Open-mouthed Farage struggles to find his voice as GB News is caught between Trump, its viewers and reality

Finding a way to keep two groups with opposing interests happy is the sort of tediously mainstream ­manoeuvre that Nigel Farage has managed to avoid in his political career so far.

But Reform UK’s leader and, until last week, majority shareholder had to deal with this unfamiliar dilemma on his platform of choice, GB News, after Donald Trump’s outburst about Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week.

Most of the British public think that, in the cold-eyed dictator stakes, the Ukrainian president is ­probably more Larry the Cat than Vladimir Putin, and about 80% of voters who back the three other mainstream parties believe the UK should at least maintain its support for Zelenskyy.

Yet less than half of Reform UK ­voters agree, and one in 10 of Farage’s strongest supporters wants Russia to win. Appealing to the silent majority and the far right is no easy task.

This may come as a shock to ­anyone who is not a regular GB News viewer but the channel has a similar dilemma. It wants to be a home for the whole right rather than its more extreme fringes, but the stream of comments underneath its videos is a good place to find some of the wilder theories about the war in Ukraine, which occasionally make it on air.

Clare Muldoon, a commentator who only seems to commentate on GB News, said last weekend that the war was “a complete sham” and claimed Zelenskyy wanted fighting to continue. “He can still get this money – goodness knows what he’s doing with it,” she said.

Muldoon was challenged but it gave commenters beneath the video a fresh chance to recycle points often made on Russian TV channels, or by people such as Calvin Robinson – the priest defrocked by both GB News and the Anglican Catholic church – and by Trump.

Farage too. Last year, he claimed in a BBC interview that Russia had been provoked by Nato’s ­eastward ­expansion and explained to ­interviewer Nick Robinson that in 2014 he had only said he “admired Putin as a political operator” for ­taking control of Russia and insisted he disliked him as a person.

US president Donald Trump called Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a ‘dictator’ last week on his social media platform. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

While Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey all swiftly condemned Trump’s comments last week, Farage took a little longer to find his voice.

Eventually, the Reform leader put in an appearance, explaining in an interview on GB News he had been on a plane to Washington for the Conservative Political Action Conference so, unlike every other party leader, he had not been able to comment on Trump’s accusation that Zelenskyy was “a dictator”.

“You should always take ­everything Donald Trump says seriously. You shouldn’t always take things that Donald Trump says absolutely literally,” Farage said.

Zelenskyy was “not a dictator” he went on, sticking to the mainstream line, before adding a Trump-friendly caveat. “But, but! It’s only right and proper that Ukrainians have a timeline for elections.”

Presenter Tom Harwood pointed out that the UK had not held any ­general elections from 1935 until after VE Day in 1945, so perhaps insisting Ukrainians dodge death drones to get to ballot boxes was a bit much?

The Farage mouth opened, Homer Simpson-style, in bemused astonishment at this challenge. “Let’s get this on the record,” he said. “We were still at war with Japan.”