Farage and Bardella are allies against migrants, but divided over where to send them

‘Help me hold this sign – it’s really heavy,’ said Nigel Farage to Jordan Bardella, holding a marker pen which he used to sign the memorandum of understanding on immigration between Reform UK and the Rassemblement National, printed in huge letters on a poster. The agreement is contingent upon two conditions—that both far-right parties come to power, the former in the UK and the latter in France—and rests on certain misunderstandings regarding the flow of migrants across the English Channel. Yet the main stage at the Reform UK conference, which opened in Birmingham on Thursday afternoon, is certainly not the place to explain the details; it is a venue for a show between allies, for ideological alignment. 

Jordan Bardella, who will become French Prime Minister if Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National wins the French elections next spring, was the guest of honour in Birmingham and performed his role excellently, speaking about the renewal of European values and immigration, whilst defending Nigel Farage, who has been embroiled in the latest, highly toxic scandal – which, as ever, centres on money and which the Frenchman dismissed as the usual ‘witch-hunt’ by the establishment. On Thursday evening, Channel 4 broadcast a report produced by an investigative collective called Verbatim, in which a journalist posed as an American financier and met with representatives of Reform UK to offer services and funding for the party. Earlier this year, James Orr, the party’s policy chief and a professor of theology at Cambridge with extensive connections within the European and American far right, and Dan Jukes, a close associate of Farage (who had been saying he would be chief of staff to a potential Prime Minister Farage, but yesterday, following the scandal, many in his own party have said he is a bit of a mythomaniac), tasked this financier with conducting three polls commissioned by the party (cost: £32,500), the results of which were then published as if they were the outcome of an independent survey. In the various conversations recorded by the hidden camera, the fake financier goes so far as to offer a donation of up to £500,000, and the Reform UK politicians devise a plan to secure this money, given that the law prohibits foreign funding. Orr and Jukes have been suspended, the Electoral Commission has launched an inquiry, and the University of Cambridge has also stated its intention to investigate its professor; however, Farage, who appears in the Verbatim footage, insists he has done nothing wrong – a line he has been repeating since May, when journalistic revelations and investigations into the funds given to him and Reform UK began to mount up.

Farage took the floor late yesterday afternoon – following a delay due to security reasons, accompanied by a fireworks display and superhero-style music – and reiterated that there is a coordinated attack by the media and establishment parties against Reform UK “because they are afraid of us”. No rules have been broken, Farage reiterated, as he ploughs ahead amidst the scandals, has protesters removed from the hall, states that there will be a general election in 2027, and outlines a plan for the first hundred days of his government. At the heart of it all is immigration: Farage will stop the ‘small boats’ – vessels crossing the English Channel laden with illegal migrants – by declaring a national state of emergency and forcing Parliament to sit 24 hours a day, six days a week, until his legislation on pushbacks and repatriation is implemented. The memorandum of understanding signed with Bardella is the first step in this project, but it is somewhat problematic for the French side because it stipulates that migrants should not set off for the United Kingdom but remain in the Calais region – a stronghold of the Rassemblement National which, as such, has no intention of keeping the migrants there. The misunderstanding lies entirely here, between two nationalist forces that share the same migration route and which, should they come to power at the same time, are likely to clash over who should take responsibility for the migrants – particularly those turned away by the UK – who, according to the text, should be ‘accepted in an orderly manner’ by France. How and when this will play out remains to be seen, depending on whether and when the two parties form a government; in the meantime, crossings have been at their lowest since 2019, thanks to agreements between the current governments – one on the left and one in the centre. Meanwhile, the spectre of the migration crisis is being brandished; today, Bardella will do so again in Cernobbio, alongside former general Roberto Vannacci.