He believes his friend has been wrongly maligned by the US establishment.

“They hate him in Washington. They’re snobs. They call him a lorry driver. They think he’s uncouth, vulgar. But they all forget he’s a New Yorker.

“The snobbery against him is just incredible. But politics is aligning. We are seeing it in Britain, across Europe and America. Centre-Right values are much more attuned to working class people than they are to the upper middle classes and the trump campaign symbolises that. It’s changing.”

‘This is the sexy bit’

Mr Farage would welcome a second Trump term for its promise of hacking cuts to federal government, overseen by Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and owner of X.

“This is the sexy bit: Elon comes in and takes a knife to the deep state. Just like when he bought Twitter he sacked 80 per cent of the staff.

“There are going to be mass lay-offs, whole departments closing and I’m hoping and praying that’s the blueprint for what we then do on our side of the pond.

“Because that’s what Reform UK believes in – that we’re over-bureaucratised and none of it works. This assault on the bureaucratic state is the thing that’s really exciting.

“They’ll all be gone. They’ll all be fired. Why do we need Whitehall with all these useless, ghastly Marxists? Universities have all become madrassas of Marxism. The whole thing is appalling.

“Trump’s first term taking on the deep state was impossible because they had no idea how it worked; he finished up with a lot of people around him who weren’t supporters and who were imposed upon him.

“They didn’t know an American president has the power to appoint 3,000 people. This time they have been working really hard on that for 18 months.”

Recognising he will face criticism for abandoning his constituents and travelling to the US for the elections, Mr Farage said: “I happen to think that having spent all Saturday campaigning hard in Clacton, that the election of leader of the free world is quite important and I don’t think my constituents would object to me being here for a couple of days In fact most of them are big Trump supporters.”