Farage signs pact with French firebrand Jordan Bardella to ‘stop the boats forever’
Nigel Farage and French National Rally leader Jordan Bardella have signed a memorandum of understanding pledging joint action to stop Channel small boat crossings, in a move Farage says could halt arrivals within 100 days. The pact, unveiled on stage at Reform UK's party conference in Birmingham, marks a significant show of cross-Channel political cooperation between two right-wing populist parties, coming as Farage seeks to shift attention away from a donations scandal that has forced two senior aides to step aside.
Under the agreement, migrants who enter British waters after launching from French shores would be returned to France, with Bardella pledging that his party would "do everything" to stop France being a "gateway for illegal migration into the UK" if it wins French elections next year. Farage described the deal as forging a new "entente cordiale" and called it a "momentous agreement", while also using his conference speech to promise a "national emergency" and a rush of new legislation within days of taking office should Reform win power.
- Farage and Bardella sign pact to return Channel migrants to France
- Farage claims it could stop boat crossings within 100 days
- Comes amid Reform conference and a donations scandal distraction
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Nigel Farage's Reform UK and Marine Le Pen's National Rally, now led day-to-day by Jordan Bardella, are two of Europe's best-known right-wing populist parties. Both have built support partly on opposition to immigration, and small boat crossings in the Channel have long been a flashpoint in UK politics, with successive governments struggling to reduce the numbers making the journey from France.
Farage has positioned Reform UK as a serious contender for government, and stopping Channel crossings is central to his platform. Bardella's National Rally is similarly a major force in French politics, with elections due there next year, meaning any commitments he makes now are contingent on winning power himself.
Cross-border cooperation between opposition parties on migration policy is unusual, since neither leader currently holds the office needed to implement such a plan. The agreement therefore functions as a political statement of intent rather than enforceable policy, and its significance lies partly in what it signals about ties between Europe's populist right ahead of elections in both countries.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Supporters of the pact argue that small boat crossings represent a genuine humanitarian and security failure, with lives repeatedly lost at sea and public confidence in border control eroded, so any credible mechanism for returning migrants to France deserves serious consideration. They see practical value in a direct understanding between British and French counterparts, since cooperation from the departure country is widely regarded as essential to reducing crossings, and existing state-to-state efforts have not delivered the reductions the public expects. Advocates would say that even as an opposition initiative, publicly committing a rising French political force to this goal builds momentum and signals that future governments on both sides of the Channel could act in concert rather than at cross purposes.
The case against
Sceptics would counter that a memorandum signed between two opposition politicians, neither currently holding executive power in their respective countries, carries no binding force and risks overpromising a 100-day solution to a problem that has resisted simpler fixes for years. They may question the legal and logistical practicality of mass returns to France, given existing international obligations and France's own sovereign say in any such arrangement, and note that the timing, arriving amid a donations controversy engulfing Reform UK, invites reasonable doubts about whether this is substantive policy or stagecraft. Thoughtful critics might also worry that formalising cooperation between two populist parties, whatever the merits of the underlying goal, could harden rhetoric around migration without the accompanying detail needed to judge whether it is actually workable.