The result means that for the first time since the party, originally the National Front (FN), was created in 1972, it will not be led by Le Pen. Le Pen protégé Jordan Bardella, who is serving as interim president for a year, beat Perpignan mayor Louis Aliot, 53, a hardliner and former Le Pen partner, with 85 percent to 15 percent of party members who voted. There were cheers and applause as Le Pen announced the result. The handover comes at a tense time for the RN after one of its MPs was expelled from parliament for a racist outburst last week. Addressing the party, Le Pen said after more than a decade it was time to make way for someone new. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, handed over the reins to the youngest of his three daughters in 2011, which changed its name to Rassemblement National, or National Rally, at a party congress in 2018. Marine Le Pen is stepping down as president of the RN to focus on directing its actions in the Assemblée National. In parliamentary elections earlier this year, which stripped Emmanuel Macron of its parliamentary majority, the party won a record 89 seats. Bardella, known as an outspoken speaker who rarely appears in public in a sharp navy suit and tie, has supported Le Pen during her presidential campaign, which she lost to Macron in the second round for a second time in May. this year a repeat of the 2017 result. In February, Bardella came under investigation after he described the town of Trappes, home to a large immigrant community, as an “Islamic Republic” in France. He is a staunch Eurosceptic, although the party under Le Pen has abandoned the Frexit campaign. After Giorgia Meloni’s victory in the Italian election, Bardella described it as “a lesson in humility for the European Union” accusing her of trying to influence the vote. “No threat of any kind can stop democracy. The people of Europe are raising their heads and taking their destiny into their own hands,” he added. Born in the Paris banlieue of Saint-Saint-Denis to a French father and an Italian mother, Bardella quickly rose through the ranks of the far-right party he joined when he was 16, first coming into public view in 2017 when he became its spokesman. He also enjoys a privileged and personal relationship with the Le Pen family as his partner is Nolwen Olivier, Le Pen’s niece. While Bardella is an ideological hardliner, Alio had positioned himself as the man to continue the process of “demonizing” the party that Le Pen began more than a decade ago. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. After Le Pen took over the FN, she set about cleaning up its image, at the time inextricably linked to the xenophobic, clean-shaven neo-Nazi thugs who supported her father. Members were expelled for making racist and anti-Semitic comments or defending Philippe Pétain, head of France’s Nazi-collaborating Vichy government in the 1940s. In 2015, after several warnings about his behavior, she expelled her own father . Critics said the washout operation was more about style than substance, but it worked. In 2012, Le Pen collected 17.9% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, while in 2017 this rose to 21.3% and in 2022 to 23.15%. In 2014, the RN candidate list, led by Bardela, won the European elections in France, with 24.9% of the vote, sending 25 representatives to the European Parliament. But the RN was again at the center of a racist row last week after its MP Grégoire de Fournas was banned from parliament for two weeks and fined half his salary for two months on Friday after shouting “Go back to Africa” when a black member of the House of Commons was asking the government about immigrants. Asked last week who she would support in the party leadership race, Le Pen declined to say. “I said I would remain neutral,” he told Télématin television. Appearing on BFMTV he added: “There is no difference in the (political) line between Jordan Burdell and Louis Elliott.”
