Reform Britain insists its agreement with France’s far-right National Rally to send migrants back across the Channel was fully approved by the party and signed by its president Jordan Bardella amid a furious backlash in France.
The agreement announced on Friday between Nigel Farage and Bardella, a 30-year-old protégé of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, appears to be in direct conflict with Le Pen’s long-standing policy of refusing to accept the return of those arriving in the UK on small boats from France.
On Monday, Le Pen came under pressure from journalists from state television channel France TV. Le Pen declined to comment, saying she would discuss the issue soon, but at her own convenience.
In 2021, Le Pen said she wants to rewrite border agreements for the UK so that people arriving by boat are sent back to their countries of origin rather than returned to France.
After the agreement was signed, Bardella was criticized by French political parties for signing the agreement, with Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad criticizing Bardella for “subordination” which was “contrary to our interests and sovereignty”.
Some French media have questioned whether Bardella was duped by Reform, wondering whether the French translation accurately conveys Farage’s message that the Rassemblement Nationale (RN) is willing to take back any migrants who travel on small boats.
However, a Reforma spokesman said the document was “signed by both Bardella and the presidential team”, that the policy was included in both the French and English versions and could “confirm that both sides are in full agreement”.
Until the summer, Bardella was seen as a potential replacement for Le Pen in next spring’s presidential elections, but she will now run to become her future prime minister. In July, when a Paris appeal court upheld Le Pen’s conviction for embezzlement of European Parliament funds, her election ban was relaxed, allowing her to stand.
Farage has kept Le Pen at arm’s length, although he has developed a good relationship with Bardella over the past year. but he is rumored to be planning to meet her later in the fall.
He previously rejected the idea of unification in the European Parliament in 2014, when he accused Le Pen’s party of a history of “prejudice and anti-Semitism”, which she said was a slander. Farage said last week that he would not have made a deal with the party when it was led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, a convicted Holocaust denier who co-founded the National Front in 1972. Le Pen expelled her father from the party in 2015. Farage praised her, saying she had gotten rid of “extreme elements”.
At the heart of the scandal in France is the wording of a document Farage presented Bardella with to sign on stage in Birmingham, calling it a memorandum of understanding.
Both texts, presented side by side in English and French, say that if Farage and Bardella become prime ministers of their countries, Britain will intercept boats launched off the French coast and that France will return the people on board to their countries of origin.
But the English text contained an additional phrase: “France usually receives these people,” who will then be returned to their homeland. This appeared to indicate that Bardella had promised to welcome returnees to France, contrary to the RN’s long-standing position.
Television France reported that RN denied any disagreement, saying the text was merely a declaration of intent that would be clarified later. Speaking in Italy over the weekend, Bardella suggested his party in government would discourage migrants from entering France with much tighter border controls, resulting in much lower numbers crossing into the UK.
However, Bardella was criticized by RN opponents for signing the immigration memorandum on stage with Farage.
MP Sacha Houllier, an ally of center-left would-be presidential candidate Raphael Glucksmann, wrote on X about what he called “a pathetic episode in which all of France could see Mr. Bardella being used as a doormat by the English far right.” He told RN: “You claim to be patriots, but you are cowards.”
Gabriel Attal, the former centrist prime minister and presidential candidate, wrote on X: “To the applause of his party members, Nigel Farage forced Jordan Bardella to sign a memorandum guaranteeing that all migrants intercepted in the English Channel would be sent back to France. Either Jordan Bardella does not understand English, or he is disgracefully weak when it comes to defending French interests. And I think he understands English.”
Edouard Philippe, a former prime minister and center-right candidate, called it an example of hypocrisy and division in Bardella’s party. Philippe said it appeared Bardella was finding it difficult to stand up to Farage to “protect French interests”.
Xavier Bertrand, the right-wing head of the northern Hauts-de-France region, wrote on X that by agreeing that only France would take responsibility for returning people to their home countries, Bardella was “reducing France to the status of a subcontractor to Britain.”
Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow home secretary, said: “Reform UK’s deal with Jordan Bardella is a complete farce… Time and again Reform have proven that they are fundamentally unserious in their grandiose camera claims, without any of the detail or hard work that could stand up to real scrutiny.”