Nigel Farage meets French far-right leader in London

Nigel Farage has met Jordan Bardella, the leader of France's far-right National Rally (NR) party, in London.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Bardella told the BBC's Nick Robinson he believed the "extremely resilient" Reform UK leader would become the UK's next prime minister.

The 30-year-old French MEP is leading in opinion polls to win the first round of the next presidential election due in 2027.

A Reform source said the two politicians discussed small boat crossings and energy policy, particularly nuclear energy.

Farage has in the past kept his distance from NR, 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.

Farage has previously said that as leader of Ukip, he wanted to keep the party out of an alliance with the FN in the European Parliament.

His Brexit Party did not rule out entering the same group 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.

Farage backed Le Pen ahead of the 2017 French presidential election, although last year said the party's economic policies 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 the NR takes power, it would seek to implement a more restrictive immigration policy and look again at the country's migration agreements.

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."