Has Nigel Farage really got 'more contacts across Europe than most people'?

It’s that time of year when, as the Edinburgh Festival hits its stride, critics compile their lists of the best one-liners of the Fringe. Frontrunners this year include Olaf Falafel’s “I remember thinking, as I taped a piranha to my boomerang, this could come back to bite me”. Or Richard Stott’s “To the person who stole my bank card and spent all my money on Ancestry.com – you know who you are.”

But there’s strong competition this year from a previously little-known comedy hotshot who goes by the stage name Bobby J. Quizzed this week on his political party’s plans to save more than £50 billion in welfare spending annually by banning all foreigners, including those from the EU, from claiming benefits – a move which would involve a renegotiation of the Brexit withdrawal agreement – Robert Jenrick explained why that would be easy.

“Nigel has more contacts across Europe than most people,” he explained. Ha ha ha ha ha! Except, it appears, Jenrick was serious.

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Reform appear to believe that a full negotiation of the withdrawal deal – a negotiation which, you may prefer to forget, took nearly three years from the triggering of Article 50 to the UK’s official exit, plus an additional 11-month transition period, involved up to 25,000 civil servants and took two prime ministers – will be simple because Nigel Farage’s got lots of friends.

It is difficult to know where to start with this, although a useful point may be that this is the same Nigel Farage who this week chucked a key ally – commentator Tim Montgomerie – out of his party because he claimed that he did not deal well with criticism. That, arguably, is not a glowing endorsement of his diplomatic qualities.

Another is that while Nigel may have many contacts across Europe, very few of them have their hand on the tiller of power. True, if and when the day comes that Farage enters Downing Street Marine Le Pen (of whom Farage is reported to have said “I think Marine wants to f**k me”) may be in the Élysée Palace, although there is still plenty of time for the ankle-tagged rabble-rouser’s star to fall.

But a glance at the Brexit Party’s partners in the now-defunct Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy, in which it sat in its final term in the European Parliament, shows few are in any position to allow Farage to tear up the withdrawal agreement. The Czech Republic’s Svobodní last year won just 7.8% of the vote to its country’s parliament, while France’s The Patriots are dead.

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Italy’s Five Star Movement is a spent force, Lithuania’s Order and Justice was officially liquidated in January 2025 and Poland’s New Hope has just eight seats in the country’s lower house and none in the upper. In fact, the only party with which Farage allied himself that has a genuine chance of holding some sort of power in the near future is Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland – and Reform have sought to distance themselves from them, Farage describing the AfD as a “mixed bag” as they increasingly flirt with fascism.

In truth, it’s highly unlikely that Jenrick – who while a fool, is not an idiot – genuinely believes that a man who has fallen out with everybody who he has ever worked with will be able to rapidly negotiate one of the most complex pieces of transnational diplomacy the British state has ever conducted in a matter of weeks because he used to sit with a ragbag of Czech and Lithuanian oddballs.

But if they do try it? Strap in, as far too many of the acts currently at the Edinburgh Fringe are wont to say. It’s going to be an awfully bumpy ride.