Jordan Bardella has no king (Credit:Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty)
In 1792, the last Frenchman to be honoured with the title of dauphin was thrown in Paris’s Le Temple prison. The young Louis XVII was never freed; he died aged just 10.
More than two centuries later, the nickname had devolved to remarkable commoner. All of 28, Jordan Bardella has no king. Instead, he has a queen, one who has been very good to him, raising him to the presidency of the Rassemblement National (RN) while she seeks that of France itself. Following last week’s European victory — in which RN won in every region in France — the queen and the dauphin now bestride the nation with as much confidence as their royal predecessors. Unlike their predecessors, however, they also command the present support of the people.
Still, Bardella and Marine Le Pen make for a very odd couple. France is used to her presidents being énarques, graduates of the Ecole National d’Administration and other elite academies. No woman has become President, and only two, Edith Cresson and until earlier this year, Elizabeth Borne, have served as prime minister. Neither did so with distinction, nor did they serve a good length of office to prove themselves.
Bardella, in contrast to all, was raised in rent-controlled housing in the Parisian suburb of Seine-Saint Denis, his parents of Italian and Algerian origin. He did well at school, but dropped out of a geography course at the University of Paris-Sorbonne to join the Front National, forerunner of the RN, at 16. He quickly became a departmental secretary, formed a group called Banlieues Patriotes (a challenge to the banlieues better known for their Islamist radicalism), and was taken into the party headquarters, where he was spokesman, deputy president and, in 2022, temporary then full president.
I’ve seen him perform before a RN crowd twice: once, in 2023, in a convention organised to reward the party’s local leaders in Le Havre; and once, in April, in a vast hall in France’s second city, Marseilles. In both, he gave elaborate genuflection — physically and verbally — to his patronne, who had “faith in him always”. And so she should, since his natural political talent and charm, with a small, slightly shy photogenic smile permanently on show, make him a huge asset.
A few months ago, Bardella was voted the most popular politician in France, which could irk a woman who has worked for decades, from notoriety to celebrity, to get where she and her party are now. But in both venues, they spoke one after the other, with every sign of affection and with great passion: she invoking the beauty of France’s countryside and settlements, as she likes to do; he ripping into Emmanuel Macron, whose presidency was going through a bad patch, with worse to come. In Marseilles, both took time to emphasise that, in government, they would not be bound by the rules of the European Union, unless these benefitted France.
If Macron’s gamble to call a snap election fails, and the RN wins, then the President is almost obliged to appoint Bardella as prime minister. The liberal-conservative Les Republicains have said they will join an alliance with the RN, a historic departure that Le Pen has since described as “brave”.
Yet were Bardella to enter the Matignon, the PM’s residence, he would be obliged to leave the much easier task of holding the present administration to ridicule, and instead face up to real politics in a large state where millions would still hate him on principle. His talent is now exercised in raucous opposition politics: then, it would be in endless complexities.
Is he cut out for the struggle? Pascal Humeau, a former communications expert with the RN, says of him that “his ease, his enthusiasm, that you can feel today, we had to work on it for months and months”, adding that even Bardella’s smile and greetings were products of painstaking training. He does appear to sincerely believe in Le Grand Remplacement — the name of a book by the writer Renaud Camus, who proposed that elites were secretly ensuring that floods of immigrants, cheaper to employ and grateful to those who allowed them to enter the country, as replacements for the indigenous people. Le Pen herself, when first encountering it, said she thought it absurd.
And in any case, it is Le Pen who will face the largest test: she will be RN’s candidate for the presidency scheduled for April 2027. Polls conducted earlier this year show her well ahead of the other challengers — with 36% of the vote; former Prime Minister Edouard Phillippe and Gabriel Attal, the present 36-year-old Prime Minister, both on 22%; and the left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon on 14%. Second-round polls are much closer: of her possible opponents, she would beat Mélenchon with ease, 64%-36%. But she would win over Attal (if he were the candidate) by only one point, and is on level pegging with Phillippe, a popular figure (though presently under investigation for possible corruption). Macron, his two-term mandate completed, could only look on.
These results, three years before she has to get real, still emphasise her largest challenge. She must not be seen to be too extreme; has she done enough to bury the Le Pen family curse of far-Right fanaticism? In a leaked private conversation from 2021, she had said that Eric Zemmour — the further right presidential contender with his Reconquête party — “makes me look reasonable. He is into the clash of civilisations, while I say yes, Islam is compatible with the Republic.”
