No Brexit, no US trade deal

• Labour leader Corbyn would be ‘so bad’ for Britain: Trump
• EU critic Farage urges Johnson to listen to Trump  

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s office has defended his Brexit deal with the EU, after US President Donald Trump warned it would make it impossible for the two nations to strike a future trade agreement.

The president, whose impeachment in the US has moved a stage closer following a key vote in Congress, waded into the British election campaign on Thursday to criticise Johnson’s divorce terms with the European bloc.

“This deal... you can’t do it, you can’t trade. We can’t make a trade deal with the UK,” he said.

But a Downing Street spokesman later said the deal would allow the UK to strike “our own free trade deals around the world from which every part of the UK will benefit”.

Trump’s comments appear at odds with his previous pledge in September that he was working closely with Johnson to strike a “magnificent trade deal” once Britain left the EU.

The US president also launched a stinging attack on the country’s main opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn and urged Johnson to unite with eurosceptic hardliner Nigel Farage, a key figure in the 2016 referendum on European Union membership.

“Corbyn would be so bad for your country,” Trump told Farage during a phone interview broadcast on his talkshow on British radio station LBC.

“He’d take you in such a bad way. He’d take you into such bad places.”

“I’d like to see you and Boris get together... I think it’d be a great thing,” Trump added. Within minutes of the interview airing, Corbyn shot back on Twitter that “Trump is trying to interfere in Britain’s election to get his friend Boris Johnson elected”.

EU critic Farage yesterday urged Johnson to follow Donald Trump’s advice and join forces with his Brexit Party in Britain’s pre-Christmas general election.

“Without wanting to hurt Boris Johnson, he told the truth about this shocking, awful EU treaty,” Farage told LBC radio yesterday morning. “It’s doubtful even by 2023, we would even be in a position to have a trade deal with the USA,” he added.

“If that applies to America, that applies to Japan, it applies to India, it applies to Australia. For goodness sake, Boris, drop the deal and let’s start again with a clean sheet.”

He promised to use his party’s campaign launch to explain “the need, in my view, for some kind of Brexit alliance” with Johnson’s Conservatives.