Heir Jordan: the rising star of France’s populist right

0:00Jordan Bardella:With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI.

0:37They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

1:04The Economist

1:12Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

1:26In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a new conservation scheme is playing out. Our correspondent pays a visit to see how smallish grants are leading to biggish environmental gains. And many American vice presidents have an unremarkable tenure out of the spotlight. Dick Cheney broke that mold. we reflect on the life of the most powerful, the most divisive, the most consequential Veep of the modern age.

2:03First up, though.

2:12Last week, I sat down with Zannie Mintembedos, our editor-in-chief, and Jordan Bardella, who is the 30-year-old protégé of Marine Le Pen, the most popular politician in France, and who has just put out a book, which is now the second best-selling book in France after the Asterix volume. Sophie Petter is our Paris bureau chief We met in his office in Paris where the RN has its headquarters and given the messy state of French politics today we came away with a real feeling that is someone who thinks that he has a real chance of taking power sooner rather than later Now Sophie, the last time we spoke with you about Mr Bardella it was just after Ms Le Pen had been banned for running for office because of a European Parliament financing offence she is contesting that.

3:03That is still somewhat up in the air. What's happened for them since then? Well, the two of them have agreed that if the Court of Appeal upholds that ban, he, Jordan Bardella, will be the party's candidate for the presidential election in 2027. So that's a big change for him. It's clearly not something that he was ready for initially because nobody was expecting that court decision. But it's something that he is now, month by month, preparing for. And it's fascinating to see this happen. I mean, he's part of a party that in the past used to be quite a kind of snarling, full of indignation. It was all about mobilising anger.

3:38And with John Bardella, you sense there's something else going on. What he's trying to do, I think, is mobilise something a bit more positive.

3:52If you look at his TikTok videos, some of them are quite funny, some of them are ridiculous. There's him in the gym, there's him eating sweets, there's him sort of trying on crazy glasses at rallies. He's got two million followers on TikTok. So this is not someone who's speaking to a small audience. And he's now France's most popular politician. So whatever you think of his politics, I think one has to take him seriously as a political candidate and try and understand what he's all about. Well, what is he about? What is his platform? What does he want to do with France? Well, part of it is what you would expect for a candidate from the populist right.

4:21He's anti-immigration. He wants to tighten up on nationality laws. He wants to tighten up on welfare benefits to those who don't have French nationality. So far, not so surprising. What I think is quite interesting and what did surprise us when we sat down and talked to him was that he has this pro-growth discourse, which is an odd blend of tax cuts in some respects, not in all, pro-business, anti-greens, anti-environmental, very much pro-farmers, doesn't want them to be bound by all these regulations, but also quite tech-focused. I mean, astonishing to have a conversation with him and to start talking about AI and the impact it will have on his generation and how to prepare for that.

5:02So it's a funny mix. In some respects, it's reminded us of an almost Trumpian mix of tech, anti-environment, cut the taxes, get the government off your back. He doesn't like that comparison with Donald Trump. As you can imagine, in France, the American president is not that popular. So he's taking care not to suggest that Trump is in any way a model for him. But he likes the fact that he stands up for his country. And that's what comes out of a conversation with Bardella is France first. It's all about France. It's all about making France great again. And that's the message that he's trying to get across.

5:37And some of that then, if France first, then it's sort of necessarily Europe second, I guess. Well, this is the great contradiction at the heart of what he's trying to do. If you listen to him explaining his policies on almost every count, it implies a direct collision course with either an EU institution or with Germany, France's main partner, co-founder of the European Union. He wants France, for example, to pay less into the EU budget. Well, good luck with that. He also wants to have a conversation with the European Central Bank to try and find a way in which it could support France and French sovereign debt.

6:10He wants to pull France out of the electricity pricing mechanism that the EU runs because he says it penalises France, which has cheap nuclear power, and prices reflect gas-fired power stations in Germany. So there's a confrontation with Germany that looms behind everything he talks about. and sometimes I got the impression this isn't coincidental. What he wants is to take Germany on. He actually described the European Union as an association to defend the interests of Germany. So this is part of what he wants to do. He's completely upfront about it and what it actually means in the end is unpicking some of the very principles that underpin what the EU is all about.

6:52So those are his views inside Europe. What about the world more widely? Well, I think the thing that worries me still is that the party, the national rally, has had in the past strong links to Russia. Marine Le Pen took a loan from a Russian bank to finance electoral campaigns in the past, since repaid, but nonetheless that is a fact. She was photographed with Putin and put that photo in an election flyer in a campaign in 2022, shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and then had to put those flyers to one side. So there is a strategic reflex, I think, in the RN to be more sympathetic to Russia and to be sceptical about the transatlantic alliance, which is a problem.

