Jordan Bardella became the first person outside the Le Pen family to lead the party since it was founded 50 years ago. The 27-year-old is a member of the European Parliament and won an intra-party ballot, receiving 85% of the vote. His election comes at a critical time for the National Rally, as the party seeks to build on its significant success in this year’s parliamentary elections and Ms Le Pen’s performance in the presidential election. But he is also facing widespread public anger after a National Rally member in parliament this week told another MP to “go back to Africa”. Ms Le Pen said she wanted to focus on leading the party’s 89 politicians in the National Assembly. He is still expected to wield considerable power in the party and run for president again in 2027. Mr Bardella has been the interim chairman of the National Rally since Ms Le Pen entered the presidential race last year. He beat rival Louis Allot, 53, mayor of Perpignan and a top party official for two decades. Mr Aliot, a staunch supporter of Ms Le Pen’s rise and her former romantic partner, won the remaining 15% of the party’s vote. Ms Le Pen lost to Emmanuel Macron in her third bid for the presidency this year, but won 44% of the national vote, the highest score to date. Two months later, her party won the most seats to date in the lower house of parliament. Ms Le Pen has gone to great lengths to remove the stigma of racism and anti-Semitism attached to the National Rally, to soften its image and broaden its audience. ‘New generation’ She has especially distanced herself from her now-ostracized father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the party then called the National Front. “Bardella is part of a generation of young, very young, people who were involved with Marine Le Pen in the 2010s and who probably would not have participated in the National Rally during the Jean-Marie Le Pen era,” political scientist Jean-Yves Camus. he said. “Progress today is called regionalism. It’s called border defense. It’s called protectionism,” Mr Bardella said in 2019 ahead of European elections, rejecting what he called “mass immigration”. In recent months, 40,000 party members have voted online to elect the new party leader.
