Ministers are repeating the same mistakes they made before Donald Trump's election as United States' president by not engaging with French far-right politician Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage has said.
The former Ukip leader said it was "extraordinary" that the Government was not reaching out to the Front National and Ms Le Pen.
Britain's ambassador to Paris, Lord Llewellyn of Steep, revealed last week that long-standing protocols mean UK officials shun the far-right party and its presidential candidate.
Read more: Donald Trump shunned by family as presidency fails to impress
But Mr Farage said Ms Le Pen was "gaining momentum" ahead of the spring election, and told the Government to make connections with her to avoid the embarrassment it faced when Mr Trump won the US presidential election.
A string of ministers had heavily criticised and mocked Mr Trump during the campaign and are now attempting to make up lost ground ahead of Theresa May's spring visit to the US.
Writing for the Westmonster website set up by his former aide Michael Heaver and Ukip donor Arron Banks, Mr Farage said: "It was an extraordinary sight to see Conservatives (and indeed Eurosceptic ones at that) not just being abusive about a potential leader of the free world, but in some cases even calling for Hillary Clinton to win.
Read more: Donald Trump shunned by family as presidency fails to impress
"At times it felt like Piers Morgan and I were the only two people outside of America that had anything even vaguely nice to say about Donald Trump.
"Perhaps that explains why when Boris Johnson flew to New York to meet with Trump's team, he did not get to meet with Trump himself. To add to this, we don't yet have a firm date for our Prime Minister to meet the new president either."
He went on: "It is therefore extraordinary that the British Embassy in Paris is not reaching out to all of the main contenders to be France's next president, who will be elected in May.
"Yet, Marine Le Pen has been excluded from this. I'm not saying that she will win, but there is every chance she could, and I'm pretty certain that she will at least make it to the final round. It seems our Government are not learning from their mistakes."
Read more: Donald Trump shunned by family as presidency fails to impress
Mr Farage in November said victory for Ms Le Pen would be a "questionable thing" because he had "great difficulty" with the Front National party, although he said he "never said a bad word" about its leader.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here