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| Marine Le Pen, leader of 'Front National', France |
Populist and anti-immigrant far-right parties will fight together on a common manifesto in next year's European Union elections but will not form an alliance with neo-fascist parties, Marine Le Pen has said.
The French Front National (FN) leader is planning to team up with Dutch, Swedish, Belgian and Austrian anti-immigration parties but has asked her father Jean-Marie Le Pen to break with groups such as the British National Party (BNP).
During a Strasbourg press conference to launch her softer focus "European Alliance for Freedom", Miss Le Pen, who is already an MEP, poured scorn on Nigel Farage for being immature, scared of joining forces with her and worried that she would overshadow him and Ukip as Europe's most important populist leader.
"We do have contact with them. Ukip is a young movement without the maturity of established nationalist parties. Ukip is already so much a victim of demonisation that it is afraid to undergo the demonisation other parties have faced. It is afraid of its image," she said.
"I would like them to join the alliance but if they don't want to that is too bad. I think Nigel Farage is worried because I would be the leader." » | Bruno Waterfield, Brussels | Wednesday, October 23, 2013