7:33Now, of course, what Bardella will say and what he said to us is we absolutely see Russia as a threat. We consider the missions that France is currently engaged in in NATO in defending the eastern flank as absolutely crucial and that he's not against supporting Ukraine. But you push it a little further and he is against, for example, giving Ukraine long-range missiles. He is against the idea of putting any boots on the ground in Ukraine. He is against the idea of Ukraine joining the European Union. So there is still, I think, a question mark which hangs over what is their real strategic thinking about where Europe lies in the world at the moment.

8:09So we are more than a year out from the election, which is an eternity in politics. How should we take those polling numbers now? How do you think this will play out in the interim year? Well, the first thing to remember is that those polls are all about first round voting. And France has a two round presidential system. And we haven't seen any polling at the moment for what happened in the second round. So obviously, when you have a score of 35%, which is what Bardella is currently on the first round, that's quite exceptional by Fifth Republic standards in France over the last 60, 70 years. So that gives you a huge momentum for the second round.

8:42But, and it's a huge but, it depends who your candidate is against you. And if you are against someone from, let's say, the far left, someone like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the chances are that Bardella would be elected. I mean, I really think one has to understand that, that there are people who think Mélenchon is even more dangerous. But if you had a candidate who's credible from the centre, centre right, even from the socialists left, if you had a credible candidate that can reach out to the broad, moderate centre, then there is a chance that that candidate could nonetheless hold on by a whisker and secure the 50.01 % you need in order to be elected.

9:17So it is far too soon to say it's not impossible that Marine Le Pen will end up being the candidate herself. If Bardella is, he will need to convince people that he is competent enough, surrounded by enough competent people, and that his lack of experience is not a handicap. And that's a big ask. And Sophie, I know that you spoke about some of these same issues on last night's episode of The Insider. That's right, Jason. Last night, we talked on The Insider about the rise of the populist right in all three of the big countries in Europe. That's UK, Germany and France, why it's happening and what to do about it.

9:50Well, I will tune in a bit late for now. Sophie, thanks very much for your time. It's a pleasure. It's very good to see you in London for once.

9:59Subscribers can find episodes of The Insider on The Economist's website or app.

10:35Jordan Bardella:We'll see you next time. Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One N.A. member FDIC. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

11:24Getting around in the Congo Basin isn't always straightforward. John Joe Devlin is deputy editor of The Intelligence. There aren't that many dirt tracks that cut through the jungles, and they're treacherous. Clear skies can be usurped by thick black clouds in seconds, and when the heavens open, the deluge turns those tracks into rivers. I made my way into the heart of Western DRC, the forests, before the raiding season began. But even so, the 4x4 I was riding in fell into a watery ditch at one point. The side of the road just collapsed.

12:05COP30 kicks off on Monday. I made the journey to see how new kinds of conservation projects are shaping Africa as its natural bounty comes into the spotlight. The continent is home to more than a quarter of Earth's intact ecosystems, and the Congo Basin rainforest is second only to the Amazon in size. Its peatlands are thought to store enough carbon to cover around three years' worth of global fossil fuel emissions. The traditional way of defending such a sprawling jungle has been to simply fence off large parts of it and establish national parks. But that style of conservation hasn't always produced such great results.

12:45What do you mean by that? Well, Jason, for starters, indigenous and local communities are often driven off protected land. In some cases, this leads to egregious human rights abuses. But it's not just abuses. There are other problems that revolve around endemic corruption. There was one anti-trafficking agent I spoke to in particular, a former British soldier who didn't want to be named, who really outlined the absurdity of working in the DRC's Virunga National Park. He had been hired a few years ago to train rangers to stop the flow of minerals, wildlife and weapons into and out of the country.

13:23But he said that senior officers were all in on that trade. He was essentially training guides to fight their own traffic. And this was something that he'd seen in other Francophone countries. But you said you were paying a visit to see how things could be done differently. Yeah, I was in the Congo basin to look at a Norwegian-backed project called the Community Fund for Forests, or CFF. It's a pilot. And you can think of CFF as venture capital for Congolese forest communities. You get these tribes of a few hundred people coming up with ideas for how to grow and prosper. One village might need tools for farming, another a warehouse for crops, or perhaps a boat to get products from the village up these tributaries of the Congo River and all the way to Kinshasa, the capital.

14:14The fund reviews the pitches, it sets terms, and then it pays out grants of around$5 ,000 to$6 ,000. Small communities can realise their financial goals. In return, they give a pledge to shield a portion of their land from development.

14:35So to see this in action, I travel to the village of Nganda. This is a mixed community of pygmy and Bantu people.

14:46They have a community meeting of the whole village every six months and it kicks off with music and dancing. Each speaker at the meeting is greeted with these kind of salutations.

