BIRMINGHAM, England — France’s Jordan Bardella and Britain’s Nigel Farage will on Friday lock arms on immigration policy, but the limits to their love-in are becoming clear. The two anti-immigrant populist leaders face opposition within Bardella’s far-right party, the National Rally, over Farage’s controversial proposal to enlist the Royal Navy to help repel immigrants trying to reach the United Kingdom on so-called small boats and return them to France. Bardella, the president of the far-right National Rally, is expected to back Farage’s plan in a speech in English at Reform UK’s annual conference in Birmingham.
He will outline how the two populist parties can jointly tackle illegal cross-channel migration, according to advisers to the duo. The 30-year-old MEP had previously suggested he could support the so-called pushbacks — but that was back in December, when it looked like his mentor Marine Le Pen would be knocked out of the French presidential election due to an embezzlement conviction and Bardella would be running in her stead. Le Pen’s revised sentence, giving her a surprise shot in the 2027 race to replace President Emmanuel Macron, has changed the equation.
Le Pen, who is campaigning as a clear front-runner according to multiple polls, is seen as less ideologically flexible than Bardella. One National Rally official, who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak candidly about private policy discussions, cautioned that France and the U.K. would first have to sign a treaty and share the burden of sending migrants back to their countries of origin. Two advisers to the French far-right party skirted the issue altogether, saying it would not be a problem if the National Rally takes charge — because once in power, they’d so dramatically reduce immigration into France that there won’t be any small boats trying to reach English shores.
There won’t be lots in Calais,” said one of the advisers. But Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said he “can’t see” how the National Rally could agree to accept migrants who tried to enter the U.K., regardless of the number of immigrants entering France. Jean-Yves Camus, a far-right specialist at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, concurred, saying that Bardella’s promises sound like “science fiction.” “The Calais region is a Marine Le Pen stronghold.
I don’t think Bardella realizes the impact of what he is proposing for areas that see a lot of migrant arrivals,” said Camus. Still, Farage’s Reform UK and Bardella’s National Rally are trying to project ideological alignment on the need to drastically reduce immigration in both their countries. For Farage, Bardella’s support on migration could offer him a much-needed win on his party’s flagship issue after a tough summer dominated by scrutiny of Farage’s financial affairs and his return to parliament in a bizarre by-election race.
For Bardella, it’s an opportunity to bolster his international profile in a way that boosts Le Pen’s campaign. Farage and Bardella aren’t the most obvious pair. One is a 62-year-old, tweed-sporting rabble-rouser and the other a carefully dressed, well-prepared politician who just entered his thirties.
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