Reform MP sides with Trump on Greenland crisis

Most people are horrified at the possibility that Donald Trump might annex Greenland, but not, it would seem, Sarah Pochin. Reform’s MP for Runcorn and Helsby said this morning that Trump was “raising a really important issue”. Appearing on the livestream of the sacked TalkTV presenter Mike Graham, she said: 

“The fact is that Donald Trump is raising a really important issue, the security now of the High North, as we call it… We’ve got two hostile superpowers circling up there in the Arctic… And Donald Trump is shining a light on this issue, quite rightly in Reform’s view. We’re not saying that what he’s talking about in terms of his tariffs and all the rest, is necessarily the right way to go about it. The point is in true Trump fashion, he’s going in there with both barrels, but he is highlighting something that the world is not listening to and that we need to.”

Earlier this week, Trump declined to rule out invading Greenland and seizing it by force. “I don’t need international law,” he has said. And: “I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way we’re going to do it the hard way.”

Pochin’s comments go further than Farage’s recent statements on the Greenland crisis. Although he said he would prefer America to own Greenland than Denmark, Farage told Sky: “This must be up to the people of Greenland.”

Reform are vulnerable to criticism that they are too close to the Trump administration. Danny Kruger, the Reform MP and Tory defector, said a Reform government would look like “Trump 2, not Trump 1”.

Reform’s leaders are deeply fond of the American president. Farage, of course, has been a longtime friend of Trump, so much so that in 2017 he flew to Alabama to campaign for the Republican Roy Moore, an accused child molester (Farage later said this was a “mistake”). And after Trump’s conviction for election fraud in 2024, Farage said he supported him “more than ever”.

The connections both real and ideological that Reform leaders have with Trump could backfire. Sixty-one percent of Brits, according to a YouGov poll, think Trump has been a poor or terrible president. A growing number think that the US is hostile to the UK, and a majority think the US has a negative impact on the rest of the world.

On that note, Farage had dinner with the Heartland Institute’s British representatives this week. Heartland is an American climate denial organisation which has said “global warming… is not a crisis”. At Mark’s Club, a fancy private members venue in Mayfair, Farage addressed a gathering of cranks gathered by Heartland, including Liz Truss, ex-broadcaster Mike Graham (sacked from his TalkTV job for posting “Why are we surrounded by non-white people?”) and David Starkey (who said transatlantic slavery was not genocide because “so many damn blacks” survived).

Heartland has links to the Trump White House and has taken money from the oil corporation ExxonMobil, which by one count is the 4th worst polluter in the world. Where America leads, Britain doesn’t have to follow.

In other news..

🙅‍♂️ Don’t believe a word they say

When it comes to the subject of Conservative Party rivals, Reform’s leaders are scathing. The Tories are “devoid of talent” and “a cash incineration machine”, according to head of policy Zia Yusuf, “loathed by the public” and guilty of “unspeakable treachery”. “Don’t believe a word they say about anything,” Farage has said. Richard Tice, deputy leader, has likewise repeated an anti-Tory mantra of “never forgive, never forget”. These would be the same leaders who have welcomed 26 Conservatives into their party since its creation. What was that about being devoid of talent?

🥴 New signings

Speaking of talent: new year, new staff. Three highlights: 

1. Richard Bingley is Reform’s new London regional director. The former Tory leader of Plymouth City Council, Bingley said people shouldn’t worry “too much about climate change” because they can adapt to “living in barren, sandy landscapes”. Bingley resigned after just a year in 2023, following widespread anger at his decision to order the midnight felling of 110 trees in Plymouth city centre. 

2. Last year, Adam Wordsworth was serving as the party’s South East regional director, but was removed after we revealed he called Reform’s Kent councillors “wankers” who “hate each other”. He is now the party’s North West regional director, where hopefully he won’t have to deal with so many “wankers”. 

3. Henry Deedes, a former Daily Mail writer, joins as deputy director of comms. Old hands at the Mail recall Deedes recording a clip in December 2019, calling Farage a “slightly sad character” who’s had his day and “looks a bit like mad Captain Ahab” from Moby Dick. Good luck!

💸 Nice work if you can get it

Farage has said sorry for the late declaration of £380,000 in income. He breached the MP’s code of conduct 17 times by failing to declare payments on time that he received from promoting gold, recording Cameos and presenting GB News. Farage is the highest-paid MP, earning more than £1 million from bonus jobs that he somehow manages to fit in while serving his constituents in Clacton. Farage blamed the errors on being an “oddball” who doesn’t “do computers”, adding: “I fully accept that I’m in the wrong in every way.” 

🤷‍♂️ Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others 

Like Cady Heron in Mean Girls, Robert Jenrick is discovering how it feels to walk up to people and realise they were just talking about you. So Reform members are having to suddenly forget their worst insults of the ex-Tory MP. Here are some of our favourites…

Nigel Farage, 18th August 2025
Jenrick is a fraud. I’ve always thought so, this quote proves it.

Darren Grimes, 1st June 2025:
I’m not going to take any lectures from a Tory who’s been there since the Cameron years! 

Reform UK X account, 2nd October 2024:
Jenrick can’t be trusted.

Richard Tice, 23rd June 2024
Jenrick still does not get it. Tory brand is toxic and finished

Zia Yusuf, 22nd July 2025
2p Farage impersonator Jenrick

Jenrick and Yusuf have history. Last July, Yusuf’s X account liked a racist post calling Jenrick “traitorous” for having a Jewish wife (which Yusuf blamed on the accidental actions of his staffer). In response, Jenrick said Yusuf’s excuse was “bullshit”, and said Reform should sack him. Welcome to the family!

💉 A very vaxxing question

Don’t ask Nadhim Zahawi about Covid jabs. When he defected to Reform last week, the former Tory vaccines minister was miffed with a journalist’s question about his new party hosting a conference speaker who said vaccines gave the King cancer. “That was a really stupid question and it doesn’t even deserve an answer,” Zahawi snapped, with surprising vitriol. During the pandemic, he oversaw the injection of 85 million people with Covid shots. Perhaps he should have taken a closer look at his new party’s manifesto, which promises a public inquiry into “excess deaths and vaccine harms”. Yikes!

🤮 Cutting-edge analysis 

David Starkey, mentioned above, is a controversial historian. He’s not a member of Reform, but has spoken at official party events. This month saw both the defection of Zahawi and the announcement that Laila Cunningham would contest the 2028 London mayoral election for Reform. Starkey’s take? “Reform is starting to look fairly Muslim, isn’t it?” Grim.