MEP Jordan Bardella has become this Saturday the new leader of the French far-right National Rally party and takes over the baton from Marine Le Pen, who has decided to step down to focus on the formation’s parliamentary activities with a view to future elections.
Bardella, acting president since 2021 and considered in his beginnings a radical element of the party, has obtained 84.4% of the votes against the mayor of Perpignan and historical of the party, Louis Aliot, a percentage much higher than the 67.65% of the votes that Marine Le Pen obtained against Bruno Gollnisch to succeed her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, eleven years ago.
«After more than ten years at the head of the movement, it was healthy to make way, healthy to bring out the talents, the new figures,» stressed Marine Le Pen.
As for the possible presidential candidacy of the National Rally, Le Pen has maintained her aspirations: «I am not leaving the presidency of our party to go on vacation. I remain mobilized more than ever. There will be no rest for me, as for all of us, until we have put the country back on track. (…) Needless to say, I will be wherever the country and the national cause need me».
Marine Le Pen will now focus on the leadership of her party’s parliamentary bloc, the largest opposition force in Parliament since the June elections, with 89 seats.
STEEVE BRIOIS DENOUNCES A «PURGE».
After the vote, the mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, Steeve Briois, denounced the «atrophy» of the party following his exclusion from the new executive body chaired by Bardella. «It is the beginning of a purge against those who defend the social line,» he said in statements picked up by BFMTV television.
«While for many months I have been sounding the alarm about a possible reradicalization, I can only see my eviction as a sanction for having wanted to raise awareness of a phenomenon that the facts confirm,» he has argued.
Briois thus regretted that «fundamentalists» have imposed «right-wing positions, contrary in my opinion to the ‘neither right nor left’ that prevailed for decades in the National Front». Briois is a supporter of Aliot, Bardella’s only competitor in the internal vote.
A METEORIC CAREER The French press points out that it has only been ten years since Jordan Bardella started pasting posters for the party as a member of the National Front’s youth until he has taken over the reins of the formation.
Bardella is considered the «shadow» of Marine Le Pen and thus intends to culminate the process of modernization of the party by putting the focus on the working class neighborhoods, not only talking about immigration, but also about housing, health, education or unemployment, in clear contrast with a more identitarian line defended by Marion Maréchal-Le Pen.
In the debates Bardella often cites his mother, a kindergarten worker who had trouble making ends meet, although he often omits his education in a private high school or his father, who on one of his birthdays gave him a Smart car.
Bardella has supported the Frexit or Generation Identity, an organization dissolved by the Interior Ministry for defending «an ideology that incites hatred and violence towards foreigners and the Muslim religion.» Bardella’s biggest milestone until this Saturday was to lead the party’s list to the 2019 European elections. The good result meant that the following year he was appointed vice president and took ‘de facto’ charge of the formation.
Bardella’s victory means that the party is left without a Le Pen at the head of the destiny of the formation since its founding as the National Front 50 years ago, but it is given the circumstance that the MEP, 27 years old and standard-bearer of anti-immigration movements, maintains a relationship with a niece of Le Pen.
