Many National Rally supporters will be relieved that Le Pen is standing in their place. He has made politics his life, he has already managed three presidential campaigns and his decision has increased his lead in the polls. Many feared that Bardella’s age and lack of experience would have come under close scrutiny and could
Many National Rally supporters will be relieved that Le Pen is standing in their place. He has made politics his life, he has already managed three presidential campaigns and his decision has increased his lead in the polls.
Many feared that Bardella’s age and lack of experience would have come under close scrutiny and could have become a burden.
Still, Bardella’s body language at Wednesday’s campaign event in the Northwest was telling.
As Le Pen smiled for the cameras, ignoring suggestions that her deputy would mind being sidelined and insisting that “our personal ambitions are absolutely irrelevant”, he barely reacted and barely smiled.
The rapid rise through the ranks of the National Rally that has characterized his political career appears to have stalled.
Had he been allowed to run, with his party’s considerable lead in the polls and his own high approval ratings, by the spring of 2027 he could have succeeded Emmanuel Macron as France’s youngest president and the first far-right head of state in modern French history.
Born in 1995, Bardella was raised by his single mother, Luisa, born in Italy, on the outskirts of Paris.
Although he has said many times that she struggled to make ends meet, her father Olivier, also of Italian origin, ran a drinks distribution business and lived in the more prosperous town of Montmorency. That detail undermines the hard-luck narrative that surrounded Bardella’s early years and that he would later use to appeal to a broader electorate.
Neither of the parents was particularly political and, according to an interview that a friend from his teenage years gave to the worldnor does the young Bardella, who prefers to spend time on his PlayStation and stream his Call of Duty sessions on a YouTube channel called Jordan9320.
However, when he decided to join the far-right National Front as a 17-year-old in 2012, he rose through the ranks quickly. He was appointed local departmental secretary at age 19 and regional councilor for the Paris region at age 20. Along the way, he dropped out of university to focus on his political career.
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