In the week that David Cameron returned to government and Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan came a cropper, Nigel Farage has been on the other side of the world preparing for a Bushtucker trial. Farage’s decision to sign up for I’m a Celebrity has been spectacularly badly timed on his part. One of the most sensational political stories of recent years, and Nigel is deep in the Australian jungle with has-beens, nobodies and creepy crawlies.

In justifying his decision to accept the reality TV dollar, the former Brexit party leader said: ‘I am hoping those who hate me might hate me a little bit less afterwards.’ Admitting his appearance in I’m A Celebrity was ‘a gamble’, Farage added: ‘I have been a little bit demonised… and the idea that somehow the things I represent – mean-spirited, small-minded, nasty, the ‘little Englander’ – all those accusations that have been flung at me over the years just aren’t true. If we can dispel some of those misconceptions, then that will be a good thing.’

Marine Le Pen softened her image with cats, Nigel Farage hopes to do it with cockroaches.

Why would any of this matter to Farage, who earns a good living hosting a show on GB News, were he not laying the ground for a political comeback? He’s chasing votes, all right, but not the ones that decide who gets to do the next Bushtucker trial.

Farage’s use of the word ‘demonised’ suggests that he may be taking inspiration from Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally in France. The moment that she succeeded her father, the sulphurous Jean-Marie, in 2011, Le Pen’s priority was what she called the ‘de-demonisation’ of her party.

It has been a long and painful process for Le Pen, one which included severing political ties with her father in 2015 and then changing the name of the party he’d founded in 1972 from the National Front to the National Rally. But it’s been worth it. In 2012 the National Rally won two seats in parliament; a decade later they won 88. They are now the second most powerful single party in the National Assembly behind Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party.

But arguably the most significant factor in Le Pen’s journey from fringe figure to stateswoman is the image makeover she underwent following her defeat to Macron in the 2017 presidential election. She blew the slim chance she had of defeating Macron in the second round run-off with a disastrous live debate on the eve of voting. Her aggression, and her ignorance, repelled voters and it was rumoured that the experience left her deeply depressed.

Le Pen emerged in 2018 with a new name for her party, a new set of advisers and a new image. Gone was the Marine forever moaning about Islam, immigration and Frexit; instead, all she wanted to talk about was cats. ‘They bring me deep joy, console me and give me a lot of softness in this world of brutes,’ she declared in one interview.

In another interview Le Pen mused about quitting politics to run a cattery. Then in 2020 she announced that she had passed an exam to become a qualified breeder of cats.

Outwardly, this caused much merriment among her political opponents. Éric Dupond-Moretti, the Minister of Justice, ]6] sniggered: ‘The classic right has drifted so far off course that Madame Le Pen has calmed down and is raising cats’.

Privately, however, Le Pen’s enemies began to worry that her feline makeover was paying dividends among the electorate. On the eve of the 2022 presidential election, one of Macron’s ministers admitted that ‘with her cats…she’s become likeable. Who wants to get out and vote against Le Pen?’

Enough people did vote against her – or at least abstained – to ensure that Macron was returned to power. Nevertheless, Le Pen’s share of the vote in the 2022 run-off was 41 per cent, an increase of eight per cent on five years earlier.

Eighteen months later the ‘normalisation’ of Le Pen is complete, strong enough to withstand an attempt last week by the left and also some within Macron’s government to tarnish her with the anti-Semitism of her father. But the people are no longer fooled: 60 per cent of people declared in a poll that Le Pen and her MPs had every right to participate in last Sunday’s rally in Paris against the rising tide of anti-Semitism.

According to Le Figaro, that rally was the moment when the daughter finally atoned for the sins of the father. ‘It took Marine Le Pen more than 4,300 days and a violent political divorce from her father before she could be applauded several times at a march against anti-Semitism,’ commented the paper.

Among Le Pen’s new allies are Serge Klarsfeld, the president of a Holocaust memorial organisation. He said that the National Rally had earned the right to march alongside their Jewish citizens. ‘Her father was the spokesperson for Holocaust denial,’ he declared. ‘Marine Le Pen has completely changed the ideology….the National Rally is a party that, if we compare it with La France Insoumise terms of anti-Semitism, can only deserve good marks.’

La France Insoumise is the party of Jean-Luc Melenchon, the French Jeremy Corbyn, who shares with his British counterpart a loathing of Israel. One prominent member of the LFI has described Hamas as a ‘resistance organisation’ and another recently appeared to cast doubt on the Hamas atrocities of 7 October during a conversation in Tunis with pro-Palestine activists.

The left can rage as much as they like at the rise of Le Pen, and keep warning that a vote for her party is a vote for fascism, but they should instead look at themselves. If one abandons one’s core electorate, the white working class, as the Socialist party purposefully did in 2011, then it should be no surprise if these men and women look elsewhere for political representation.

There is also a large swathe of the electorate in Britain which is now politically homeless. What exactly, they wonder, is the difference between Labour and the Conservatives? Nigel Farage has his eye on this disillusioned mass – after all, if David Cameron can make a political comeback, so can he.

Is that why he’s in the jungle, taking the first steps on a campaign trail for next year’s general elections? Look at me, viewers, is his message: I’m not the demon the mainsteam media make me out to be.

Marine Le Pen softened her image with cats, Nigel Farage hopes to do it with cockroaches.