Nigel Farage meets French far-right leader in London

Farage has in the past kept his distance from National Rally (RN), the successor party to the National Front (FN), formerly led by Marine Le Pen.

Le Pen was banned from public office for five years in March after a conviction for embezzling EU funds, barring her from standing in the 2027 presidential race.

She has condemned the verdict as a "political decision" and plans to appeal, with a court due to rule next year.

As leader of Ukip, Farage kept his party out of an alliance with the FN in the European Parliament.

But writing in 2017, he endorsed her to win that year's presidential election, praising Le Pen for reshaping the party, adding that under her leadership since 2011 it had become "about sovereignty, not race".

His Brexit Party did not rule out entering the same group as the rebranded RN after the European Parliament elections in 2019, but ultimately decided not to join the group ahead of the ejection of the party's MEPs in 2020 in the wake of Brexit.

However he criticised her party's more interventionist economic policies last year, saying they would be a "disaster" for France.

Speaking to the Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast, Bardella acknowledged Farage "may have been harsh in the past" towards his party.

"But that's politics - you're allowed to evolve," he added. "My political party has also evolved, even in its name."

He added that if it took power, RN would seek to implement a more restrictive immigration policy and look again at the country's migration agreements.

Bardella's party wants to place a "national priority" on welfare, limiting benefits to French people.

He said he believed in police co-operation between France and the UK on small boats, but with the intention of returning migrants to their "countries of origin" rather than the French coast.

He said: "If I am head of the French government tomorrow, France will no longer be a country of mass immigration.

"Therefore, by implementing measures designed to drastically reduce immigration to France, this will inevitably have consequences for the departure of migrants from Calais, in northern France, to Great Britain."

Writing on X after the meeting, Bardella said the pair had discussed shared challenges facing the UK and France, including "mass immigration" and boosting economic growth.