Jordan Bardella: The 'blank canvas' who could be France's youngest president

As a teenager, Jordan Bardella says he was self-conscious about his name.

Making his foray into politics with the far-right National Rally (RN), his peers answered to Arthur, Charles or François – some of the more traditional names usually associated with the French political class.

Bardella's name spoke of a different France: a childhood in working-class Seine-Saint-Denis; his parents' Italian immigrant roots.

Now president of the RN, the 30-year-old could become the party's candidate for next year's French presidential election, pending a court ruling on Tuesday which will determine whether party leader Marine Le Pen remains barred from running herself.

With the RN's sizeable lead in polls and Bardella's strong approval ratings, it is conceivable that by spring 2027 he could succeed Emmanuel Macron as France's youngest president – and the first hard-right head of state in modern French history.

Born in 1995, the young Jordan was brought up by his Italian-born single mother, Luisa, on the outskirts of Paris.

Although Bardella has often said Luisa struggled to make ends meet, his father Olivier, also of Italian origin, ran a drinks distribution business and lived in the more affluent town of Montmorency. That detail undercuts the hard-luck narrative surrounding Bardella's early years which he would later use to appeal to a wider electorate.

Neither parent was particularly political, and Bardella had to convince his mother to allow him to join what was then the National Front (FN) as a 17-year-old in 2012. He climbed the ranks quickly, becoming local departmental secretary at 19 and regional councillor for the Paris region at 20. Along the way, he dropped out of university to focus on his political career.

Bardella would later attribute the initial decision to join the party to a fascination with the party's figurehead, Marine Le Pen, who had taken the reins of the party from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2011 and was working to turn it from fringe, extremist movement to respectable political force.

"There's something about her that others don't have," Bardella said in 2021. "She has a character, an energy... a courage that speak to me."

The interest was reciprocated. Early on, Bardella entered the RN's inner circle through his relationship with the daughter of an old National Front hand, Frederick Chatillon; by 2017, Le Pen had named Bardella party spokesman.

In 2019 he became the European Parliament's second-youngest MEP, and at 27 – already one of the party's most visible figures – he was elected president of the RN.

Then, in 2024, it looked like Bardella was going to make another leap ahead. National Rally emerged with 33% of the vote in the first round of a snap parliamentary election, bringing him within touching distance of becoming prime minister.

The second round resulted in a victory for a centre-left alliance, but in the two years since, Bardella's popularity has remained solid. His approval rating is now at 40%; Marine Le Pen's has remained stable at 39%.

Bardella's appeal is, in great part, linked to his capacity to appeal to a large segment of the electorate.

Lecturer Pierre-Henri Tavoillot calls Bardella "a huge question mark". "His ideological make-up is unclear... and his smooth image allows him to cast a wide net."

He employs standard RN anti-immigration, populist rhetoric, indicating to old-school Le Pen supporters that he will carry on her legacy.

He speaks to the youth vote through his social media channels, where he has two million followers.

His relationship with Italian socialite Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies has given him a glamorous edge, but he frequently references his modest upbringing.

He meets business leaders and promises measures to "from an unbearable fiscal and regulatory straitjacket". He says he wants to renegotiate France's membership of the EU, pleasing Eurosceptics, but promises he is not looking to "destroy anything", reassuring more cautious voters.

Sociologist Raphael Llorca, who has studied the RN electorate, says Bardella is an "incredible blank canvas": "Each group projects its ideal image of what its candidate for 2027 should be or could be" on to him, he says.

Despite being adaptable to various voters, Bardella has rarely strayed from RN policy, especially on contentious issues. That is why many were surprised when Bardella said he was against lowering the retirement age – a longstanding RN objective – in favour of tying a full pension to a minimum 42 years of contributions. The RN's old guard – including Le Pen – bristled, and the matter remains to be settled.

But on most other topics – notably immigration, the RN's defining political cause – Bardella is in lockstep with Le Pen and the RN.

He wants to curtail benefits for immigrants and end birthright citizenship, and has drawn a clear distinction between those who were born in France but "reject republican institutions like the police or values like secularism", and others – like, he says, his parents – who "do everything to become French".

In a BBC interview last year Bardella insisted that mass immigration was "shaking the balance of European countries, of Western societies, and namely French society" and said his first move as president would be to trigger a referendum on immigration to "allow France to take back control of [its] borders".

He has not addressed the fact that immigration is not among the subjects on which the French constitution permits referendums, meaning a constitutional amendment would be required first – a lengthy process requiring an absolute majority in Parliament or enough allies.

The party's former core demand that France make a clean break with the EU – exiting the union and abandoning the euro – has long been shelved. But Bardella views the EU as "profoundly old-fashioned" and "obsolete", and has said he would want to rework some of the terms of France's membership.

He has pledged to keep France in the EU's electricity market while pushing to renegotiate its price-setting rules to lower bills. More strikingly, he told Politico in June that he would "cut in half" France's contribution to the EU budget, for a total of about €10bn (£8.5bn).

Several barriers stand in the way - not least that the EU's long-term budget is set to be rubber-stamped months before the 2027 French presidential election. But the intention reflects Bardella's broader ambition - spelled out in no uncertain terms earlier this year - to "change everything [in the EU] without destroying anything".

He has taken a similar approach to Nato. France is part of the Alliance's integrated command, which Bardella said Paris would leave – although he ruled out doing so while the war in Ukraine rages on.

He has also called Emmanuel Macron's proposal to extend France's nuclear deterrence to European allies as a potential "national betrayal", rejecting any sharing of its nuclear weapons.

Beyond France, Bardella has been building ties with Europe's nationalist right, liaising with Italy's Giorgia Meloni - who he frequently cites as a model - and Poland's opposition PiS, with the stated goal of forging a "new European architecture" and the "largest possible" nationalist bloc in Brussels.

But he has also said he sees "common ground" with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and has worked to distance himself from US President Donald Trump, whom he has called "erratic".

In the lead-up to the Le Pen verdict, Bardella had to pull off a delicate balancing act: to appear as both poised for the presidency and prepared to make way if Le Pen is ultimately allowed to run.

He spoke of being "calm and ready to accept the consequences".

This may involve going back to playing second fiddle to the mentor who made him - or suddenly having to take responsibility for leading the RN to its next, and perhaps most consequential, electoral test.