The golden rule of Trump and Farage’s free speech crusade: they’re allowed to chat rubbish – you’re not | Marina Hyde

The Reform leader has been in the US, bemoaning Britain’s ‘awful authoritarian situation’. It’s a shame about his party’s own anti-media huff back home

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Pop quiz. Of whom did Donald Trump say admiringly: “I also learned that he loves his country very much”? And: “He wrote me beautiful letters. And they are great letters. We fell in love”?

If you answered “Nigel Farage”, then I’m sorry. The Reform UK leader might have spent this pre-party conference week in his happy place – lodged several feet up the US presidential colon – and rhetorically demanding of US lawmakers: “At what point did [the UK] become North Korea?” But those Trump compliments were in fact previously made about Kim Jong-un, the dictator of … well, you know the rest.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist