Thursday, March 28

Far-right Le Pen hands over the leadership of her party to MEP Jordan Bardella


The young MEP Jordan Bardella has been elected this Saturday as successor to the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen at the head of her party, National Grouping (RN, in French). The election of the 27-year-old politician opens a new era in this ultra-nationalist bloc, which for the first time will not be headed by a Le Pen.

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Bardella started as the favorite for being the right hand of the referent of the French extreme right. In the vote, held during the XVIII congress of the RN, at the Maison de la MutualitĂ©, a conference center in the fifth district of Paris, the MEP has swept the ballot with 85% of the party’s support, compared to 15 % harvested by his only opponent, Louis Aliot, current mayor of Perpignan.

The young politician, who at only 27 years old embodies the new generations of the old National Front (as the party was called until the refoundation promoted by Le Pen in 2018), has achieved with this result even surpassing the numbers of his predecessor when she was elected in 2011 to succeed his father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Marine Le Pen came out on stage with a broad smile to announce the results after giving a farewell speech to the audience. The current leader will now concentrate on her work as head of the RN in the French National Assembly, after the great results obtained in the June legislative elections, in which they won 89 seats. With an epic tone, Le Pen has evoked the remarkable rise of her party under her leadership and has promised to continue at the foot of the canyon.

“I am not leaving the presidency of our movement to go on vacation. I’m still mobilized. There will be no rest for me, as for any of us, until we have straightened out the country”, said the ultra-nationalist leader.

The change of leadership will not imply, in principle, major changes in the ideas defended by the RN, centered on the nationalist and ethnocentric concept of the national “preference” or “priority”. Indeed, Le Pen is expected to continue to be the strong voice behind the scenes.

Bardella’s rise, aided by Marine Le Pen herself, has been meteoric since joining the party at the age of 16. Born in the Parisian suburbs of the Saint-Denis department to an immigrant family of Italian origin, Le Pen appointed him head of the list for the European elections in 2019, when he was not yet 24 years old. RN won those elections in France and Bardella became the second youngest MEP.

With a good presence and a talent for dealing with the media, Bardella is also the partner of one of Le Pen’s nieces.

This congress came at a time of strong controversy for the RN, after an alleged racist rebuke by one of its deputies (Grégoire de Fournas) led to the interruption of the National Assembly session on Thursday and caused a stir.

According to French political commentators, this incident – ​​which cost De Fournas a fifteen-day suspension – has eroded the strategy of “de-demonizing” and strengthening the institutional profile of the RN promoted by Le Pen to legitimize the image of the far-right movement.





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