At the same time, anxious not to be seen to be too mild, she has celebrated the expulsion of Mahjoub Mahjouni, a Tunisian Imam who preached in the town of Bagnols-sur-Ceze in the department of Gard and who specialised in calling the French tricolour “Satanic”. According to a report which the police had compiled, he had said that “we won’t have any more of these tricolour flags, which poison us, and give us headaches”: he thought it a pity that “mosques don’t produce fighters, as in the time of the prophet. women were inferior, feeble and venal, who must be guided and controlled by men, and hidden away in the name of religion”. On the daily message the RN puts out, usually featuring Bardella and Le Pen smiling broadly, waving joyously, she wrote that “the RN never allows our flag to be trampled into the earth of the French republic”.
Such constant, sharp-edged criticism, which Bardella and Le Pen both deploy in confronting the large Muslim community, has found favour — indeed, it has forced Macron to follow suit. Le Pen believes that many Muslims live decent lives and cause no trouble: she also believes a large proportion, especially of the young, do not. Gilles Kepel, France’s leading expert on Islam — and no fan of Le Pen — writes in his Terror in France that the tendency to label as “Islamophobia” all criticism of Muslims “makes it possible to rationalise a total rejection of France and a commitment to Jihad by making a connection between unemployment, discrimination and French republican values”. The many murders of French citizens by young Islamists have narrowed the space for toleration and exculpation: Le Pen, while careful to avoid extremes, is with Bardella at the head of this popular backlash.
But how long will that stay the case? The dauphin and his queen have already chosen their future titles: M Le Premier Ministre, and Mme la Presidente. He would be in a dauphin-like, subordinate position, as all French premiers are obliged to be: but should he succeed in that office, confounding his critics by showing a grasp of the hugely difficult role, he may himself progress to being a republican king.
Moreover, despite being on the back foot, Macron is still in charge of a timetable and still in the Élysée. If he wins in July, the Le Pen-Bardella charge will be halted. And with some support returned to him, Macron could rally for the last years of his reign, and use them to try to reduce the RN. Beneath the charm and the calm, Bardella must fear such failure. To which his Queen, in Lady Macbeth guise, will surely tell him to “screw his courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail”.
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Subscribe“Britain voted Brexit because of austerity”. I take it you didn’t vote for Brexit James, or you’d know that wasn’t true.
To be fair to James, he is quoting the views of others.
Thank you, Howard.
An excellent essay, in which the last three words of the first paragraph neatly encapsulate Vince Cable’s life in the political arena : “almost entirely pointless”.
VC is not pointless. He recently tweeted this;
“You don’t need to be a Communist or even a Socialist to recognise the positives as well as the evils in Lenin’s rule. Not least, his New Economic Policy established pragmatic market socialism which eventually succeeded in Deng’s”
He and his ilk are dangerous.
Sadly I have to agree. Far, far too many of his generation held similar deluded opinions, in fact in many ways they are the progenitors of today’s ‘woke’ sub-culture.
At the time (the 60’s) it was so fashionable to espouse liberal/socialist views, that even the so called Conservative Party was infected with the poison. Just at look at Ted Heaths and a plethora of other feeble Tory cretins.
For me, the seminal moment was the suspension of capital punishment in August 1964, and the subsequent atrocity perpetrated almost exactly two years later in Shepherds Bush. The State had abrogated its power to chastise with utterly predictable and foretold results.
To compare Lenin’s NEP to China’s economic policy is absurd, just absurd. The NEP was very small scale and did little more than enable a few entrepreneurs to make various goods avaialble for a couple of years. China’s capitalism is on a vast scale.
oi tosspot we did not vote brexit cause of austerity..we voted cause we have witnessed yrs of repression from the EU that differed from the economic union we voted into in the 70s and watched successive gvmts take from us over the yrs..do not put ur bile to our lips
beautifully put, Steve, Thank You.
An interesting article containing a lot of truth. I am slightly surprised that Cable seems unable to see that there might be more important things than economics. He always struck me as having a little more depth than that, although I believe he was an economist for an oil company.
Having said that, the triumph of money and the economy has been with us for some decades now and has swept up almost everyone in, say, the top 50% of the population. I include myself to some extent, before I started to wake up over the last 15 years or so.
My first fegree was economics. The classical definition of which is the study of how a society allocates scarce natural resources to one of a number of possible uses.
