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It’s Jordan Bardella’s Party Now

With Marine Le Pen facing a critical court ruling on July 7, leadership of the French far right is passing to her 30-year-old lieutenant.

The far right’s standard-bearer for the 2027 presidential election in France will be made definitively clear on July 7, the day the Paris court of appeal is scheduled to deliver its ruling on a corruption case that could derail Marine Le Pen’s political career. In March 2025, a first ruling found Le Pen responsible for a sprawling embezzlement scandal tracing back to the late 2000s and early 2010s that saw the ex–Front National, renamed the Rassemblement National (RN) in 2018, siphoning off millions of euros of public funds from the European Parliament.

That bombshell decision, which implicated several other far-right apparatchiks, was most notable for barring Le Pen from seeking office for five years. A three-time presidential contender, Le Pen has already been forced to resign from her position in a local departmental council, although she is allowed to serve out her current term as an MP. If the verdict stands, the 2027 election could well be the first time since 1981 that the words “Le Pen” do not appear on a French presidential ballot. Marine took over the far-right force from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, before the 2012 presidential election and has been its unquestioned leader ever since.

But if the sky was supposed to fall for the Rassemblement National, it hasn’t. Though the RN’s initial reaction to the March 2025 verdict was to cry abuse, its attempt to build a MAGA-like stop-the-steal movement has petered out. Polls consistently show broad indifference to the RN’s accusations of judicial treachery, and tacit approval of the initial ruling, with barely a third of the public seeing the decision as a politically motivated ruling taken against the longtime far-right leader.

Over a year later, the party has downplayed its scorched-earth strategy. “Judges are falling back on practices that we thought were the exclusive purview of authoritarian regimes,” Le Pen said shortly after the initial verdict, decrying a “political decision.” The tone was markedly different in the appeal, with the defense reportedly hoping at best for a reduction of the ineligibility sentence to two years—thereby ending in March 2027, a month before the race. “My client’s life work is in your hands,” Le Pen’s counsel pleaded at the close of the appeal this February.

What’s no doubt cushioning the blow is the fact that the Rassemblement National is entering the 2027 election cycle in a position of unmatched strength. With a steady clip of opinion studies showing the party in the top spot for the first-round vote, it’s now taken as a fait accompli that the RN will make it to the run-off, where it remains competitive against just about any hypothetical contender.

The party has delayed announcing its official candidate until after the appeal, but it’s also no secret that Jordan Bardella, the RN’s 30-year-old official president, will take over from his mentor if the court of appeal upholds her ineligibility. “I hope that Marine will be able to be our candidate because she is innocent in this........

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