Was Farage inspired by the rise of Le Pen?

The last time Nigel Farage stood for parliament was in 2015. He wasn’t elected, and it was his seventh failure to win a seat, as his many enemies love to point out.

What has inspired Farage, the new leader of the Reform party, to have an eighth shot? The state of the domestic opposition, perhaps, and also maybe the rise in the last decade of European politicians who, like him, were once considered freaks, failures and fascists.

A decade ago, even Farage considered Marine Le Pen too extreme to form any form of alliance in the European parliament. It was specifically her party’s history of ‘anti-Semitism and general prejudice in its DNA’ that repelled him.

His remarks infuriated Le Pen, who had replaced her father, Jean-Marie, as leader of the National Front in 2011 and was in the process of trying to detoxify the party. Calling his comments ‘extremely disagreeable’, Le Pen said of the then-Ukip leader: ‘Slandering your neighbour to try to make yourself look whiter than white, it’s not correct.