“You’ll be able to park over there”, says the smiling policewoman, pointing at rows of Renaults, Citroëns and Toyotas. We are nearing the Narbonne Arena, a 5,000-seat concert hall in a dire commercial strip on the outskirts of Narbonne, a midsized Roman-founded town in the Aude winemaking département, 160 miles west of Marseilles. It is where Marine Le Pen, 56 and her Wunderkind party president, Jordan Bardella, 29, have chosen to hold the Rassemblement National’s traditional May Day rally.
It’s rare to meet relaxed French police at a political event, even rarer when a good chunk of them are CRS (Compagnies républicaines de sécurité), the baton- and taser- wielding riot police. The latter are here in case of an Antifa attack, which is unlikely. Far from the French capital, where she’s never managed to poll above single figures, and exactly one month after a Paris court sentenced her to four years in prison (two suspended), a €100,000 fine, and a five-year ban from running for public office, Marine, as everyone here calls her, has come among her own people to fight for her political life.
Three hours before kick-off, cheerful queues are already forming. Since last year’s snap election, all three Aude MPs belong to the National Rally, part of the 125-strong intake that made the Rally the largest single-party group in the French National Assembly. The maps published after the runoff showed the entire Mediterranean coast of France, from Perpignan at the Spanish border to Menton next to Italy, as one almost solid block of navy blue (“bleu marine”). Three red islands (Marseilles, the university town of Montpellier, posh Avignon) and a single Macronista yellow speck (half of Toulon) were all that remained of legacy parties.
Even though the two-round electoral system ultimately disappointed Rassemblement ambitions nationwide, when a hastily-cobbled Front Républicain alliance between the Left and Macron’s centrists beat back many of the Rally candidates who’d been in the lead, similar Rally blue areas structure the new map of France: in the northern rustbelt where Le Pen herself has held her Pas-de-Calais seat for eight years; in Lorraine and other once-prosperous north-eastern mining and steelmaking towns; even in places such as Burgundy and Corsica, where they won unheard-of tallies of close to 40% of the vote. The Marinisation of the country seems proof of Le Pen’s achievement in “detoxifying” a brand that was once embodied by her fire-breathing, provocateur father.
My driver and Languedoc-whisperer, an Anglo-American friend who’s lived here for two decades, says the jolly queues and party atmosphere reminds him of MAGA rallies. One difference is that nobody starts insulting us once we’ve collected our press badges. On the other hand, the minute people recognise Yoann Usai, a reporter from CNEWS, the conservative all-news channel, derided by Parisian progressives, they crowd him affectionately for autographs and selfies. “Thank you! You’re speaking for us! You’re defending us!”
As in America, the mood is against “le steal”. “C’est une décision politique!” insists the first person we ask about the judicial condemnation in Paris — and the second, and the third. Le Pen, a barrister by trade, earned herself the solid enmity of her judges, as well as a harsher sentence, when instead of admitting that she’d wilfully broken European Parliament rules (and French political party financing laws) by paying, for almost two decades, Rally officials in Paris with salaries supposed to go to Brussels parliamentary assistants, she claimed she was singled out for political censure. But victimhood plays well among the faithful here. “They all do it and get a rap on the fingers, she gets jail and a ban from running”, says Josette, a 68-year-old former shoe shop assistant. “Ils ont voulu nous faire un sale coup!” (“They’re trying to pull a fast one on us!”), say Linda and Christelle, 20-somethings in crop-tops and ripped jeans, hoping they will be able to get within selfie-reach of the handsome Bardella.
It’s true that both France’s current PM, the centrist François Bayrou, 73, as well as the hard-Left France Unbowed firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, also 73, have also been targeted by judges for similar rule-breaking. But neither Mélenchon, nor those of his party’s Brussels parliamentary assistants currently being investigated for alleged misappropriation of some €500,000 over 9 years, have yet been formally indicted. (France Unbowed denies all charges.) While nine of Bayrou’s Modem Party assistants were condemned last year (to fines and suspended sentences), he himself was acquitted, although the public prosecutor has appealed against “excessive leniency”, and Bayrou will have to stand trial again. In both cases, the sums involved are one-third of those siphoned off by Le Pen’s party; and the practice is “less systematic” (than regular payments into Rassemblement coffers for non-existent jobs for over twenty years). But that’s far too much detail to dispel this crowd’s belief in the fix.
