Who is Jordan Bardella? Le Pen’s proxy begins to think about the post-Macron era

In his last campaign message on Tik Tok, he told his many followers: “Do not disperse the vote. We are the only ones who can win. The only thing Macron will take into account on Sunday night will be the difference with the National Regrouping. Let’s prepare together for the post-Macron future.”.

• Jordan Bardella wants to embody a break in continuity. Unlike President Macron, Prime Minister Attal and many other Macronian political figures who make competition and diplomas the differentiating factor, Jordan Bardella does not give the impression of knowing all the files by heart and he does not even have a degree.

• Jordan Bardella was born in 1994 in Drancy, in Seine-Saint-Denis, in the banlieue of Paris, the only son of a kindergarten teacher born in Turin and a small businessman of Italian and Franco-Algerian origin. A normal adolescence, passion for video games (in particular Call of Duty) and a failed attempt to become a YouTuber. After graduating from a private institute, a degree in geography at the Sorbonne abandoned halfway and a first militant experience in the right-wing student union (UNI).

• A member of the National Rally – formerly the National Front – since 2012, he has enjoyed a brilliant career within the party: from secretary in 2015 to spokesperson in 2017. Meanwhile, he went from an affair with the daughter of Marine Le Pen’s influential advisor, the far-right militant Frédéric Chatillon, to Marine Le Pen’s niece, Nolwenn Olivier, with whom he has been a partner since 2020.

• Vice president in 2021, he became president in 2022 after being proposed by Marine Le Pen herself.

National Regrouping is an atypical party: few elected members, no government experience and, above all, it is run like a family business.

• Therein lies part of Bardella’s success. Le Pen’s name remains a “radioactive” brand in France. Difficult to institutionalize. Bardella provides dynamism because she allows a new, young and well-educated face to replace that of the daughter of a violent figure in French political life. Jean-Marie Le Pen was a personal friend of the SS, accused of torture during the Algerian war and – even as a member of the RN – of being an anti-Semite.

• Numerous sources from the business world confirm to the magazine that direct contacts have been established with the leader, who has organized a series of informal breakfasts in recent months to meet and make himself known to the upper echelons of French capitalism. Something still unthinkable for Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella was able to speak directly, without protests and, in fact, in a welcoming atmosphere, in the famous business school HEC.

• In his irresistible rise, he begins to ask himself a question. The party that remains firmly in the hands of Marine Le Pen does not seem scalable, but Jordan Bardella is beginning to think more and more about his future. For the moment, the official line is simple: in 2027, the National Rally will propose a tandem: Marine Le Pen in the Elysée, Jordan Bardella in Matignon (seat of the prime minister).

It will be enough? “But as Jordan Bardella progresses and gains experience, his presidential candidate stature takes shape.” According to sources close to Marine Le Pen collected by the Dimanche Journal, whose director was a supporter of Eric Zemmour during the last presidential campaign: “Jordan knows perfectly well that 31 years is still too early to claim the throne.” Some sources whisper that the choice to dialogue with Bardella also serves to weaken Marine Le Pen by creating a divergence that could create a lot of confusion in the three years that separate France from the next presidential elections.