In the midst of a controversy over a deputy accused of racism, Jordan Bardella was elected Saturday president of the National Rally (RN), the main French far-right party, succeeding Marine Le Pen, who came second in the French presidential election in April.
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This 27-year-old MEP is the first leader of this party that does not bear the name of the Le Pen family dynasty. Indeed, Jean-Marie Le Pen had founded the National Front in 1972, which became the National Rally led by his daughter Marine Le Pen.
This succession comes in the middle of a racist incident triggered Thursday by a deputy of his party in the National Assembly, who launched “Let him return to Africa!” while a black member of the radical left evoked a boat of migrants in distress in the Mediterranean.
This incident undermines the strategy of trivialization of the party that Jordan Bardella has promised to pursue. Especially since the sanctioned deputy, Grégoire de Fournas, has regularly shown his support for the elected candidate with nearly 85% of the vote against Louis Aliot, ex-companion of Marine Le Pen.
“The professionals of selective indignation manipulated a statement which evoked the logical return of illegal ships to the ports of origin”, defended Mr. Bardella unreservedly during his first speech as president of the RN.
He also expressed his “recognition” and his “pride to work with” Marine Le Pen, “but especially for her and by her side”.
Marine Le Pen, who achieved a record score of 41.5% in the second round against Emmanuel Macron in April, is stepping back after eleven years at the head of the party, while saying she wants to continue her “work” and her fight politics, without excluding a fourth candidacy.
“Identities”
Jordan Bardella, companion of a niece of Marine Le Pen and rising star of the French far right, has indicated on several occasions that he intends to support her for a new presidential candidacy in 2027.
It is therefore above all a question for Marine Le Pen of freeing herself from sometimes thankless internal tasks while the epicenter of the RN is now in the National Assembly, where the deputy of Pas-de-Calais (northern France) shines out of a large group of 89 elected (out of 577), ten times more than in previous elections.
The RN has become the first opposition party in a hemicycle where the Macronists have lost the absolute majority.
Marion Maréchal, 32, niece of the far-right leader and long considered the heiress of the family, was not in the running. She left the party before the 2022 presidential election for Reconquest, an economically more liberal movement of former polemicist Éric Zemmour, her aunt’s rival, who won 7% in the presidential election.
If Marine Le Pen has refused any alliance with Reconquest, Jordan Bardella’s links with “identities” and his indulgence towards those who left the party to join Éric Zemmour have often been the subject of criticism.
Mr. Bardella also gave them a wink, castigating “a France that would like to make identity a swear word”.
He then wanted to be reassuring by affirming the need to “walk on our two feet by occupying the entire political spectrum, by worrying about the social anxiety of the end of the month as the vital urgency of the end of France “.
His competitor Louis Aliot had castigated in a forum last month the “identitarians” and, above all, “the followers of the” great replacement “”, a racist and conspiracy theory defended by Éric Zemmour that Jordan Bardella took over in August 2021 .
Jordan Bardella intends with the RN to take advantage of a rise of the far right in the European Union, illustrated recently by the victory in the Italian legislative elections of Giorgia Meloni at the head of the post-fascist party Fratelli d’Italia, who became head of government .