Pauline Hanson and Nigel Farage to meet as right-wing parties surge in polls

Pauline Hanson will meet up with Reform leader Nigel Farage in London, where the pair will be “crossing notes”, Barnaby Joyce has revealed.

The meeting of the two right-wing party leaders comes as Senator Hanson’s One Nation continues to experience a surge of popularity in the polls, the primary vote hitting 31 per cent in June in NewsPoll.

For his part, Mr Farage leads the most popular party in the UK according to YouGov polling — the company also finding that 61 per cent of Britons now see Reform UK as a ‘main party’, up from 19 per cent two years ago, demonstrating the fragmentation of British party system.

Mr Joyce, who became the first federal One Nation MP after his defection, said it made sense for the pair to meet and discuss strategy.

“Nigel Farage, according to the polling is about to become the Prime Minister of England. Pauline and One Nation are doing incredibly well, and I suppose they should be crossing notes about where do you go forward from here,” the New England MP told Sky News.

“I think that’s a very sensible thing to do, making sure that they get all the information you can to do the best job they can is a good thing.

“I was over in England only just recently and used it to work out how much they’re making a botch of the place with their involvement with intermittent power.

“It’s what politicians should do is make themselves as informed as possible so they can do the best job for their nation.”

Mr Farage’s Reform Party won five seats of the 650 at the last UK general election in 2024, where former Labour leader Keir Starmer swept to power with 411 seats and the Conservative vote sank. The next poll is due in 2029.

Mr Starmer announced his intention to resign last month, with Westminster veteran Andy Burnham widely seen as his likely successor in 10 Downing Street.

But the change in leader has only marginally shifted opinion, with 26 per cent of British adults backing Reform if a general election was held tomorrow, two points ahead of Labour and eight more than the mainstream right-wing party the Conservatives, according to Ipsos.

“With Labour narrowing the gap with Reform UK, public doubts over whether Reform UK or the Conservatives are ready for government and Andy Burnham preferred as Prime Minister to Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage, Labour will be more optimistic about the future than they were a month ago,” Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos in the UK, said.

“However, the jury is out with the public on whether Burnham himself is ready to be Prime Minister and whether a Burnham government will deliver in office.

“Which suggests he will have to start well to convince a sceptical public his government can succeed where others are perceived to have failed.”