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.

“We’re going to reduce immigration. 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.

“They are naturally going to find it quite difficult to work with each other in these areas,” he said.

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.

“It’s very important for [the National Rally] to build links, to show that you are listened to by people abroad,” said a former French official who knows the far-right party well.

The populist odd couple

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.

But both men are on a mission to professionalize their movements by building a more coherent party machine and trying to slough off their most extreme elements. For Farage, that means trying to neutralize the new threat from a further-right party called Restore, while Bardella tries to make the National Rally more business-friendly, despite no longer being the party’s nominee for president. 

The two first met in December for lunch at one of the British politician’s favorite haunts, 5 Hertford Street. They hit it off, enjoying copious food and wine in a meeting lasted more than two hours, according to one Reform adviser and a National Rally adviser.

“Saving the West” dominated the conversation, according to the Reform adviser.

Farage told POLITICO Bardella had impressed him “very much” and another one of the Brexit champion’s aides predicted the relationship would develop from a personal one to more formal party alignment in the months ahead. 

Bardella’s team was just as flattering in return, with an adviser to the National Rally president confirming they want closer cooperation with Reform.

“Farage is a political force of nature. He succeeded in the two ambitions of his life: Brexit and ending the two-party system in the United Kingdom,” the aide quoted above said. “We want Reform in power.”

The two men have remained in contact since, according to one Reform official.

The future

Bardella is expected to address migration in a way that complements Reform’s policies when he speaks in Birmingham, according to one Reform official and two National Rally officials. He’ll also be delivering his remarks in English — something he rarely does in public — according to National Rally officials. The move is likely to further please Farage’s followers.

Leonard of the ECFR said Bardella’s appearance was a bid by Reform to show that “it is part of the wave of the future … a global political movement which is changing the world one country at a time.”

One of the Reform officials quoted earlier said this was also evident in Farage’s focus on getting closer to Bardella, rather than Le Pen. Farage and Le Pen never formed an alliance, according to two National Rally lawmakers, partly due to bad blood dating back to their days as MEPs, but also because Farage’s French partner, Laure Ferrari, once ran for a parliamentary seat as a member of a rival party to the National Rally.

“He sees that [Bardella] is the future,” the Reform official said.

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