Le Pen backs 23-year-old ‘poster boy of forgotten France’ to win over yellow vests
Far-Right leader believes protege Jordan Bardella can gain her party seats at the European Parliament
in Nanterre and AS FRANCE licks its wounds from weekend after weekend of “yellow vest” mayhem, the far-Right has placed its hopes of reaping electoral capital from the revolt in the hands of a 23-year-old ex-geography student.
Today, Jordan Bardella will be anointed leader of the European Parliament election campaign for the National Rally (RN), the party run by Marine Le Pen and until recently known as the Front National (FN).
As head of that list, Mr Bardella is set to become the youngest MEP in the history of the European Parliament.
In 2014, the then FN won the most French MEP seats, some 24. It is once again in pole position. A party activist since the age of 16 and from a modest housing estate in the run-down Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, Mr Bardella is a self-styled poster boy of “forgotten France” from where many “yellow vests” hail and thus, Ms Le Pen hopes, well-positioned to hoover up their vote.
“The popular classes and modest families are often those forgotten by politicians and that’s one of the reasons I was chosen,” said the smooth-talking former head of the party’s youth wing.
Support for the far Right appears to be rising as protesters train their ire against President Emmanuel Macron. Some polls suggest that around 40 per cent of yellow vests are RN voters.
“The demands of the ‘yellow vests’, backed by a clear majority of French, are in the political programme we have always defended,” said Mr Bardella.
These included, he said, “popular referendums, tax cuts, proportional representation in national elections and rises for the low-paid”. While the gilets jaunes protests have been largely apolitical and an expression of anger over failing to make ends meet by middle France, cutting immigration has not been a central demand.
Mr Bardella, who is of Italian origin, recently met Matteo Salvini, the Italian populist and fiercely anti-immigrant deputy prime minister.
RN is hoping to forge at the very least a “blocking minority” by allying with other nationalist and populist par- ties in the European Parliament from countries including Italy, Hungary, Belgium, Austria, Poland and Spain.
This week, the broadening alliance made it clear that Mr Macron was their main opponent.
Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, branded the French president Europe’s “leader of the pro-immigration forces” against those who wish to see “anti-immigration forces” become a majority in all EU institutions. His words came as Mr Salvini travelled to Warsaw in an attempt to forge an alliance with Poland’s ruling populists, expressing hopes that an “Italian-Polish axis” would replace the current “French-German axis.” The Italian interior minister also offered his support to the gilets jaunes.
Some have called Mr Bardella a mere “puppet” of Ms Le Pen, as she will be present at all meetings around France and her face will be on posters along- side her young protégé. Seconds into the interview at party headquarters, she burst into his office and made it clear who called the shots.
“In general I pull electoral lists from the top, this time I’m pushing from the bottom as my name is second last,” said Ms Le Pen, who then derided Theresa’s May’s Brexit plan as “a scandal” and said anything but a clear-cut exit from the EU would be a dereliction of democracy in the UK.
“When one tries not to respect the will of the people, each time you move, you sink deeper into quicksand,” she said.
“The British wanted a departure from the EU. They want that vote to be respected. You might as well remain in the EU as it has all the disadvantages of the EU and no advantage.”
Her party is no longer calling for a swift Frexit, convinced it can win back sovereignty from Brussels where David Cameron failed “because without France the EU would collapse”.
Before leaving, Ms Le Pen went on to accuse Mr Macron of deliberately seeking to exacerbate the “yellow vests” by pitting the police against them.
“If he carries on this will end very badly,” she warned, adding that the only solution in her view was “to dissolve parliament”.
Once she had gone, Mr Bardella said the European elections were “in a way the third round of the presidential elections”, which Ms Le Pen lost.
“Many French were told it was either Macron or chaos. Now they see it is Macron and chaos. We are at a turning point. The French want to take back control nationally and from the European Parliament,” he said.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the alliance of liberal parties in the European Parliament, called for a “counter movement” to “defend the international order and liberal democracy”.
“It is worrying that European populists and nationalists, many with strong pro-Kremlin links, for example Matteo Salvini, are clamouring to hijack the ‘yellow vest’ movement,” he said.
Mr Bardella said this was simply a clash of “nationals against globalists”.
“We’re witnessing a political awaking of the people throughout the world,” he said, citing the election of Donald Trump and Brexit. “In France, we are going through this political moment with the ‘yellow vests’.”
‘The popular classes and the modest families are often those that are forgotten by the politicians’
‘The French want to take back control nationally and from the European Parliament’