CPAC Speech Proved its Still Donald Trump’s Republican Party, Says Brexit’s Farage

Brexit leader Nigel Farage said that former President Donald Trump’s speech at CPAC cemented his position as the leader of the Republican Party, hailing the return of a true “opposition” in the United States.

Mr Farage said that following Trump’s speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Sunday, it is clear that “Trump’s grip on the Republican Party seems to be as strong as ever”.

“I will be the first to acknowledge that we are talking about a cult of personality here, but that is because, in 2021, it is Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” Farage wrote for Newsweek, predicting that Trump will further solidify his power within the party through winning battles against so-called RINOs in Washington DC.

Mr Farage said the speech also secured Trump’s role as the true opposition leader in the United States, something which the Brexit leader said has been sorely missing from American politics.

The U.S. has not had much in the way of “opposition leadership” for several years, Farage explained, adding that the lack of a credible opposition is “unhealthy in any democracy”.

“Following Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, there was a vacuum at the top of the Democratic Party that was filled by CNN and The New York Times. By the time Joe Biden won the nomination, the campaign was in full swing and the key message was simply ‘Vote for me, not the other guy,'” Farage said.

The leader of the Brexit movement and the recently renamed Reform UK party said that Mr Trump “has what it takes to do the job well”.

“Trump made it clear how he intends to use his new role. He will hold Biden’s administration to account and he will not shy away from criticizing it when he has to. It’s true that opposition leadership is, in certain ways, easier than being in charge, but it requires considerable amounts of energy and skill to be a truly effective opposition leader,” Farage said.

Mr Farage has himself acted as a de facto opposition leader in the United Kingdom for years, representing the only credible challenger to the Tories. His voice — from outside of government — successfully forced the then Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron into calling for the 2016 EU referendum, which, albeit belatedly, resulted in the UK leaving the European Union.

The Brexit leader can also credibly claim to have ‘decapitated’ the British government twice. He took down two sitting Prime Ministers — David Cameron after he lost the referendum to Mr Farage, and Theresa May after she lost the EU elections on the back of her failure to deliver Brexit to Mr Farage — more than the official opposition Labour party can claim to have achieved in over a decade.

“Strong opposition leadership is about more than just complaining,” the arch Brexiteer said, explaining: “The essence of it is offering solutions to problems that voters care about. With this in mind, whether you dispute last November’s election result or think that Trump is a sore loser, he was right to point out that the need for electoral reform in America is urgent.”

He noted that Trump’s electoral reforms represent “tangible” policies that can be taken up by state legislatures throughout the country.

“If the Democrats oppose election transparency, they will need to marshal some very powerful arguments to convince the electorate that it is a good idea to maintain a broken system that damages America’s reputation around the world. This is the sort of reforming idea that will serve Trump well,” Farage predicted.

He went on to say that Trump’s call for regulations on Big Tech censorship, such as his demand for the repeal of Section 230 and the breakup of the Silicon Valley monopolies, could also prove to be “very fertile territory”. He explained that neither Democrat nor Republican voters want to be “controlled by a corporation”.

Farage said that Trump’s biggest challenge going forward will be reaching his voter base. In light of the Masters of the Universe tech companies marching in lockstep to censor the former president from their social media platforms, he said that it is unclear through which means Trump will get his message out.

Without the ability to communicate over the internet, Mr Farage said, both Brexit and Trump’s victory in 2016 would never have occurred.

“For now, what is clear is that Trump’s CPAC speech was disciplined and persuasive. It marked the start of a genuine period of opposition leadership, something that any functioning democracy should welcome. It was not so much a case of ‘Trump is back’ as a case of ‘Trump never went away'”, Farage concluded.