The UKIP leader said “no” to Marine Le Pen. The British nationalist leader did not succumb to his French colleague pressure, due to basic ideological differences, for instance “her anti-Semitic prejudice,” he explained – even though Le Pen “has great qualities” and “is achieving remarkable results,” Farage admitted.
The Front National leader said that the UKIP “could participate a coalition in the European Parliament” given that “a joint project against the European Union is in European citizens’ interest.” Farage cold-shouldered her, trying to join forces with the newly born Neo-Gaullist party, the Debout la Republique. The British politician has lately participated a meeting of this tiny French reactionary party – and participants acclaimed him as a hero.
Interviewed by BBC, Le Pen said Farage is a “charismatic leader,” and that “if he really understood how severe the situation is in Europe, then he could not avoid joining other nationalist parties without strategic and tactical tricks.”
UKIP is flying high in pre-electoral British polls, getting votes especially in the exhausted Tory party – a victim of both Cameron’s political uncertainties and of a recent scandal involving the Minister of Culture (story concerning the way in which she paid for her second house loan). Farage is also trying to get votes from the working class, with a fight against foreign workers – who, according to him, come to Britain to ‘steal’ British people’s jobs: a good old classic of populism which could perhaps work even in the United Kingdom.