Why Farage is courting rising star of the French far right

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:12France's far right has travelled from the political fringes to the brink of power. Now its 30-year-old frontman Jordan Bardella is headlining the Reform Party conference and this is why.

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0:58The next elections in France are in 2027. And the odds-on favourites to win are Marine Le Pen as the next French president and Jordan Bardella as the next French prime minister. Now, I know what you're all thinking. Nothing eases you into the weekend quite like a profile of the 30-year-old leader of France's far right. But stay with me, because this isn't just a story about French politics. It's about how an insurgent party moves from influencing the political debate to having a realistic chance of running the country. Now, if you were to put Jordan Bardella and Nigel Farage side by side, at first glance, they're quite the odd couple.

1:37Farage is 62, rarely far from a pint, and has been knocking around British politics for decades. Bardella is young, immaculately turned out, huge on TikTok, and looks as though he was designed in a laboratory to make France's far right more presentable. But both build their appeal around immigration, national identity and anger with the establishment. And now Bardell has been to Birmingham to address Reform's conference.

2:05It's an honour and a great pleasure to be here. The invitation of Britain's leading political party and of your next Prime Minister, Nigel Farage. The timing is interesting. The conference is taking place amidst fresh allegations about reform's funding. Reform denies wrongdoing. But even without that, Bardella's invitation is revealing. Because to Nigel Farage, he offers a glimpse of where reform wants to go next, from electoral breakthrough to genuine contenders for government. They've even signed something known as a memorandum of understanding that they say will bring an end to small boats crossing the Channel forever, once they're both in government, that is.

2:48Dr Philippe Marlier is Professor in French and European Politics at University College London. Philippe, a French politician, is turning up as a star performer at the Reform Party Conference of all things. But most people, I think, in this country have no clue as to who Jordan Bardella is. So how would you describe him? You're right. Jordan Bardella is a pretty unknown figure outside of France. He's only 30 years old, which is in political terms is a baby. But he's been around for a while. He's someone who joined Marine Le Pen's party aged 16. He's had no job outside of politics. He became the leader of the party in 2022.

3:29Since then, he's been the leader. He's been an MEP in Brussels since 2019. People don't talk much about him, to be fair, as an MEP. So quite discreet. He hasn't been, for instance, the mayor of a large city, which in France is a springboard to a national career. But last detail, and not the least, is that he may have run for the presidential election had Marine Le Pen, in her appeal, been barred from running. You know, she was convicting for embezzling EU funds. In appeal, the conviction was upheld. However, the penalty was reduced so that technically she can run and she will run. So in a space of hours, the sort of potential candidate was set aside, discarded, if you like, or dumped even by Marine Le Pen herself.

4:23But Le Pen said publicly that if she wins the presidential election, he might be a prime minister. I am wondering if there was anything in his background that drove him towards national rally, a party, you know, more commonly associated with policies closer to the far right. When he joined the party, he was asked, you know, Sebleton, why did you join the party? And one of the answers was it's because of Marine. I love Marine. You know, he's a fervent admirer and supporter of Marine Le Pen. I'm not sure if it's still the case today since it's been discarded, but that's what he said then. It is helpful to talk a little bit about his background.

5:03He was born in Saint-Saint-Denis, which is in northeast of Paris. It's probably the poorest or one of the poorest départements in France altogether. And of course, it's also an area with a large population of migrants, ethnic minorities. So he talks a lot about it and to explain why immigration, for instance, was always an important issue to him, how to cope with it, how to make sure that France doesn't lose, as he puts it, its own identity. And so that could be an explanation as to why he made that choice very early on. You know, age 16, he joined the party. He likes to portray himself as a working class kid and not exactly the reality.

5:47He was born to a lower middle class background. His mother was a kindergarten assistant coming from Italy. So both parents are migrants. That's the irony of it. Father is also Italian and Algerian and he's a businessman. So not exactly in a blue collar worker background. background. Now he's in relationship with a young member of the Italo-French aristocracy, you know, from the Bourbon to Sicily's family. How can you portray yourself as a bit of a working class boy who climbed the echelons of politics and be in a relationship with someone who belongs to the European Jet Set family, which has close ties with Donald Trump?

6:27You talk about him as a 16 year old. I have not seen him as a 16 year old, but I suspect the image that he had back then is rather different to the one that he has now. The style, the look, the smoothness, the sharp suits, it does seem of a piece with other politicians who occupy this part of the political spectrum. Yes, he's impeccable. And a lot of his critiques point to the fact that that's just an image. In fact, when it comes to the intellect, policies, ideas, well, there's not much to show for. He wrote two books recently, but again, that didn't seem to satisfy his critics. They were pretty shallow books, not much policies and ideas in there.