“Victimhood plays well among the faithful here.”
Inside, rock music is blaring, of the unadventurous Radio 2 variety; Gloria Gaynor, Queen, Black-Eyed Peas, even Aznavour and Piaf: the vibe more rave party than political funeral. In addition to their parents and grandparents, there are crowds of young people in the wide pit, perhaps two-thirds of the 5,000-strong throng. They are the ones who form the bulk of Bardella’s two-million-plus TikTok followers, but they shout “MA-RINE, PRÉ-SI-DENTE!” at the top of their voices until Le Pen shows up, and is greeted with wild applause. Earlier, with the clever analyses of Paris political pundits in mind — the aristocracy of established newspaper and magazines columnists variously billed this “last-chance rally” as the moment when Bardella would “commit matricide” (Le Point), “cast himself as the Crown Prince” (Challenges), “put her to pasture” (Libération) — I had tried asking as many people as possible for favourites: who would they ultimately prefer to give their vote to? Nobody would play. “They’re inseparable.” “They go hand in hand.”
“You don’t understand,” Josette told me. “We love him, but she’s family.” “She understands us,” her husband said. “She does all this for us. Yes, if it comes to that, I will vote for Jordan; but that’s because I know she will be at his side, she’ll advise him.” Jean-Marc, the owner of a local garage, who for years voted for what was then called the Front National, headed by the old Jean-Marie Le Pen, said he tended to favour Bardella’s more pro-business policies. “Marine is sometimes too Left-wing, she would spend more on benefits when the country can’t afford it. If he’s her prime minister, he’ll bring balance.”
Often disappointing in television debates — Emmanuel Macron, the ultimate class swot, destroyed her twice, in 2017 and in 2022, pushing even the most faithful of her supporters to predict that she’d never make it to the Élysée — Marine Le Pen is never better than when cornered. A week after stalking out of the court that had apparently killed her political prospects for good, she gave a one-hour interview to the respected parliamentary journal “L’Hémicycle”. As she pointed out, applying to her a specific disposition that enforced her ineligibility immediately, even though she was appealing, and therefore presumed innocent, meant she was being put into the category of dangerous gangsters and terrorists, and deemed a risk to society. “I don’t suppose anyone really believes I shall flee abroad?” she asked. It was a fine performance, one of her best, and at the party that followed, in a Michelin-starred Champs-Elysées restaurant that once belonged to Referendum Party founder and press maverick Jimmy Goldsmith, she was crowded by the exact kind of people — political journalists, society types, business leaders — who supposedly want to keep her out of the game.
Strangely, in Narbonne, Le Pen chose to speak first, unconcernedly leaving Bardella to deliver the finale. The grandson of Italian immigrants, born in France’s poorest département north of Paris, and a university drop-out, Bardella doesn’t threaten her — though he is probably the fastest learner in French politics. “They’re instinctive personalities, no book-readers, so neither will try intellectually snubbing the other, and they have an almost filial relationship,” says a Rassemblement MP.
I spot a candidate for the mayoralty of a large provincial city in the 2026 municipal elections. The candidate is standing for UDR: Union des Droites Républicaines, the Les Républicains rump that seceded last year to ally themselves with the Rally, and were damned accordingly. Marine Le Pen runs a surprisingly relaxed shop, I’m told. “It’s such a relief after the constant backstabbing at Les Réps. One of our leading MPs went to her to explain our group couldn’t support the Rally in a coming parliamentary vote of no-confidence on pensions reform, because it went against stated policy. It meant 16 fewer votes. She said, ‘Yes, I understand; that’s not what your voters want from you.’ No drama! No recriminations! Well, that’s how you explain her relationship with Jordan. She promoted him several times, because she liked what she saw. Of course he’s ambitious; of course he realises younger voters connect to him. But it’s easier for him to wait, because there’s no resentment; he’s been far better treated than her own niece Marion Maréchal, who left the Rally to join Eric Zemmour.”
