Meet Nigel Farage’s girlfriend – the quietly influential Frenchwoman

Nigel Farage has had a complicated love life. In 2017, while married to his second wife Kirsten Mehr, a British tabloid published a photo of a younger French woman taking out the bins at his London bolthole. Her name was Laure Ferrari, she was 15 years younger than Farage, and she appeared to be staying at the five-storey, £4m townhouse near Buckingham Palace that Farage used when in the capital. At first, when the image surfaced, Farage dismissed the idea of a relationship as “crackers”. He said at the time: “She is someone I have worked with and known well for a long time who wanted somewhere to stay for a week that wouldn’t cost her any money. It’s a working relationship. You can inflate it however you want to”. Ferrari also denied that she was anything more than Farage’s lodger: “I have no trustworthy friends in London who could have hosted me. I asked and he accepted. He is just trying to be helpful.” A week later, Farage’s German wife of 18 years, with whom he’d had two daughters, Victoria and Isabelle, announced she and her husband had been living separate lives for some time and he’d moved out of their Kent home “a while ago”. She added, “This is a situation that suits everyone and is not news to any of the people involved.” Shorts Farage and Ferrari didn’t officially announce their relationship, but rumours swirled when the pair were seen slow-dancing together at a Brexit party in 2018. A fellow guest at the event said: ‘There was no question that they were a couple. Laure was putting on quite a display. She seemed to twerk a bit and was all over Nigel. From the look on his face, he was loving every minute.” Yet, the real relationship reveal came when Farage left the I’m a Celebrity jungle in 2023, she was there waiting for him. She said later: “It was an opportunity to say, ‘We are together and we don’t give a damn what you think.’” Ferrari has been dragged into the spotlight following a row over Farage’s finances after The Sunday Times reported he received financial support from a long-standing ally before he became an MP, which he did not declare to parliamentary authorities after his election in 2024. Earlier this year it emerged that separately received a £5m gift from a party donor before the election, which he also did not declare. In a video statement, Farage said he had done nothing wrong and he wanted voters to judge his actions rather than journalists, adding that parliamentary investigations had become a “political tool”. One report has revealed that a house in Clacton, which Farage had claimed to be the owner of, was in fact bought in Ferrari’s name. The couple go way back. Ferrari was working as a waitress at a restaurant called the Cornichon Masqué in Strasbourg in 2007 when she met Farage and his colleague Godfrey Bloom, while serving their table. At the time, Farage and Bloom were MEPs for Ukip, with Farage making waves in UK politics but still on the sidelines. The political duo downed pints at the restaurant when the European Parliament sat in Strasboug for a week each month. Ferrari, who was born nearby in Epinal, France, was 28 at the time and was going through a tricky patch, moonlighting as a waitress because she’d had to put her clothing business – Urban Flavour – into liquidation. She’d not ended up finishing her course in English civilisation and communication at Strasbourg university, and her CV was sparse. But she was a fluent English speaker, and very interested in politics. Farage was looking for a French speaker for his team, and so he gave her a job as a parliamentary assistant. Ferrari would later say that she had actually worked for Bloom, rather than Farage, and Bloom confirmed this to Le Monde newspaper. According to the reporter, Bloom added “with a smile”, that “she [Ferrari] was attractive to men of a certain age”. He also told The Times: “She was looking for a bit of a career change and was bright as a button. I knew she would add value. Whatever she does, she adds value.” Bloom, who is retired, has remained friends with Ferrari and describes her as a libertarian. With her waitressing days behind her, Ferrari rose quickly within Ukip, becoming head of public relations for its delegation in the European Parliament, and went on to work for several right-wing research organisations and political parties in France. Once she’d left Ukip, she and Farage stayed in each other’s lives, and are now in a long-term relationship. The couple at an event in 2024. Ferrari was serving at the restaurant Cornichon Masqué in Strasbourg in 2007 when she met Farage, then a Ukip MEP, for the first time (Photo: Kate Green/Getty) Ferrari said in an interview in 2026 that she would not “meddle” in political affairs like she believes Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie did. “If people elect Nigel Farage, they are not electing Laure Ferrari,” she told Le Monde. Yet, it is clear that despite her no longer working in politics, she has had a big influence on Farage and his career moves. She said there were “three things Nigel has done in his life that I encouraged him to do” which make her “proud”. The first was encouraging him to leave Ukip in 2018 – “I couldn’t stand that party anymore, not even the colors, yellow and purple… I told Nigel he was better than that after Brexit”. The Brexit Party was born, in which Ferrari says she was “very involved”, and in 2021 it morphed into Reform UK. The second thing she says she helped push Farage to do was getting him to take part in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!, wanting people to see he was not “the villainous, racist, misogynistic and homophobic man portrayed in the newspapers”. The third claim Ferrari makes is that she encouraged Farage to run in the July 2024 general election. He’d been considering going to the US to help Donald Trump with his campaign for re-election, but Ferrari said she made him see that “his ideas were gaining ground – especially on immigration, let’s call it what it is – there was an appetite wherever he went in the country”. She has also, alongside Farage, hobnobbed with Trump and Steve Bannon. The couple own at least five homes across Surrey, Essex and Kent. Farage has confirmed that Ferrari purchased their house in Clacton – which has four bedrooms and a heated swimming pool – with her own money. “I haven’t lent money to anybody. I didn’t give her money,” he told The Mirror when queries were raised about his finances. “She comes from a very successful French family and she can afford it herself. It’s convenient, it works, and she loves it there.” Ferrari seems to have bought the £885k house outright, mortgage-free, but has refused to say directly how she bought it. Little is known about her family, as they appear to be very private, but a BBC investigation in September 2025 questioned the Ferrari family’s alleged wealth. Ferrari’s father, now a retiree, ran a haulage business in Strasbourg, France, for many years but the company was liquidated in 2020 and showed a deficit on its books at the time. “Mr Ferrari was a discreet person who didn’t really talk to anyone here. His wife was also very discreet,” one local businessman told BBC News. “As far as I know, the company was liquidated when Ferrari retired years ago.” Ferrari’s parents live in a flat worth around €300,000 in a Strasbourg suburb, which they co-own with their two daughters. In recent years Ferrari has been the director of a consultancy, now called Baxter Laois Limited, which is the registered owner of Farage’s gin brand. While Ferrari has said she’s keen to stay in the background, she has also expressed joy at the idea of moving into No 10 if Reform form the next government. Asked what appeals to her about it, she said: “All the diplomacy side of things. I really like ambassadors’ dinners, Ferrero Rocher, that sort of thing…”. There is certainly a need for diplomacy if you’re going to be Farage’s partner. When he was taken to hospital in 2010 after a two-seater aircraft crashed in Northamptonshire during a political stunt, his former mistress, Annabel Fuller (who has claimed her own 12-year affair with Farage started in 2004) has said that she rushed to the hospital to see him – only to find his second wife Kirsten, and Ferrari were already there. Aides reportedly had to try and stop them all meeting. Two years later, in a leaked email that Ferrari sent Fuller, she wrote that British women are “drunken tarts [who] put themselves in embarrassing situations with well-known married men whom they kiss in public”, while French women can be “very discreet and respectful hiding a sincere love affair for three years and six months… not looking for any kind of publicity at all”.