July 1, 2024 - 7:00am

Nigel Farage has claimed that the economic policies of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) would be a “disaster” if enacted in France. Speaking exclusively to UnHerd yesterday after a Reform UK rally in Birmingham reportedly attended by 4,500 people, the party leader said that the RN will be “even worse for the economy than the current lot”. His comments were made ahead of results yesterday evening from the first round of France’s snap parliamentary elections, which projected a significant victory for the RN.

Farage has previously expressed support for Le Pen, writing that, while her “party’s roots were deep in Vichy” and “antisemitism was embedded in its DNA”, she is a “sincere Eurosceptic”. He added in the 2017 piece that Le Pen “would make a good leader of France”.

Earlier this week, the Bank of England warned in its June Financial Stability Report that an RN election victory would threaten global financial stability and have a damaging effect on the British economy. This followed fears among economists that Le Pen’s policy proposals, including low taxation and extensive spending, would significantly worsen France’s ongoing debt crisis. The country’s current Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, suggested that France could face a “Liz Truss-style scenario” if the RN were to reach power, while economists have argued that the European Central Bank would be unlikely to intervene in the event of a full-blown French financial crisis.

RN President Jordan Bardella claimed earlier this month that the party would be willing to cut €3 billion from France’s payments to the European Union, arguing that “the less we give to the EU, the more we can forward money to the real French economy”.

In additional comments to UnHerd, Nigel Farage cited Giorgia Meloni as an example of a Right-wing leader in Europe from whom Reform could learn. “She’s brought her party [Brothers of Italy] into the 21st century,” he said. “Some of the more radical Italians might not like it, but she’s been a very good thing and she’s made her party electable.”

The Reform leader addressed the crowd yesterday at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, alongside speakers including party chairman and former leader Richard Tice and Reform’s Immigration and Justice spokesperson, onetime Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe. In his speech, Farage accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of being “slippery” and the “biggest spinner since Blair”, stating that the Tories “are a broad church without any religion”.

Farage also tackled recent controversies involving himself and Reform, labelling Vladimir Putin’s Russia “a brutal dictatorship” after recent criticism over his suggestion that the West contributed to provoking the Ukraine war. On the subject of Andrew Parker, the Reform canvasser secretly filmed by Channel 4 using racial slurs against the Prime Minister, Farage called the news report “the biggest put-up job I’ve seen in my life”, and accused Parker of being a paid actor who had tried to goad actual campaigners into making offensive statements.


is UnHerd’s Deputy Editor, Newsroom.

RobLownie