Marion, the wife of the former Fratelli d’Italia MEP Vincenzo Sofo, is a gifted but temperamental maverick. Once a Zemmour MEP, she recently created her own mini-party rather than altogether re-joining the Rassemblement. She is a Le Pen, which used to be everything in the party — but the new message is now that loyalty is more prized than family. When Bardella recently produced a best-selling (200,000 copies) autobiography, “Ce que je cherche” (What I Seek), which he had very little hand in writing, she immediately agreed to rally side-events in which he was mobbed for signed copies. At Narbonne, you could see dozens of young people clutching their copies like a fashion accessory, with their hero’s black and white cover photo well in evidence.
This pair know their audience. And they know the sure-fire way to get an entire hall to boo on cue is only to utter: “Monsieur Macron…!” In Narbonne, both Le Pen and Bardella grab the opportunity at regular intervals. (“Madame von der Leyen!…” works too.) Le Pen is strong and fluent, talking about the economic crisis, lack of jobs, de-industrialisation — far more than on immigration and insecurity, as if, to this audience, that was already a given. Bardella is punchier: using precise figures, against the Green Deal and the costs it meant for the less well-off; on zero tolerance on crime; on France’s “humiliation” by her former colony, Algeria, (whose the 79-year-old president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, has directed French-Algerian influencers to stir up their communities against the French state, and imprisoned an 80-year-old French novelist on trumped-up charges.) The crowd, who applaud Marine from sheer affection, roar at Bardella’s arguments, including a well-crafted sentence on rising knife murder. “No crime can be tolerated, no-one should walk into a mosque to kill a young man with impunity.” (He is referring to the killing of Aboubakar Cissé, 22, in La Grande Combe, 90 miles north-east of Narbonne, which Mélenchon immediately grasped as an instance of “Islamophobia.”) But even if you could feel the excitement Bardella, a strong speaker, generates, it wasn’t strong enough that Le Pen could feel slighted.
“Even if you could feel the excitement Bardella, a strong speaker, generates, it wasn’t strong enough that Le Pen could feel slighted”
If now were truly the time for the fight for leadership that analysts predict, it would have put Bardella one step further to so-called victory. But even if this “ideal son-in-law” of mesmerising poise were tempted to unseat his mentor, he knows perfectly well that any hint of disloyalty would spell his end with Rassemblement voters, a bloc who feel, rightly or wrongly, that every government and politician in France has betrayed them. Loyalty is all they have, and all they prize. Besides, even if Bardella only were to run in 2032, he’d still be the exact age of Emmanuel Macron when he won the presidency in 2017.
Winning is now realistically in the Rassemblement sights. Emmanuel Macron, who cannot run again, is so detested that his probable successors have little hope of victory on his negative coat-tails. The most interesting is his 36-year-old former PM Gabriel Attal, who had 240 days in the job before last year’s disastrous snap election; but he suffers from being perceived as a Macron clone. The Left is irretrievably split between half a dozen parties, from Mélenchon’s France Unbowed to a shattered Socialist Party whose best hope is a comeback of François Hollande, still smarting from his minister Macron’s betrayal. On the Right, what’s left of Les Républicains cannot hope to be in the runoff. If Mélenchon gets there, the Rassemblement will win easily, possibly with 60%. If Hollande’s dream of a comeback catches on (and that’s a big if) on the Left, he still may not be able to benefit from another Front Républicain.
That leaves the oft-discounted, even more often derided Marine Le Pen. Her appeal should be heard next year. Even if she cannot stand a fourth time, she will have shaped the next French presidential race.
