Our People

National Leadership

Justin Barrett

National Party Leader

Justin Barrett is the Leader and co-founder of the National Party. He is an experienced campaigner and has been involved in Eurosceptic and anti-abortion activism since the early 1990s. He was prominent in the 2001 ‘No to Nice’ campaign and ran for the European Parliament in 2004 on a platform of immigration control.

After a lengthy break from politics Justin Barrett decided in 2016 that the time was right to launch a new political movement. He had long advocated the development of an authentic nationalist party but up until then conditions had been unfavourable. Encouraged by the response he was getting from a new generation of nationalists he publicly announced the Party’s foundation in November of that year.

His goal was to campaign not on a single issue but to create a coherent ideological front built around a committed core of activists. He described the Party as a “long term project” and called for determined people who were prepared “to see it through.”

James Reynolds

National Party Deputy Leader

James Reynolds is the Deputy Leader and co-founder of the National Party. Described by the Farmer’s Journal as “one of the most controversial figures in Longford farming”, he has a long history of involvement with Eurosceptic movements and with Irish farming politics. From 1999 to 2003 he served as chairman of Longford county executive of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) and later as treasurer of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA). He helped form the Farmers for No campaign in 2009 in response to the Lisbon Treaty Referendum and again in 2012 in response to the Fiscal Compact Treaty. His political life has been marked by attempts to inject nationalist and Eurosceptic discourse into the movements he has been a part of.