France’s far right president-in-waiting wants Britain to rejoin the EU

The gruesome twosome agreed that they were going to stop the migrant boats if Bardella becomes French president in April 2027. In fact, Bardella said he would do this on his own, suggesting they might be a dead issue by the time the next UK general election takes place in mid-to-late 2029 – not such great news for Nigel, there.

They agreed that despite Reform’s leader saying racist things as a schoolboy and proposing racist policies today, Nigel Farage is definitely not a racist. “As far as I know, he has always been irreproachable when it comes to the fight against anti-Semitism,” Bardella said of the man who used to sidle up to classmates and say “Hitler was right”, sing “gas them all, gas them all” and make a hissing sound to simulate the sound of deadly Zyklon B being released into the gas chambers.

And the preening pair agreed that they loved each other almost as much as they love themselves. Bardella said Farage was “a great patriot” (he didn’t mention for which country), while a source close to Farage said “Nigel came away impressed”, before suggesting that the young man’s success was largely down to following in the footsteps of an inspirational figure from his childhood: “He would have grown up watching Nigel… I actually think he [Bardella] is a bit of a fan of Nigel.”

(Even more impressed with the Frenchman was Farage’s former Brexit Party sidekick Alex Phillips, now with little-watched online channel Talk and also present at the lunch, who gushed on her blog: “I met Bardella. And I was poleaxed… ‘Do you have a wife?’ I ask. It is something he very much wants to do, and seemingly soon. I wondered what the pillow talk would be like… There is something altogether rather perfect about Bardella.”)

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But there are a couple of areas where Farage and Bardella are not aligned. First, as Phillips revealed, the latter left his white wine “untouched as multiple bottles came and got drained by everyone else”.

And perhaps more importantly, Bardella is not a Frexiteer, National Rally having ditched their commitment to leaving the EU once the full disaster of Britain’s exit became clear. “Tomorrow, the United Kingdom could have its place in partnership with a European Union that is not a federal union, but a cooperation of free and sovereign states,” he told the Telegraph,” saying he wanted to “transform the European Union,” by paring down its executive arm and giving more power to the European Council. If that happened, he said, “it is conceivable that one day we will see the return of Great Britain”.

A Frenchman who doesn’t drink? A far right Farage fan who wants Britain back in the EU (albeit in a much different form)? Imagine how much this must be boggling Nigel’s narrow mind!

Just wait until he finds out about the identity of the Reform MP who went missing on Tuesday when the Commons briefly debated a Lib Dem proposal to rejoin a customs union with the EU. The vote, remarkably, was a tie, with 100 votes both for and against, meaning it passed on the deputy speaker’s casting vote.

Who was the guilty party, whose vote could have prevented yet another embarrassing setback (albeit a tokenistic one) for the Brexiteers? It was none other than Nigel Farage, busy enjoying himself at lunch with Jordan Bardella. Sacre bleu and zut alors, as they say in Clacton.