Reform UK, France's RN pledge to stop English Channel illegal migration

Earlier this week, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and French President Emmanuel Macron announced that extra police would be deployed on beaches to deter small boat crossings.

Farage has previously sought to distance himself from the conservative movement in France, but while he said he had been "nervous" of Marine Le Pen's father, former presidential candidate Jean-Marie, he praised her for changing her party.

"What she has done with the party...getting rid of those extreme elements, putting it into the mainstream of French national debate, is a massive achievement," he said.

(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Alistair Smout in Birmingham and Sam Tabahriti in London, editing by Sarah Young, Elizabeth Piper)