By declaring himself “naturally” at the top of the RN’s list for European women, Jordan Bardella, elected president of the party almost a year ago, is pursuing an emancipation no longer in the shadows but alongside Marine Le Pen, with one objective: to arrive first on the evening of the June poll.
“The June 2024 deadline is not just a European election (but) the only opportunity for the French to sanction the government and prepare for the post-Emmanuel Macron period”: Sunday, in Le Figaro, the one who will be 28 years at the end of the month justified his candidacy, certainly “as outgoing MEP”, but above all as “party leader”.
Because since his first election to the Strasbourg Parliament in 2019, everything has changed for Jordan Bardella: at the time already propelled to the top of the list, the young man had in fact been chaperoned by Marine Le Pen, the real boss of the campaign.
Five years later, Mr. Bardella was elected to the presidency of the National Rally (84.84% against Louis Aliot) at the same time as he gained notoriety and established himself as a feared opponent during the debates. televised.
The Europeans of June thus announce themselves as his first real campaign in his name. By taking the lead, the one who has not been able to benefit from the lights shined on the 88 deputies elected to the Palais-Bourbon for a year also intends to give the “the” of the political season which opens.
His field campaign should really start on Saturday at the Châlons-en-Champagne Fair, a prelude to a tour of “popular events”, where the “selfie strategy” with onlookers must be implemented, at the like the low-noise campaign led by Marine Le Pen during the 2022 presidential election.
“Our desire is to translate European issues into people’s daily lives, for example inflation and the price of energy”, explains Mr. Bardella’s campaign manager, Alexandre Loubet, who assumes “not to only focus the debate on the European Union, but to talk about issues that are both European and national as concrete as possible”.
On the merits, the number one of the RN list wants to be more transgressive by proposing “a new reading grid” between “supporters of power”, which he claims, and “the forces of renunciation which go from Jean-Luc Mélenchon to Emmanuel Macron”.
“The consciousness of power is the condition for relaunching our independence and our sovereignty”, tries to decipher Mr. Loubet, noting that “all the States which succeed have this consciousness of power, including in globalization”.
A pavement in the garden of Marine Le Pen, cantor of “neither right nor left”, as much as opposition between “popular bloc” against “elite bloc” or between “globalists” and “patriots”?
“This (new) reading grid is complementary to the divisions that we have forged for ten years now”, swears Jordan Bardella, according to whom “there are undoubtedly some of these patriots among those disappointed with LR, perhaps among those disappointed with Éric Zemmour”, but also “on the left”. Monday, in a video published on X (ex-Twitter) on the occasion of the start of the school year, he also took the trouble to highlight Nicolas Sarkozy’s latest book on his desk.
The assumed emancipation of the outgoing MEP raises questions in any case among his detractors within the party, quick to guess “identitarian” inflections or a sensitivity for the thesis of the “union of the rights” rejected by Marine Le Pen, a way of questioning her loyalty to her mentor.
His supporters want to be more pragmatic, putting forward a score written and interpreted together by the two far-right leaders, in order to widen their electoral base by all means.
Objective: to repeat the performance of five years ago by arriving first in the Europeans of June 9, a hypothesis hitherto accredited by the polls, although the Macronist list is only given 2 to 4 points behind, in the margin of ‘error.
“It will only be a victory if we come out on top,” warns a party pundit, according to whom this “mid-term election” must “facilitate that of 2027”. For which Marine Le Pen has already indicated that she was “candidate as long as (she) has not decided not to be”.
09/04/2023 18:04:45 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
