Taking pains to assure a CPAC crowd that he “didn’t want to meddle,” U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage nevertheless made a couple uncomfortable observations about American conservatism on Thursday.

The insurgent British politician behind UKIP’s recent parliamentary rise, Farage earned cheers from a small but boisterous crowd for his stand against unrestricted immigration and multiculturalism on both sides of the pond.

But his critiques of conservative politics and policies in the U.S. received a decidedly colder response.

“I accept that I’m a foreigner, and I don’t want to meddle,” Farage said. “But if the Republican Party is going to win the next presidential election, I think the Republican Party needs to get the kind of people voting for it that were voting for it 30 years ago.”

“Reagan Democrats — people that worked hard, people who were patriotic people, who aspired and wanted to get on. I don’t think, at the moment, the Republican Party is attracting those kinds of people,” he said, to a smattering of applause.

Farage also questioned the wisdom of the American and British military campaigns in the Middle East since September 11, 2001.

“Every time we get involved . . . we’re told by our leaders it makes the streets of London and New York safer,” he said. “Far from doing that, we’ve actually inflamed and stoked the fires of militant Islamism by doing what we have done.”

That line, too, got a frosty reception — though his follow-up comment on how the Islamic State “is the greatest threat we face in the free world today” helped win back his conservative listeners.