Nick Clegg thinks it might be in UK's best interests if Nigel Farage is made ambassador to the US. Taking on a sarcastic tone, the former deputy prime minister said that sending the interim Ukip leader as a diplomat to America was "an absolutely great idea".

Clegg, who went head to head with Farage over Brexit, responded to Donald Trump's recommendation that the EU critic "represent Great Britain" in the US, claiming "he would do a great job".

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"I think it's a great idea – absolutely great idea," Clegg said in an interview with CNN Money View. "Send Nigel Farage to Washington and let him spend all his time in cocktail parties on the diplomatic circuit. That would be great, as far as I'm concerned."

Reacting to the Autumn Statement, the British Liberal Democratic politician warned that going into the era of populism and the politics of grievance and anger and division, future generations could suffer.

"I think we are living in very, very perilous times indeed," he said. These populists express people's anger but they don't have any answers. These people are not in touch with the folk they claim they're representing – they are elitist themselves, and that is the interesting thing."

Clegg went on to point out that politicians like Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump who practice populism, should be taken "deadly seriously".

Nick Clegg
Nick Clegg jokes about Nigel Farage being appointed as ambassador to the US REUTERS/Phil Noble

"Donald Trump is hardly a 'man of the people'. He resides in a gold-plated tower in Manhattan. These people are not representing the common man or the common woman. They are as elitist as anybody else. They get away with saying a whole bunch of extreme things and then they're not held to account."

The Sheffield Hallam MP compared the situation in the US to what is happening on the home front. "It's exactly the same thing as here – the Brexiteers, who advocated this great utopia, are not being held to account to the fact that clearly that utopia is not going to suddenly arrive in the United Kingdom," he explained. "So I think we need to somehow find a way to holding populists to account in a way that conventional politicians traditionally are."