Le Pen’s 28-year-old political heir faces make-or-break moment after call for French elections

PARIS – French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to

call snap elections

has plunged France into uncertainty, but it may prove to be the making of Mr Jordan Bardella, Ms Marine Le Pen’s 28-year-old wefie-loving political heir.

Mr Bardella – the butt of jokes on a satirical television show for his habit of offering to take wefies with people – would likely become prime minister if Ms Le Pen’s National Rally wins a legislative majority in July after Mr Macron called a ballot following his party’s bruising defeat in the June European parliamentary election.

As president of the far-right National Rally, Mr Bardella was instrumental in its record score in the vote, making the party appear more mainstream.

By not carrying the Le Pen name, he has helped Ms Le Pen’s push for legitimacy by putting even more distance between the party and its founder – her controversial father Jean-Marie Le Pen, known for his anti-Semitic views.

But Dr Marta Lorimer, a political science researcher and fellow at the London School of Economics (LSE), says no one should be fooled by the “moderation” narrative.

“Bardella has the exact same ideas as Le Pen, it’s just that he’s not called Le Pen and he’s 28,” she said.

“The National Rally hasn’t moderated hugely in the last 10 years. There’s nothing that would justify thinking of it as anything else than a radical right party. And Bardella is just a cleaner, nicer face, but he’s not a moderate.”

For Ms Le Pen and Mr Bardella, the challenge will be to show that the economic and social discontent that carried the party in the European vote will also see them through in France.

Already in 2022, Ms Le Pen’s party made significant strides by winning nearly 90 seats in the Lower House of Parliament to become the main opposition in the National Assembly.

Inside the National Rally, or Rassemblement National (RN) in French, a Le Pen-Bardella ticket is seen as a stronger bet than just Ms Le Pen’s name, according to one of its strategists.

The family brand still has cachet in former communist strongholds like the de-industrialised north of France.

But without the Le Pen baggage – although he has dated Ms Le Pen’s niece, Ms Nolwenn Olivier – Mr Bardella is seen drawing conservatives who typically vote for the centre-right Republican party.

Also, while RN is not usually popular with executives, polls suggest Mr Bardella is helping it become slightly more acceptable for this category. 

His popularity among the young has been bolstered by a strong social media presence, including on video app TikTok, where he has 1.4 million followers, compared with Mr Macron’s 4.5 million. Mr Bardella has been preparing himself for the limelight, taking media training classes from a former journalist.

Mr Bardella, who dropped out of university to focus on politics, likes to burnish his credentials by pointing to his upbringing in the poor, rough and ethnically diverse Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis.

A recent portrait in Le Monde, however, highlighted how atypical he was for that neighbourhood. Although he grew up in a housing project and was raised by his divorced mother, Mr Bardella – who is of Italian descent – was more privileged than his peers, getting a Smart car as a gift for his birthday and travelling to Miami with his father, according to an unidentified party official cited by the daily. 

Mr Bardella, who was named party president in November 2022, may be outgrowing his mentor, Ms Le Pen – the 55-year-old has ditched her plan to retire at 60. He touts his edge in addressing issues that young people care about, like climate change and artificial intelligence.

And while Ms Le Pen has distanced herself from comments about race, Mr Bardella portrays immigration from Africa as a threat to French culture, alluding to the “great replacement” theory – a view popular with white nationalists around the world that says they are at risk of being dislodged by people of colour.

Although he can rally large crowds at party gatherings, he often comes across as out of his depth and ill at ease in debates. He avoided a debate on key policies like the European Union’s green deal, letting an RN lawmaker stand in for him.

During a pre-election debate with Mr Macron’s 34-year-old French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, Mr Bardella appeared tense, struggling to explain his idea of creating a “double border” for migrants.

Mr Attal, presented as Mr Macron’s “anti-Bardella” campaigning weapon, baited Mr Bardella on the bloc’s electricity market reform.

Mr Bardella, who, like his boss, has expressed a preference for Donald Trump over present incumbent Joe Biden as US president, is in favour of imposing more tariffs in sectors that are particularly vulnerable to foreign competition, including electric cars and agricultural goods.

During the debate, he slammed the bloc’s free trade agreements as well as the European green deal agenda. 

When he met business leaders in March, he noted that the economy needs trust, less red tape and fewer taxes. He also said that growth would help France reimburse its ballooning public debt – a Macron mantra – and that his party had no intention of leaving the EU, a proposal Ms Le Pen ditched in 2019. 

To be sure, Mr Bardella’s chances of becoming prime minister are slim. In 2022, Ms Le Pen was about 200 seats shy of a majority in the National Assembly.

If her party wants to govern, it may have to build alliances, including with her niece, Ms Marion Marechal, who joined the rival far-right party of TV pundit Eric Zemmour, and traditional conservatives, some of whom are still repelled by the party’s history of anti-Semitism and racism. 

Also, French national ballots typically do not echo EU votes – its voting rules and dynamics are different.

But if the party does cobble together a majority, Mr Macron might be able to shine a light on its shortcomings, according to Teneo analyst Antonio Barroso. 

“Ultimately, Macron’s goal might be to bring an RN victory forward in time to expose the party’s lack of experience in government and make them confront politically painful decisions ahead of the 2027 presidential election,” he said in a note on June 9.

One of the trickiest exercises for Mr Bardella, if he were to become prime minister, would be to negotiate the 2025 budget in autumn.

Ms Le Pen has sought to shift her party’s image by promoting fiscal responsibility. She has slammed Mr Macron for letting the French debt-to-gross domestic product ratio climb and seized the moment when France’s debt was recently downgraded, characterising the government’s management of public finances as “catastrophic”.

At the same time, Mr Bardella has laid out costly plans, including the creation of a sovereign fund to invest in energy and defence, higher pensions, lower energy prices and taxes, and boosting low wages by 10 per cent while slashing corporate contributions.

As an EU lawmaker, Mr Bardella voted against a proposal to implement a windfall tax on the energy sectors and others.

“The economic agenda is a little bit all over the place,” said the LSE’s Dr Lorimer. “I would be curious to see what happens to them once they’re actually in power and have to negotiate with the fact that the economy is, if not real, at least some kind of constraint on what they’re able to do.” BLOOMBERG