15:02It's an event. And in this meeting, the biggest topic of conversation was how funds would be used. In Aganda, they were using the money for a pigsty. Afterwards, I was guided to see a community farming project. to give you a sense of how thick this forest is. You know, when you look up, you can't see the sun. It's dark. After about a half-hour trek into the woods, I came out into what was actually a very open area. There was blue sky above me, and there was a field of cassava rolling out in front.

15:44I spoke to Nico. He's the chief of Inganda. And he talked to me about the sustainable farming practices they were operating out in the jungle. Essentially, they were not clear-cutting the land. There were still trees remaining, particularly the oldest growth trees. And that was to ensure that there was a kind of symbiosis between what they were doing and the flora and flora that lived in the forest. So in its simplest form here, what you seem to be describing is essentially a pay-for-conservation scheme. Yeah. I mean, if you pay people and say the money is contingent on you protecting bits of forest, they will potentially leave them alone.

16:21They will leave them alone. There's more money coming down the line. And that is how this fund works. But there are other effects of this funding. One is that communities who have more also tend to take less from the forest. And so funding alleviates strain on biodiversity simply because there's less extraction. for need. So the example I would give here is that as I was walking through the forest, this guide was telling me that chimpanzees were returning because villagers no longer needed to hunt them in difficult times for meat. Another effect is that the community was more insulated from loggers.

17:00I drove about 16 kilometers up the road to see a nearby village that was not part of the scheme. It had sold its land rights to a Chinese logging firm that had built wide roads in to get those logs out. And as I sat beside the sort of dirt track, you can see almost like clockwork every four or five hours, huge trucks, massive 18 wheelers rolling sections of the forest out and down the road to Kinshasa in the port. But those second order effects aside, cash for conservation is a growing area of interest and there are schemes being tried elsewhere in Africa too. Like where else? If you look at GiveDirectly, which is an American charity that has pioneered, putting money directly into the hands of the poor.

17:43They've rolled out a similar project in Liberia. Earthacre, a charity operating in Kenya, is trying to maximize income that landowners can earn on their plots of land for restoring and protecting wildlife. That's a biodiversity credit scheme. What links these projects is that they put local communities at their heart. And this is not just for ethical reasons. A growing body of research suggests that given the right incentives, indigenous populations are often the best custodians of the land on which they live. And it may make sense from an efficiency point of view too. I mean, a key advantage over more traditional conservation schemes is lower overheads.

18:24If you ask locals to stay where they are, incentivize them to protect their area's biodiversity, then you may not need as much of a superstructure of charity, of an NGO to be coming in and operating those schemes themselves. I guess the question is how much the incentives, though, are actually aligned for these communities when CFF money is simply better than, for example, that of Chinese loggers. Yeah, I mean, the schemes, CFF, others like it, are no panacea. They face several problems. The first one, and this is a question I found very hard to get an answer to, is what happens when communities grow.

18:58Development begets development and people do generally like to spread out once they have a bit of economic freedom. There's this other niggling problem aside from the growth problem which is as you suggest you know what happens when the benefits of siding with the logging companies become greater than those on offer from these NGOs. If selling parts of the forest that are supposed to be off limits proves more profitable than the funds cash there's little to stop these communities ditching the program. Another risk is mismanagement or misallocation of funds on a local level. A much bigger problem, though, is the broader corruption in places like the DRC.

19:37I mean, even if people do not want to sell their forests, enforcing property rights for them is difficult. And the Congolese state might not even be motivated in some cases to do that. It's weak, corrupt, and has been accused of complicity in illegal logging already. I visited the village of Samba, which is a day's drive from Inganda. and they were looking for money to buy a boat engine.

20:07At the village meeting, a local woman told me she didn't want to ask for financial help from the local government for fear of becoming what she called a slave. Any local official, she said, would expect political support in exchange for funds. this kind of co-option of communities is endemic in the region. And at the beginning, you mentioned the impending COP30 meeting. Will the successes that these programs have had be on show at that meeting? I'm sure that each charity will be vying to get in front of decision makers at COP next week. I think what's important to say is that there is a broader context here to these efforts to rethink conservation.

20:45Four years ago at COP, big promises were made about the protection of forests. And yet here we are a few years later and a lot of those promises have not been kept. Rich countries are wavering in their green commitments and markets for natural capital are struggling to take off. There are major headwinds in conservation. And we may be entering an era where conservation charities, governments have to do more with less. So whichever way you look at it, fresh thinking is welcome. John Joe, thanks very much for your time. Thanks for having me, Jason.

21:20This piece was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center Rainforest Reporting Grant. There's another intersection of rainforest and economics and conservation on the other side of the world, in the Amazon. For the 30 million people who live there, the precious trees have almost no value. So they're clear-cutting for cattle and soybean farms. On this week's episode of our subscriber-only show, Money Talks, my colleague Gavin Jackson traveled to the Amazon to find out how to fix the economics that's destroying the rainforest.