7:08So he's got to fight on that. Let's talk then a little bit about the policy portfolio that National Rally have put to the French people. I mean, there is a tendency in this country and other parts of Europe to kind of use far right as a bit of shorthand. How fair is that characterisation of their policies? The interesting thing with Jordan Bardella is that it doesn't come from the dynasty, i.e. the Le Pen dynasty. You had first the father, the founder of the party, back in 1972. Then his daughter succeeded him in 2011. She's been committed to process that the French called de-demonisation, because the party and the father was seen as too far-right, racist, anti-Semitic.

7:50She put an end, to a large extent, to all that. Bardella doesn't have that problem because he's not a Le Pen. Just the name Le Pen, if you are not a supporter of the national rally, the name carries some way. For most French people, this is a bit of a scary name because of the father. So at least he hasn't been involved in that kind of thing. So that could be an advantage. But overall, he's fully committed to the RN programme, putting immigration at the centre of all things. If Le Pen is elected, she pledged a national referendum where the issue of immigration will be put forward. And also there will be an attempt to revise the law on nationality.

8:33In France, if you are born on French soil from foreign parents, you become automatically a French citizen when you reach the age of 16. And the National Rally would like to put an end to that. It's fully in line with that. How then would you describe his relationship with Marine Le Pen? I couldn't quite work out whether their relationship was mentor-protégé or whether she now views him as some sort of stalking horse waiting for another reason that she wouldn't be able to stand and he can just slip straight. And what is your assessment of the way the two are? Bardella, he was 16 when he joined the party.

9:09Soon after, he was involved in Marine Le Pen's campaign in 2017 for the presidency. He was 17 then. So he was really handpicked by Le Pen. So clearly, she is a mentor. There's no doubt about that. And for a very long time, you could see a very shy, almost blushing figure next to the leader, undisputed leader. So that has changed more recently, particularly during that strange period following the first verdict when Le Pen was convicted for embarrassment in 2025. So between 2025 and last July for about a year, talks were about Le Pen not being able to run. So Bardella was presented quite openly and even by Le Pen himself, if I can't run, then it will be Jordan.

10:00So in a sense, that probably put an end to that protégé and mentor relationship. And now I suppose Bardella, which was looking unhappy on the day of the appeal because it went very fast. The court of appeal gave his judgment in the morning and Le Pen went on national news in the evening to say, that's it, it will be me running. So I think probably now Bardella thought, well, until that moment, I was probably the guy who could run and with a potential chance of becoming president, which is one of the highest political jobs in the world, given the power the French president has. I think probably, yeah, now the relationship has changed.

10:58One of the reasons that you and I are talking today, Philippe, is of course that Jordan Bardella is appearing at the Reform Political Party Conference. What do you see as the parallels, as the links between national rally and reform? Both parties focus on the issue of immigration. Too much of it, at least, is a problem for the economy, for the identity of the nation. On that, I think that would be a similarity. For a very long time, National Rally was Eurosceptic. As late as in 2017, it was part of the National Rally program to pledge Frexit. It's out, and it's out since Brexit, by the way. Le Pen has seen that there is no majority for Frexit in France.

11:44Now, the difference is, well, Farage hasn't had a good summer. They're down third in the polls, but until the summer, things were going very well for them. But the problem with Farage and reform parties, it seemed to be where the national rally was 20 years ago. They're very high in the polls, but would that translate into a majority of seats in the parliament? One thing is to have a national average, which is in a 20 plus percent. Another is to be able to be nationally strong everywhere, in all constituencies, so that you can compete and win a majority of seats. I don't think the reform party is there yet.

12:20The national rally, it took the party 50 years between its creation and now is the moment where they could win an absolute majority, or if they fall short of it, together with the conservative right, they could get there. Can we talk, though, about the two men themselves? I mean, Nigel Farage is obviously totemic for the Reform Party, and Jordan Bardella appears to be going in that direction. They're both clearly fond of a suit or two. They both style themselves as men of the people, to some criticism from quarters. Beyond that, do you see these two as peas in a pod? They're very different. I think I would see a more outspoken, more jolly figure in the case of Farage.

