The former UK Independence Party leader — who has come to known as ‘Mr. Brexit’ — has declared his preference for the next French president as Sunday’s polling day approaches.
Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Mr. Farage, who now hosts an LBC radio show in the United Kingdom as well as being a Fox News contributor, wrote that despite a long-standing concern over the Front National, he is now ready to back Marine Le Pen.
“At no point in time did I want Ukip to do a deal with the French National Front (FN),” he writes. “The party’s roots were deep in Vichy and I believed anti-Semitism was embedded in its DNA. All this made it the wrong place for Ukip to be. I’ve always seen Jean-Marie Le Pen as the modern-day Chauvin.
“Then, in January 2011, an overwhelming vote of FN members saw Marine Le Pen become leader – beating Holocaust-denying Bruno Gollnisch. From the start, she wanted the FN to be more like Ukip than the BNP. I was told that this would be a nightmare for me”.
Mr. Farage, who has previously interviewed Ms. Le Pen on his LBC radio show, goes on to state that he believes Marine Le Pen has been treated unfairly due to her father’s image in the country as an anti-Semite:
It was always monstrous that she should be judged in the image of her father – an accusation many still make today. I wonder whether, had her surname not been “Le Pen”, she might now be ahead in the polls.There is nothing she has said in this entire election campaign that I find unreasonable or extreme. Indeed, she has a more rational line on Islam than many Eurosceptic parties across the Continent. She is a sincere Eurosceptic, and under her the FN is about sovereignty, not race. Marine has met virtually all of my previous conditions.
He goes on to describe the establishment candidate, Emmanuel Macron, as a “cardboard cut out creation of the political class”, adding: “From a UK perspective, as we enter tough negotiations, what is best for our country? I have no doubt that a Le Pen victory would give the EU an even bigger headache than the UK voting for Brexit, which is why the European Commission is openly backing Macron”.