Jordan Bardella won his bet. The young MEP was largely elected (84.84%) at the head of the National Rally, Saturday, November 5, against Louis Aliot (15.16%). At only 27, the interim president of the RN was preferred by activists to the experienced mayor of Perpignan, according to the results announced at the 18th party congress, meeting at the Maison de la Mutualité, in Paris.
This election without much suspense, which turned into a plebiscite, marks a small revolution in this party which, for the first time since the creation of the National Front 50 years ago, will no longer be led by a member of the Le Pen family – at least on paper. “It’s an originality, indeed, but I de facto follow in the footsteps of Marine Le Pen. My objective is to make the change in continuity”assures the new boss of the RN, whom franceinfo met at the party’s headquarters, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.
With these elements of language, which he handles almost daily on television sets, the young president of the RN is already displaying his strategy. “Jordan Bardella wants to continue to break the codes to break with the image of a party that the French have for too long considered authoritarian, clannish and unprepared for the exercise of power”, explains one of his supporters during the internal campaign. Clearly, to continue the “normalization” of the party, even if the racist remarks pronounced Thursday by the deputy Grégoire de Fournas in the National Assembly, widely condemned by the political class, risk leaving traces in the opinion.
The story between the native of Drancy (Seine-Saint-Denis) and the RN began very early. Inserted in the National Front from high school, Jordan Bardella was quickly spotted by the national authorities of the party for his very active activism.
“At first, my mother didn’t want me to join the FN, because we lived in Saint-Denis and she was afraid for me. But after a few days of negotiations, she said yes.”
Jordan Bardella, President of the National Rallyat franceinfo
In 2014, Florian Philippot offered him to do his first TV by participating in a program devoted to military service on BFMTV. “I had arranged to have him appointed departmental secretary of Seine-Saint-Denis and invested him as regional councilor for Ile-de-France in 2015”says the ex-right arm of Marine Le Pen, who has since left the RN.
Everything accelerated in November 2018 for the young geography student. Jordan Bardella, then president of Generation Nation, the youth section of the party, has an appointment in the office of Marine Le Pen to validate visuals. “I wanted to show her what we had planned for young people and she said to me: ‘I want you to be our top candidate for the European elections'”he remembers, all smiles. “In fact, everyone knew for several months, except me.”
The choice is risky but winning for the RN. The list led by the young sovereignist, almost unknown to the general public, comes first, ahead of that supported by President Emmanuel Macron. A gamble that immediately allows him to establish himself as the rising figure of his political family.
Today, his election at the head of the National Rally hardly surprises his supporters. Everyone sees it as a logical step in the meteoric rise of the man who has been acting since September 2021. “He is gifted, energetic and friendly. For me, he is a boy of his time. He understood the codes of the media and social networks, which is a great strength for leading a political party”testifies Sébastien Chenu, deputy and vice-president RN of the National Assembly. “Personally, he blew me away. In addition to being very good on TV sets, I noticed quite quickly that he had a real vision to bring our party into a new dimension”enthuses RN deputy and former journalist Philippe Ballard.
“The first time I saw him was in 2017 during a debate on a program I hosted on LCI. There were PS, LR and LREM deputies facing him and he smashed them. It was clay pigeon shooting.”
Philippe Ballard, RN deputy for Oiseat franceinfo
For his part, Jordan Bardella claims to be aware of the responsibility that now weighs on his shoulders. “I am at the head of a political movement of which we have to build the last step that separates us from the exercise of power”explains the new boss of the RN, who decided to bring together the new party authorities on Sunday.
For “to make national ideas triumph” in the next presidential election, as he has been hammering for several weeks, Jordan Bardella is considering “to occupy the terrain of ideas and territories”. Because “the electoral battle cannot be won without winning the ideological and cultural battle”.
He wants to launch, in January 2023, training for future party executives. This “online platform” mounted in partnership with the sounder Jérôme Sainte-Marie will offer “conferences, interviews, argument notes or even forums”. Of the “training on party doctrine and operations” will also be aimed at activists, executives and elected officials. “It will be the cross between a school and a media”details Jordan Bardella.
Second priority project: the municipal elections of 2026. “We want to prepare them very early with the ambition of pushing the doors of new municipalities”says Jordan Bardella, who hopes for a “runoff”. “When we took the city of Fréjus, we won almost all the constituencies of the Var during the legislative elections. The same for Perpignan and Hénin-Beaumont. So, the more we push the doors of new municipalities, the closer we will be to power.
But there are many challenges ahead for Jordan Bardella, who will have to silence criticism linked to his young age and a political ambition that arouses internal jealousy. “Politics locks you in. It should not, as it started very early, become a perishable product”warns a tenor of the RN.
“Jordan Bardella is on a sort of carpet of roses today. If he wants to last, he will have to make his own music resonate. It is now that we will see what he is really worth.”
An RN executiveat franceinfo
Another difficulty: his lack of local roots and his decision not to be a candidate in the last legislative elections. A mistake according to several of his relatives. “The party had kept winnable constituencies in the Var for itself. But it preferred not to go there. For me, it’s a bad choice, because it appears today as an Emmanuel Macron above ground”, tackles a deputy who has just entered the Palais Bourbon. Could his political credibility suffer? “He needs an electoral stronghold because until he wins an election on his name, he will not be completely legitimate”, continues this deputy.
The interested party is exasperated by these attacks. “I have chosen to support all our legislative candidates everywhere, including at weekends. I am very far from being in a comfort zone. But if some want my place, it is with pleasure. It you just have to go the distance”scolds Jordan Bardella, regretting that he is being blamed “everything and its opposite”.
“My detractors cannot agree on the roadmap. In the morning, I am Marine Le Pen’s puppet, in the evening, I have a hidden agenda and the next morning, I am an identity. You should know!”
Jordan Bardellaat franceinfo
Within the party, some rightly denounce the proximity of the new president of the party to the identity movement: his supposed relations with the founder of the GUD, Frédéric Chatillon, his opposition to the dissolution of the small group Génération indentitaire in 2021 or his ideological acquaintances with Eric Zemmour, follower of the racist idea of the “great replacement”. “I don’t use the phrase ‘great replacement’ like the Zemmourists, because that would mean there is a plot to replace the white and Christian population,” replies Jordan Bardella. If he rejects the conspiratorial component, he still mentions “a demographic shift that is taking place almost everywhere in France” and believes that “to denounce the replacement of a certain number of our ways of life and our customs” don’t make him “an identity”.
Within the party, the real political inclinations of the new boss are worrying. If he assures that he will lead the battle for the European elections in 2024 and that he will undoubtedly be at the top of the list, the vagueness around the Elysian intentions of Marine Le Pen questions the elected RN. “In fact, I have doubts that Marine Le Pen really wants to be a candidate in 2027. In any case, she is not at all in plan mode for the next presidential election”worries a deputy.
Whatever the decision of the former presidential candidate, most of the tenors of the party advise against Jordan Bardella to skip the stages. “I have already told him not to imagine that he could be our candidate in 2027. Our candidate will be Marine Le Pen and she has everyone’s support”, warns an RN executive. He insists : “There are no bardelists today: 80% of people who join the RN do so only for Marine Le Pen.”
To calm things down, Jordan Bardella prefers to praise the qualities of the one who made him want to get involved in politics. “Marine Le Pen said that she would not be a candidate, except in exceptional circumstances. I believe that when you are the leader of the first opposition group in the National Assembly with 89 deputies, it is an exceptional circumstance!” Ambitious, but still loyal.