Jordan Bardella will address Reform UK's party conference in Birmingham on Friday, putting the French far-right leader alongside Nigel Farage as both men seek to strengthen their political profiles. The appearance also marks closer ties between two of Europe's most successful populist radical-right parties that share similar positions on immigration but have not always been natural allies.
Issued on: 04/09/2026 - RFI
By: Alison Hird
Bardella, 30, and 62-year-old Farage are from different generations but appear to appreciate one another.
“I am pleased to welcome Jordan to our party conference,” Farage said in a recent statement quoted by Politico. “He represents a new generation of political leaders who are standing up for their countries, their borders and their people.”
The two men met at a private members' club in London last December, where they discussed small boat crossings and energy.
"I think Nigel Farage will be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom, for a very simple reason: he has fought, sincerely, I believe, all his life, to defend the interests of his country, the interests of his people," Bardella told the BBC.
Presidential ambitions
Marine Le Pen has officially declared herself a candidate for the French presidency, with Bardella as her pick for prime minister.
But she will have to overturn a 2025 conviction for embezzling European Parliament funds in order to run. France's highest court is expected to issue its ruling just ahead of next April’s poll.
EU prosecutors launched a probe in May into a possible misappropriation of EU funds after a complaint alleged the RN had used European grants to benefit Bardella.
Despite this, Le Pen and Bardella are acting as though they will soon be in the Elysée Palace, with recent opinion putting them ahead at this stage.
The main benefit of appearing at the Reform conference “is for Bardella himself,” said political scientist Jean-Yves Camus.
“Travelling to Birmingham allows him to demonstrate that he is still actively campaigning and to support a political party whose agenda is close to his own.”
As well as leading the RN, Bardella is a member of the European Parliament with the Patriots group. In June, he toured Poland, where he met President Karol Nawrocki and Krzysztof Bosak, one of the leaders of the far-right Confederation coalition.
Following his trip to Birmingham, Bardella will head to the Ambrosetti Forum on Lake Como – a kind of Italian Davos – on Saturday.
Like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who toured Europe to boost her international stature ahead of taking office in 2022, Bardella is keen to beef up his profile abroad and reassure public opinion that a far-right party is fit to govern France.
“Bardella has always been attached to the international credibility of the National Rally,” said one of Bardella's aides, reported in Politico. “He will give great attention to the international press during the campaign.”
The RN also stands to benefit from closer relations with Reform, a party whose positions are particularly close to its own on migration, Camus said.
The UK is not due to hold an election until 2029, but the Conservative right and Reform continue to put pressure on the government of new Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
Like the National Rally, Farage is angling for power and has built up the party’s popularity on an anti-immigration ticket.
Outlining the party's proposed Channel migration plan on 3 August, Farage said: “Operation Fortress would be a joint military operation, it will save lives, help France fulfil its mission of blocking the boats, and we will make huge savings.”
Bardella, meanwhile, advocates turning the EU border agency Frontex into a tougher coastguard police force able to turn back illegal migrants.
The two parties and their supporters have “a lot of similarities,” said Stijn Van Kessel, professor of comparative politics at Queen Mary University of London, with immigration as “the number one theme”.
“Reform has also taken very radical positions in terms of deporting illegal migrants and stopping benefits to any foreign nationals.”
The conference gives both Bardella and Farage a platform to promote their parties as part of a broader radical-right movement, Van Kessel said.
“For Farage and other actors and politicians of the far right, it can be tempting to present themselves as part of a wave of successful new right figures that have the same general goal,” he said.
“So championing national sovereignty, stopping immigration... they like to present themselves as a broader movement that’s not only affecting their own country but across the globe.”
Arguably it's Farage that is most in need of shoring up his political credentials.
A YouGov poll published this week showed support for Reform had fallen over the past year, with Farage losing seven points since June.
He is facing a parliamentary standards investigation for allegedly failing to declare a €6 million donation before entering Parliament. Robert Lowe, a former Reform UK MP, also broke with the party last year and formed his own nationalist party, Restore, in February.
Despite this, Reform is “still a force to be reckoned with,” Van Kessel said.
From distance to closer ties
Farage, he added, “likes to portray Reform as right wing, not a radical right wing party,” but its proposals and supporters suggest otherwise.
“Reform is very similar to a lot of other populist, radical right parties that present themselves as a sort of voice of the ordinary people, the protectors of their nation and national customs ... that go against the elites that don’t speak in the name of the people and that are responsible for opening borders and creating more immigration.”
For years, however, Farage kept his distance from the National Front, as the National Rally was known until 2018.
As a member of the European Parliament with his former party UK Independence Party, or Ukip, Farage was “reluctant to associate himself with like-minded radical right parties abroad,” Van Kessel said.