Towards tye end of my studies, I came to the notion that economics is really about providing an intellectual justification for a political objective. Usuallywhere the political objective was the advancement of those who ere supporting the economic idea.
Afam Smiths invisible habd was no more than a justification to shift power from the landed aristocracy towards commercial enterprise. Likewise, Marx argued to take power from those who had it by dint of owning factories etc in order to replace power with those without such ownership.
Call me a cynic if you will.
Cynic then !The very clear difference between positive and normative economics was drummed into me at A level and then at the LSE..I focused on the former and very much took the view that it was a source of research for political science-not the other way round.Having said that,most economic debate currently appears to be characterised by sloppy thinking and an absence of any scientific method.
So the author is quite convinced that property assets – he means houses – should be taxed. He makes no attempt to explain why this wealth tax – which is what it would be – should apply to just one asset. A person with a million pound house is taxed on their wealth. A person with a million pound share portfolio is not. This is sensible? How does this economics expert propose that his tax will work with legal partners, for example husband and wife, each owning half the asset? It makes no sense and has never worked anywhere. And in any event, we already have a wealth tax called IHT. To raise more revenue, the Government, any Government, is going to have to look at the big number taxes: income tax, National Insurance, and VAT.
The Author obviously hasn’t heard of Council Tax,or death duties on Income /inheritance of £240,000 or above
I’d favour internet sales. And a tax on FATGA.
I used to be one of the naive souls that thought a strong economy (which meant a good chunk of free market economic policy) could only be grounded in a reasonably free and open political system. I am older now, and I know that for a fiction – not because of China (or somewhere smaller, like Singapore) proving me wrong, but because I now understand the power of the modern state to dictate how people think, quite frankly to manipulate it, through and with a media which is for its own reasons allied to it. The current propoganda on Covid is just the latest example – but based on opinion polls there doesn’t seem any doubt that it is highly effective in exerting control.
So, no, to the extent that a strong economy gives rise to a strong state, a state which is capable of dominating any communication medium it chooses to, I am quite certain that the example of China is not an aberration, it is quite capable of being the future for all of us.
‘China is not an aberration, it is quite capable of being the future for all of us.’
And that future is approaching fast. The US and the EU are clearly heading in the direction of a China-style society, while literally handing over their assets and markets to China. The same is true of Canada. Whether or not countries such as the UK and Australia can somehow hold out as islands of democracy and some sort of freedom will be one of the great questions of the years to come. As you say, our mainstream media is now in lockstep with the state, so the omens are not good.
Sadly I believe You are mostly Correct! ”Bladerunner” Style of Woke Capitalism and Chinese communism Societies , awaits the next Debt ridden generation?….”There is hope.”.thought Winston as he entered ‘Victory mansions’…
Did project fear fail because people thought other things were more important than personal wealth and wealth of the nation or was it because many saw it for the utter bullshit it was.
Where is the economic logic of staying tied to 7% of the worlds population – a 7% that sees its share of global GDP decline year on year, compared to sacrificing some of the benefits of being part of the 7% in order to seek new and better opportunities with the other 93%? Those who argue for staying with the 7% are defeatists that have no pride in or ambition for their country.
Taxing housing assets? Do you mean taxing people out of their houses? Where are they to go? We aren’t exactly flush with spare flats.
Mr. Kirkup is broadly right about China, but:-
“(And I still do: the sooner we start taxing housing assets to fund social care the better.)”
As if Britain does not tax “housing assets” already! And that a particular “new” tax can be reserved for a particular purpose.
Not only does HMG already tax houses, but VAT is levied on building repairs. That is a huge tax on essential annual maintenance which should be encouraged, not discouraged.
One supposes stamp duty doesn’t count as a tax either.
“Effective economic policy is trumping politics.” Except that no-one to my knowledge says that there is no politics in China. In fact I am sure that the CCP itself would say that ‘the leading role of the party’ guarantees that ‘politics is in command’. Deng’s turn toward ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics’ was prompted by politics; the prospect that the party would lose power if it did not improve the people’s standard of living in an East Asia which was on the march, developmentally. South Korea and Taiwan show that China’s particular brand of party-state is not the only political route to prosperity, even in Asia. What should stimulate our concern is not China’s success, but our own current failures, both economic and political.
It is not just V. Cable – the international establishment is generally in love with the Communist Party dictatorship of the People’s Republic of China.
