World would be a ‘better place’ if US took over Greenland, says Nigel Farage

The world would be a “better, more secure place” if America took over Greenland, Nigel Farage said at Davos, while insisting that he still believed in the sovereignty of nation states.

During a panel at the World Economic Forum’s “America House” in the Swiss ski resort on Wednesday, the Reform UK leader said he had “no doubt” that the world would be safer if a “strong America” was in Greenland “because of the geopolitics of the high north, because of the retreating ice caps and because of the continued expansionism of Russian icebreakers, of Chinese investment”.

Speaking just after Donald Trump appeared to rule out taking position of Greenland by force, while doubling down on his demand to annex the “big, beautiful piece of ice”, Farage insisted that while he “agreed strategically” with Trump he believed in “nation states … not globalist structures”.

“[I]f you believe in the nation state and not globalist structures, you believe in sovereignty,” he said. “And if you believe in sovereignty, you believe in the principle of national self-determination.”

He added: “You must respect the rights and views of the Greenlanders, because that is what national self-determination is, and that’s a key part.”

Farage is a longtime critic of Davos, describing it in a video as a place where decisions are made that “bow down to the European Union” and calling the attenders “people deciding our futures in Swiss ski resorts”.

During the forum he insisted that stance had not changed. “For those of us at Davos that are fighting the globalists, belief in national self-determination is at the root of what people like me, albeit the minority here, believe in,” he said. “So I think that’s really, really important.”

Asked about the rise in popularity of Reform in the UK, Farage referred to the “moral decline” of Britain and said people were disenchanted with politics and wanted an alternative to the Conservatives and the Labour party.

Positive polling ratings represented “a Britain that is in very serious decline, economic decline, social decline, even moral decline, in many ways, in knowing the difference between right and wrong. And so people are desperate for something different,” he said.

Farage said “young entrepreneurs, our highest taxpayers, many of our best businesses” were deserting the country, adding that while there was “a long way to go … I think we’ve got every chance of winning the next election. I really do.”