The far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally, or RN) were not as victorious as they would have liked in the recent French parliamentary elections, but they remain a force in France.
Had the voting gone according to polls, Jordan Bardella, the RN president and one of its most visible leaders along with Marine Le Pen, could have become France’s youngest ever Prime Minster at the age of 28.
His is already a meteoric political rise, from university drop-out to one of the most powerful people in France within a decade.
Bardella is popular, especially among younger voters, and his party trounced President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble in May’s European elections, which prompted him to call a snap parliamentary vote.
So, who is the man who might have become the latest resident of the Hôtel Matignon on 7 July? Despite his widespread visibility, especially on social media, many think Bardella remains something of an enigma.
Personable and well-polished, his sudden arrival into French politics has people asking who he is, where he came from, what he believes in, and what kind of premier he could be.
Humble beginnings?
Bardella was born in 1995 and raised in a deprived estate in Seine-Saint-Denis, a suburb of Paris, and has made much of this modest upbringing, on the 8th floor of a tower block, claiming to have lived in the shadow of crime and poverty.
This has enabled him to connect with working-class French voters and argue that RN's hard-right policies are necessary “to stop that becoming the norm for the whole of France”.
Though both his parents were of Italian immigrant origin, he has a hard anti-immigration stance. He claims that his harsh childhood, including a week interning at a local police station, prompted him to enter politics, joining the National Front (as RN was then called) at the age of 16.
Yet Bardella’s critics note that his upbringing was not quite so disadvantaged. His parents separated when he was one and, while the young Jordan did indeed spend weeks with his mother in the Saint-Denis banlieue, his weekends were spent with his middle-class father in the prosperous commuter town of Montmorency.
A tactical outsider
His father, a businessman, paid for Bardella to be privately educated, meaning he did not attend the same state schools as most other children on his estate.
He was considered a bright, although his contemporaries do not recall much interest in far-right politics. One teacher at his school told Le Monde that she suspected Bardella cynically saw in the far-right “the best chance of climbing the ladder”.
Bardella studied Geography at the Sorbonne University, but dropped out to concentrate on politics full-time.
His supporters play on this, noting how, unlike Macron and other French politicians, Bardella did not attend the elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) government training school.
Once again, this allows him to claim to be an outsider in French politics, more a ‘man of the people’ than his political rivals.
Under Le Pen's wings
After a few years climbing the ranks in the National Front, Bardella’s life changed when he was introduced to its leader, Marine Le Pen, in 2017.
They met because Bardella was dating the daughter of Frederick Chatillon, a friend and former adviser to Le Pen.
She was instantly impressed by the 22-year-old and swiftly appointed him party spokesman, recognising that this smooth, presentable, and handsome young man could help her detoxify the party and broaden its appeal.
When she became leader in 2011, she had already expelled her father and predecessor, Jean-Marie Le Pen, for his extreme views, including his dismissal of the Holocaust as a mere “detail” of history.
She renamed the party in part to distance it from those views, yet critics said it was more a change in style, not substance.
Into the limelight
Since 2017, Le Pen put Bardella at the centre of this rebrand. listing him as the RN’s candidate for the 2019 European elections, which the party won. This made him France’s youngest ever Member of the European Parliament (MEP).
In 2022, she made him RN president. In 2024, he was the party’s candidate for prime minister in the parliamentary elections. Le Pen is expected to run for president in 2027, as she has done unsuccessfully three times before.
Le Pen’s promotion of Bardella has been an unqualified success. Their parliamentary vote jumped from 8 seats in 2017 to 89 in 2022; Le Pen’s vote in the presidential run-off vote climbed from 33.9% in 2017 to 41.45% in 2022; and the European vote went from 23% in 2019 to 31.37% this year.
Crucially, in that election, 26% of RN votes came from the Under-25s, up from 15% in 2019.
Getting through
Many of these younger voters cite Bardella as the reason for their support. He is their age and gives a voice to a generation that feels increasingly marginalised.
As one supporter told France 24: “He is eloquent and knows how to talk to young people in words they understand.”
Bardella also communicates via media that speaks to young people, with 1.6 million followers on TikTok and 747,000 on Instagram. He uses both regularly to post political content, often in witty memes, slating his opponents.
RN has invested heavily in this, ensuring teams film behind-the-scenes footage of his events to post to followers. This has helped create a 'popstar' aura around Bardella, the cameras always capturing young people at rallies swamping him for photos and selfies.
This is unprecedented for most politicians, especially those with far-right views, who might previously have drawn support from older voters. Commentators label it ‘Bardella-mania’.
Policy concerns
There remain questions about his substance, however. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Bardella offered RN’s usual mixture of populist and anti-immigrant slogans.
He said the party’s aim was to amend the constitution to give French citizens preferential access to housing and benefits over foreigners, and promised to prevent children born to immigrants from automatically getting French citizenship.
He further wants a new law to “to combat Islamist ideologies” to make it easier to close mosques and deport imams deemed to be extremists, adding that “the veil is not desirable in French society”, in comments that will not help RN shed past accusations of Islamophobia.
Perhaps mindful of the Financial Times' business audience, he suggested that some of RN’s more radical spending plans may be scaled back, possibly to reassure the markets.
Intellectual abyss?
Many have questioned how much he believes in, and contributed towards, the policies he cheerleads. The popular suspicion is that this is Le Pen speaking through him.
As an MEP, he attracted the unflattering nickname ‘Bard-est-pas-là’ (Bardella is not there), after he grew notably absent from parliament when serious issues were being debated, including key RN issues like immigration.
Bardella has denied the charge but that, along with being roundly outsmarted by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in a recent TV debate, have stoked concerns.
Bardella and the RN said they would not form a government unless they got a full majority in parliament, which they did not. They have since refused to enter a coalition.
Had the voting tipped the other way and given RN the majority it craved, both France and the world would soon see what (if any) substance lay behind Bardella's self-evident style.
