PARIS (AP) — He wears his suits like armor, smiles like a pop star and boasts more than 2 million followers on TikTok. At just 29, Jordan Bardella has become the fresh-faced figurehead of France’s National Rally party and is now poised to inherit one of the most electorally successful far-right machines in Europe.
But behind the image of youthful confidence lies a question increasingly whispered by allies and adversaries alike: Can Bardella, who has no experience in government, really lead?
The presidential ambitions of Bardella’s mentor, Marine Le Pen, are likely over after a French court convicted her of embezzling European Union funds and barred her from holding office for five years. That means Bardella finds himself the last man standing atop the largest party in the French National Assembly. But having the spotlight doesn’t mean he commands the stage.
Critics call him Le Pen’s puppet. Le Pen calls him her asset.
On Monday night, she seemed to suggest the moment of reckoning might be approaching sooner than expected.
“I hope we won’t have to use that asset sooner than necessary,” she told the TF1 television network.
From housing project to the brink of power
Bardella was born in 1995 in the gritty suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis — a place more often in headlines for gang violence and poverty than political promise. He grew up in public housing, the son of Italian and Algerian heritage. His father ran a vending machine business. His family scraped together enough to send him to a semi-private Catholic school. He never finished university.
But ambition moved faster than education. At 17, he joined the National Rally — then still known as the National Front, a party shunned by polite society and defined by the legacy of Jean-Marie Le Pen. For most, it was a dead end. For Bardella, it was a launchpad.
By 23, he was a member of the European Parliament. By 26, Marine Le Pen had made him party president — the first person outside the Le Pen family to lead the far-right movement in its half-century history. It was a symbolic handover, but also a calculated move to modernize a brand long stained by racism and antisemitism.
“Jordan Bardella is the creation of Marine Le Pen,” said Cécile Alduy, a Stanford University professor and expert on the French far right. “He has been made by her and is extremely loyal.”
He quickly became the party’s face: camera-ready, uncontroversial and fluent in the aesthetics of modern politics. While Le Pen kept hold of the ideological reins, Bardella toured the country as the youthful ambassador of a rebranded movement.
Their alliance was once pitched as a kind of American-style ticket — she for president, he for prime minister. But that balance no longer holds. With Le Pen sidelined, Bardella is no longer the backup.
The problem is, he was never meant to lead.
The heir apparent with no track record
Bardella has never held national office. He’s never run a ministry. But he has built a following. With an outsized social media presence and a slick, stage-managed image, he has become a star among young voters, offering a set of politics that looks fresh, even when the message is familiar.
His content is clean, curated and relentlessly on message. Campaign videos feature sharp suits, barbed quips at President Emmanuel Macron and selfie lines at rally stops. He doesn’t improvise. He doesn’t deviate.
That discipline has helped broaden the National Rally’s appeal, especially in the aftermath of Macron’s defeat in the 2024 European elections. Bardella was the one who demanded Macron dissolve Parliament. When Macron agreed, Bardella’s status shifted from party mascot to potential prime minister.
Style, message and fragility
Yet the more visible he becomes, the more his limitations show.
Last week, Bardella traveled to Israel in a bid to bolster his image on the world stage. It backfired. Major Jewish organizations boycotted the event he attended. Israeli President Isaac Herzog stayed away. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered only a brief, formal handshake.
The French press called the visit a reputational flop — a trip meant to signal international stature that ended up highlighting its absence. Bardella may wear the suit, but many say he hasn’t yet grown into it.
At home, his platform is standard fare for the far right: stricter immigration laws, fewer social benefits for noncitizens and limits on dual nationals holding sensitive public jobs. He’s pledged lower energy taxes, a reversal of Macron’s pension reform and a ban on mobile phones in high schools.
Abroad, he’s attempted to sound more statesmanlike, voicing support for arming Ukraine, labeling Russia a “multidimensional threat” and calling for France to eventually exit NATO’s integrated command, though not while war rages in Europe.
It’s a program designed to reassure nervous voters while keeping the movement’s nationalist core intact.
“He has a clean slate and comes with no baggage of the past,” Alduy said.
But the real question isn’t about his past. It’s whether he’s ready for what comes next.
Between the spotlight and the script
For now, Bardella walks a fine line as the protégé who was suddenly promoted, the frontman who’s trying to become the act.
His strength lies in presentation. The suit, the smile, the soundbites — they’re all in place. His weakness is what lies behind that performance. That’s still in question.
The French press has criticized Bardella for failing to prepare his party for real power. National Rally figures have said his leadership has focused more on personal promotion than on collective progress, more about boosting his own image than caring about the party or building a serious governing force.
Others have linked him to a lack of structure and professionalism inside the party. Projects he once promised — from recruiting outside talent to strengthening local networks — have stalled. Key voices say the party is too centralized, too top-down and too afraid to challenge its young leader.
Whether Bardella becomes the future of French politics or just its most polished understudy will depend not on Marine Le Pen but on whether he can become more than her invention.
