Jurgen Sommer, the politician representing Calais in the French parliament, would very much like to see Britain remain part of the EU.
In an interview with the BBC, Sommer, a Marine Le Pen supporter, said Britain would “soon be back in what we have always had.”
“Because we are not very independent, we no longer have very strong people in the UK,” he added.
Sommer, a member of the far-right National Front party, also took a swipe at Boris Johnson, a former mayor of London and leading Brexit supporter, and suggested that the current mayor of Calais should work a little harder to defend the city, which has seen a huge influx of immigrants attempting to stow away on trucks bound for Britain.
“Now he’s in big trouble because the far-right NPA [National Front] who call Boris ‘Bonapartist’ are going to use him against the mayor of Calais because the mayor of Calais is a strongman,” Sommer told the BBC.
Johnson rejected the suggestion Wednesday, telling a radio station in London: “If he wants to put it like that he’s free to do so, but that is quite clearly, in my mind, a demeaning insult.”
The mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, also pointed out that Paris offered refuge to many migrants trying to reach England, and told The Telegraph, “we could never want for Brexit to be the end of Britain.”
The election of Le Pen, who led France’s far-right National Front party to its first-ever electoral win in regional elections last month, has opened the floodgates for another round of polling over Brexit and other issues. The National Front also holds sway with voters on France’s far-left and northwestern regions.
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a far-right candidate representing a far-right wing opposition party in regional elections held in the March 24-25 ballot, appeared to suggest that he could forge ties with other Euroskeptics to mount a referendum on leaving the European Union.
Asked on the TV program France 24 if he would support a referendum, Dupont-Aignan said: “It is to that end that I am in several circumstances involved, even if I am a little bit isolated… we cannot go from political turmoil to political instability.”
Dupont-Aignan, a physician turned MP, said that his party could “consider a convergence or a grudging or informal convergence with the right-wing [to rally] against French involvement, against a “federalisation” of Europe, against a dirigiste one, against democracy being shredded.”
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