13:03Bardella comes across as sometimes a little bit shy. That's a bit surprising when you're a public figure, but a little bit shy, a bit uncertain, a bit unsure of himself. I don't think you could say that about Farage. There were also communication issues with Bardella until recently, you know, being not very good in the media. And that's why I think the party was fearing a Bardella candidacy, because when you have to go for the big debates against your opponents, when you have to answer complicated questions from the media, you have to be good. You have to get the message across. You have to be clear.

13:40And that wasn't the case. You know, he's a bit of a TikTok man, very eloquent when it comes to delivering punchlines in the social media, where he's a star. and he manages this way to appeal to a young audience. There's a lot of young people, you know, 16, 24, who are very fond, allegedly, of Bardella and that's probably where he's better than Farage. But again, that may not suffice to make a competitive politician on the highest level. What then do you think, Philippe, that Nigel Farage and Reform can learn from Jordan Bardella and National Raleigh? to become more professional. That's what Le Pen has insisted on.

14:23When you speak in a National Assembly, stay calm, don't insult your opponents, don't say anything too controversial, and also come to the National Assembly well-dressed. Come across as professional. And the second point would be to become work on developing your strength nationally. It's not enough to be strong in certain parts of the UK where you win very easily the contest if you are quasi non-existent in a majority of seats, because you can't get a majority this way. And that's exactly the story of the national rally over the past 50 years since its creation. For a long time, it was a party doing well in certain areas, the southeast, the north, but was absolutely nowhere to be seen elsewhere.

15:14Now they are strong absolutely everywhere. We can say though, can't we, if we look across Europe, and indeed if we look further afield, that parties further to the right and parties of the far right do seem to be doing better than they have in a very long time. Can we attribute that to one reason, one explanation? Is it simply the case that mass migration has allowed the parties of the right to make their case more strongly than they have been able to before. I think when you look at the mainstream conservative parties, such as the Tories in the UK, Les Républicains, Chirac's and Sarkozy's party in France, I think there's been a notable shift to the right on a number of issues, notably immigration.

15:55One of the effects of that is that the views of the far right on immigration, which were deemed 20 or even 10 years ago very extreme, have now been to some extent legitimised and or they've entered the mainstream. But little help from the conservatives, but also from the media. You know, when you are invited to the media on a regular basis and not particularly challenged in some cases on some of your policies, which could be debated more strongly, robustly. So, of course, it is a bit of a boost for the party. So I think the reason why Le Pen might win this time around is because French voters, for the first time in 50 years, do not regard the national rally as, if you like, the greatest threat.

16:42That's the way pollsters put it. If Jordan Bardella does make it all the way to the office of president, all the way to the Elysee, and given everything that we've discussed, I certainly wouldn't bet against it. Would he be a president that parties of the centre-right, the centre-left, countries like the United Kingdom, would they be able to do business with him, do you think? That's a$1 million question. Yes, it's really to tell. I would suspect that there are very good chances of that. Yes. Because in particular, if there's a kind of hung parliament, if there's no absolute majority for the national rally, they will turn to the party which is closest, which is Les Républicains.

17:23And opinion polls have been showing already for a few years that the electorates of Les Républicains are quite keen to vote on some occasions for the national rally. Lots of LR politicians are also calling for an alliance with the party. A former party leader of Les Républicains, Eric Ciotti, two years ago, he was the leader of the party. And he called for an alliance with RN and he was expelled from the party. Can you imagine the party leader being expelled? So they already bridge it. If that happens, that would be, I think, one of the most extraordinary developments, not simply in French politics, but in European politics since the end of the Second World War.

18:08and off my words. Why? Because it would be the first time that an unreconstructed far-right party gets in office by its own right, winning the election, and make an alliance with a mainstream conservative party, but the mainstream conservative party would be in a junior position, junior partner. You've never had that before in Europe. Think of Italy. Meloni, before becoming prime minister, was a junior partner to Berlusconi. You see? So that would really be, I think, for political scientists such as myself, for journalists like you, would be a major, major topic to discuss. Well, if it does happen, Philippe, we'll get you back on the podcast to discuss it.

18:53Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Thank you. And that's your lot for today, but do get in touch with your thoughts. Earlier this week, I was speaking to Ed Conway on the alarming rise in the cost of government borrowing. That prompted plenty of you to reach out, including Neil. He says this. I thought the UK's static non-growth economy was the root cause of all our problems. Wouldn't ramping up our defence industry kill two birds with one stone, i.e. boost employment and therefore tax revenue, and move our commitment forward towards ensuring the UK's defence is secure? To get in touch, you can email me directly, why at sky.uk.

19:27That's your lot for this week. We're back the other side of the weekend. Until then, take care.