Listening to Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum fawning over “President” Xi’s speech to the international elite about “freedom and democracy” would be funny if it was not so tragic. The international establishment assume that a Social Credit system of censorship and control (denying people with the “wrong” cultural and political opinions, employment or the ability to trade) will only be used against people they dislike – never against them themselves.
As for Donald John Trump – yes the election was rigged, but he seems to have had no plan about what to do if it was rigged (even though many people warned him that the election would be rigged), Not planning out what to do if the election was rigged, was a massive failure.
On trade the policy of President Trump was straightforward – free access to the American market IF a trading partner gave free access to its market. President Trump was not interested in one-way-trade (with America importing but not exporting) – he wanted two way trade (open both ways). Hardly rocket science – so I am surprised that V. Cable does not understand that the objective was always to “make a deal” – get access for American exports.
Idiots like Cable have no comprehension of sustainability, resilience and sufficiency whether on economic, political, cultural or ecological levels.
Similarly, very little is understood in terms of the economy being an energy system and how the rising energy cost of accessing and distributing energy is increasing. This is reducing the supply of surplus energy to create meaningful prosperity which is why living standards have laboured since before the Financial Crash.
Consequently, QE and other forms of monetary stimulus are effectively subsidising the increasing energy cost of accessing and distributing energy in order to avoid a prosperity crash.
Essentially, Western economies have reached secular stagnation and monetary stimulus is life supporting a system that has reached peak prosperity in relation to fossil fuels.
https://surplusenergyeconom…
This puts greater emphasis on ecological, cultural and political wellbeing.
Idiots like Cable think they know best but it is always the working class who are experiencing reality on the ground.
Vince cable is a numpty, as is James Kirkup.
..
If we want an economy like Germany or Switzerland then perhaps 70% of the population is going to have to change it’s attitude to trade and technology. One take a horse to water but one cannot make it drink. What proportion of the British population have the same attitude and academic attainment as the Swiss entering their various technical institutes?
An interesting review of both the book and its author.
Politicians (and others) who live by the “economy is all” theory are taking a rather psychopathic view. I think that this applies to many modern politicians and, indeed, it may be a necessary qualification for long term political success. More and more, their ideology (including this particular ideology) seems to trump every other consideration.
One sees plentiful displays of ostentatious humanity, but I think most of us are capable of seeing the difference between the true and the false in this regard – in fact, I think that most of us see that rather more clearly than our politicians do.
Having just watched the brilliant documentary on the BBC about the Delorean affair, anyone who thinks that economics can ever be divorced from politics shouldn’t be seriously involved in either.
I’m not convinced that China is proving much of anything wrong. They have about 4 times the population of the US, yet are still behind it in GDP. It’s always easier to play catch up when you’re well behind than it is to continue making fast progress when you near the target. Assuming there’s no revolt against the regime for losing the Mandate of Heaven, we’ll have to see what they can do in the next few years. I’m not as concerned as the author or some of the commenters here. Of course, I may be wrong.
The role of quantitative easing is to finance budget deficits when the tax base is too low. It funds welfare and while the bond market is dysfunctional it is a free ride off the surplus countries. The last thing that is needed is populists or ignorant members of the public interfering with it with their views reflecting their vested interests. Its adverse distributional consequences are best deal with by using fiscal policy to tax the windfall gains it produces.
It is fascinating to me as growth has slowed over the last 45 years (blame EU loony Tories Brown all deserve credit) in the UK and indeed seems to have got slower by the decade if I could put a chart here I’d demonstrate…. Yet we saw Labour win 2 re-ections and accepted from a coalition Conservatives win 3 re-elections twice.
a 10 years line is better i.e mapping last 10 years but this does it note fewer but deeper recessions and no actual booms lately
I was minded by the Labour leaders debate where I saved time and did not watch and read someone comment on the Trans discussion and I said did anyone ask their economic ideology or discuss economics? Nope. Not a factor.
As Austerity (OK pedants it’s not what you define as austerity but to question terms is a fallacy argument as you know what I mean) showed in 2010-Pandemic really people do not blame slow growth more unevenly spread necessarily even if decent economics would make things better. 1% or 2% growth can be seen on a graph and maybe if you live in side by side countries that differed but clearly does not hit people in the eyes. TBF some of it is timing Clinton was a disaster and led to 2008 but he was long gone and his pointless budget surpluses (seriously they served no purpose in the 90s USA) etc were not obvious to all but economics professors.