“He shunned being in the same group as the main populist, radical right parties, including the National Front.”
That has changed, Van Kessel said, in part because Bardella and Le Pen have successfully rebranded the National Rally's image, distancing it from its racist and anti-Semitic predecessor and giving it more of an “image of respectability”.
The parties still differ over the European Union. Farage campaigned strongly for Brexit and the UK formally left the EU in January 2020, while the National Rally no longer supports leaving the bloc.
Both Bardella and Le Pen nevertheless remain “very eurosceptic,” Van Kessel said.
“So I would emphasise more the commonalities in their ideology rather than their differences.”
Playing the business card
The Reform UK conference is also a business convention and carries a hefty ticket price.
“It’s extraordinary, everything is behind a paywall,” Camus said. “The main debate, even the side events cost money, you can even have coffee with Nigel Farage in a lounge at Heathrow Airport if you pay an extra hundred euros or so.
"Even diplomats attending are being asked to pay £950.”
Bardella will be surrounded by businesspeople, investors and bankers, an environment suited to the self-described “business-friendly” politician.
“There’s a notable difference between him and Marine Le Pen, who is much more atuned to the expectations of her electorate, particularly working-class voters, whom she needs to hang on to for 2027,” Camus said.
“Bardella is much more in favour of creating a political environment in which companies, whether small businesses or CAC40 companies, can expand their profits.”
The conference therefore suits Bardella better than Le Pen, Camus said, with Bardella expected to deliver a speech in English.
“It suits her because the environment she would be entering is not really hers,” he said. “Bardella is certainly much more interested in meeting people who will be talking about artificial intelligence, banking systems and the economy more generally.”
Bardella is also likely to meet potential campaign fundraisers among Britain's “extremely multicultural” financial community, where “many French people work in financial institutions,” Camus said.
Le Pen has repeatedly said French banks refuse to lend her party campaign funds for political reasons, forcing it to seek foreign lenders, including Russia.
RN treasurer Kevin Pfeffer told Euractiv in July that the party was still looking for a bank loan to finance the campaign, whose costs are reimbursed only after the vote.
Bardella signs pact with Farage to stop small boat crossings 'forever'
At the Reform UK Party conference on Friday, Nigel Farage and Jordan Bardella signed an agreement, vowing to end irregular migrant crossings "forever", should their respective parties come to power.
On Friday, Jordan Bardella of the far-right National Rally party signed a "memorandum of understanding" with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, aimed at stopping the boats "forever" — should their parties come to power — at the party's annual conference in Birmingham
Farage and Bardella signed the agreement which vows to end irregular migrant crossing on stage. The Reform UK leader hailed the deal as a "genuine new entente cordiale" between the two countries and political parties.
Bardella — who is hoping to become France's next Prime Minister — said that "the United Kingdom must not be the destination for illegal immigrants entering France. They must be sent back to their countries of origin.”
Delivering his speech in English, something he rarely does, he accused French President Emmanuel Macron of "failing" to protect France. Switching to French for the press conference that followed his speech, Bardella argued that “if France managed its borders better, no one would leave Calais.”
Bardella and Farage's meeting followed the French President's trip to London on Thursday, where he met with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham to discuss how to "scale up" efforts to tackle illegal crossings and strengthen the UK's relationship with Europe.
Britain's Labour government said this week that the UK had recorded the lowest number of boats carrying migrants and asylum seekers across the Channel from France to England this summer since 2019.
Tense past relations with the National Rally party
Farage and Bardella last met in December last year at a private members' club in London. But despite their shared eurosceptic views, Farage has not always had a smooth relationship with the National Rally Party — or with Le Pen.
In 2014, Le Pen accused Farage of "aggression" against her party, after he refused to form an alliance with the National Rally party (which at the time was known as the National Front) in the European Parliament due to what he described as the party's "anti-Semitism and general prejudice."
When questioned about his past ties to the National Rally party by the press, Farage conceded on Friday that he had been “nervous” about the National Front, founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen, when he began his career as a member of the European Parliament in 1999.
“When Marine took over, I observed the situation; I didn’t get involved right away. What she has accomplished, namely ridding the party of those extremist elements and bringing it into the mainstream is a considerable achievement", said Farage.
Reform UK led national polls in the UK for over a year until July, but the party's standing has slumped in recent weeks amid multiple scandals involving allegations of irregular political funding.
On Friday, hours before Reform's conference was set to begin, Farage's Reform UK was reported to the Metropolitan Police and the Electoral Commission over alleged illegal donations.
This followed an undercover investigation aired by British broadcaster Channel 4 News, in which an investigative group called Verbatim posed as a wealthy American financier and his UK-based son. Under UK law, donations from foreign investors are illegal.
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