel Farage who first recognised Trump was a political miracle more than a decade ago and struck up a friendship with him. And while it would have been easier in the face of media criticism to dump him, he has always stuck by him.

So, what could Farage learn from the Trump campaign?

The first thing is to recognise that you don’t need mainstream media (MSM). Uniquely Trump adopted a policy of ignoring them. He became the first presidential candidate in history not to do the 60 Minutes interview.

Nor did he do the sit-downs with those boring 7pm (Eastern time) newscasts on CBS, NBC or ABC which are created and produced by liberal journalists who don’t represent mainstream opinions when making news selection.

Instead, he went all-in on social media and podcasts. Recently he did a remarkable three hours with podcaster Josh Rogan at his studio in Austin, Texas. That’s the deal with Mr Rogan. You have to fly to him and you have to give up three hours if that’s what he wants.

Rogan offered the same deal to Kamala Harris. Her people said she could an hour but it would have to be on Zoom. He refused and she lost a massive opportunity. Rogan has 19 million followers for God’s sake. What a mistake that was.

Harris got that wrong because she would prefer to be interviewed by the liberal New York Times that has much fewer followers but would be considered on her side.

Important for Farage is to take on board that nobody needs MSM anymore. When I edited the Sun we sold 4.25million a day, about 30% of the public saw the paper each day. Today the number is so low The Sun refuses to publish it but the best estimate is around 400,000.

Who cares what The Sun thinks although I note that they stuck Vote Starmer all over the front of the printed edition and all over the screen of their digital version. And what happened?

Starmer’s first action was to scrap the £300 winter fuel payment- hitting Sun readers hardest because their demographic is older and skint. Thank you, Murdoch for the advice.

Podcasts reach the young. MSM reaches the old. When the analysis of voting is done I’m sure it will reveal that Trump did remarkable well in the 21-35 demographic (of all colours). All down to his media strategy. Farage must do that.

The other thing to take on board is be true to yourself and your policies. Illegal migration to our country is out of control. It is even worse in the US where they are charging across the borders in their hundreds and thousands.

Starmer will not talk about it because in an odd way he looks at the illegals as Labour voters of tomorrow and believes that if he keeps saying ‘’smash the gangs’’ the problem will go away.

It won’t and this is Farage’s opportunity. He must double down on keeping the illegals out. It’s a winning policy. And one that the Tories will struggle to replicate as their performance between 2019-2024 was so poor.

But most of all Farage must put money in the pockets of the voters. That is Trump’s winning hand.

My closest friend lives in South Carolina. Hard working guy, a Brit married to a local girl, he said some 18 months ago to me that all the talk about the US economy doing well was good to hear but was not trickling down to the pockets of the people where he lived. Trump cashed in on that and so must Farage.

I expect Farage to be energised by Trump’s win. There will be much to learn and much to be adopted.

The bad news for the UK is that it was only a few weeks back that Labour’s Head of Operations issued a public appeal for volunteers to travel to the US to campaign for Harris.

Trump’s team made a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission accusing Labour of foreign interference and even named two of Starmer’s aides.

So, Trump has no reason to love Labour. But he has reason to love Farage and it would not surprise me if he didn’t bend over backwards to accommodate Reform in some way.

Were I Farage this morning I would be thinking five years is not such a long time away and No.10 seems more possible than ever. This has been a remarkable day in politics.