Immigration bill 'will do nothing to solve France's problems', says RN leader
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Emmanuel Macron’s controversial immigration bill that split his cabinet will do nothing to solve France’s problems, the head of the country’s hard-Right National Rally (RN) has warned.
Jordan Bardella, whose party backed the law passed on Tuesday night in a surprise move, plunging the centrist Emmanuel Macron camp into disarray, said far deeper reforms were necessary to get a handle on illegal migration.
Speaking to The Telegraph from party headquarters in western Paris, he promised sweeping constitutional changes through a referendum that would allow France to take back control, should party veteran Marine Le Pen win the next presidential election in 2027 in her fourth attempt.
While that remains a long way off, Mr Bardella said the French president may well soon have little choice but to dissolve parliament and call snap elections.
“If he does, I am confident that the National Rally will gain a majority,” he insisted. While such claims may remain illusory, an Ifop poll out this week suggested RN would clinch the highest score if elections were held today, taking 28 per cent - a nine per cent rise since last year’s ballot.
The Macron camp would win just 18 per cent, down eight points while the combined score of the Left would be 24 per cent.
In that case, the 28-year-old MEP insisted that despite never holding a ministerial post he is “ready” to step in to become prime minister in a cohabitation government.
In preparation for the prospect of greater responsibilities, he confirmed he has begun taking twice-monthly English lessons at his office in Strasbourg, the lingua franca to speak to fellow nationalists in Europe. Mustering an “I’m fine” and “nice to see you”, he remained cagey about progress.
It may all sound wildly upbeat but Mr Bardella has good reason to be bombastic.
His party has been in the ascendancy since pulling off a cunning ploy to back Macron’s immigration bill at the 11th hour after it was toughened up by conservative Republicans. Some called it “the kiss of death” for Macron’s centrist administration. A quarter of the President’s camp abstained and his health minister resigned but the law was passed.
That prompted Ms Le Pen to claim the bill was an “ideological victory” as it inscribed into law “national preference” for certain types of welfare.
Stung, Mr Macron took to the national airwaves on Wednesday night to denounce such talk as “intellectual fraud” and insist that the National Rally’s “ideas are not in this text”.
However, polls suggest the French think otherwise. While 70 per cent backed the bill, some 73 per cent agreed it was inspired by the National Rally.
All this is music to Bardella’s ears.
A party activist since the age of 16 and hailing from a modest housing estate in the run-down Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, Mr Bardella ditched his geography degree to run for European Parliament and ran Ms Le Pen’s last European election campaign. The party came first with 23 per cent of the vote.
Since then, the Le Pen protégé has taken over the party and a poll published last week suggested that 46 per cent of French felt he would make a good prime minister, despite his relative inexperience.
“I’m humbly the head of the main opposition party. My first elected mandate was at 19, I was MEP at 23. I think the solutions we have worked on with Le Pen are backed by a majority of French,” he said.
“We are ready to lead the government. It’s not a question of age. One grows up fast on the battlefield. I don’t think Macron, Mozart of finance, has any lessons to give when you look at our national debt.”
Last week, a poll suggested he had shot up to France’s sixth most popular politician, on 44 per cent, jumping 15 places in a month and for the first time was one place ahead of his mentor, Le Pen.
Was this a cause of friction with his boss?
“Marine recently said: ‘I’m his first supporter and I think he’s my first supporter.’ People perceive this reality. I owe her a lot. The French see work hand in hand and complement each other,” he said.
“I have a slight advantage with young people, pensioners and executives. Marine is very strong on the working class electorate, so we manage to bring people together and widen the base.”
The party HQ is awash with photos of the double act embracing or addressing supporters. CNews, the French equivalent of Fox News, beams into his office.
Mr Bardella’s smooth-talking “boy-next-door” image belies a skilled and deeply ambitious politician with a reputation for being on the radical end of identity politics, even when compared with Ms Le Pen.
He recently refused to dub her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the Front National’s co-founder who has been convicted for racism as “anti-Semitic”, only to go back on this under pressure. He has also flirted with the conspiracy theory that there is a plot to enact a so-called “great replacement” of white Europeans by foreigners.
When pressed, he said: “In Seine-Saint-Denis, in the department where I grew up, a quarter of the population, according to a report by the National Assembly are foreigners present illegally. This creates a clear demographic shift. That much is clear. But no I don’t believe in conspiracy, it’s simply the consequence of immigration policy,” he said.
RN is surfing on widespread dissatisfaction with President Macron’s government, with many still angry he bypassed a parliamentary vote to raise the country’s retirement age. Inflation and the cost of living continue to bite and the public has not forgotten the urban riots that rocked the country following the killing of a teenage boy by police in June.
The rise in anti-Semitic incidents linked to the Israel-Hamas war, recent terror attacks, including the murder of a teacher, Dominique Bernard, in northern France, and the fatal stabbing of a young rugby captain at a village fete have fuelled debate about French identity, immigration and extremist violence.
But Bardella barely gives these a mention. Now that Le Pen’s “detoxification” of the party is complete, he said his next job is to “institutionalise” it by raising support from different social levels.
His main mission, however, is to lead his party’s European election campaign next June.
One poll this week suggested RN would trounce the Macron camp, taking 31 per cent of the vote - its highest-ever score and 10 points clear of Macron’s Renewal alliance.
“Patriots”, as he calls nationalists in his Identity and Democracy (ID) group, have the wind in their sails in Europe, galvanised by last month’s general elections in the Netherlands, which handed a surprise win to Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration Freedom Party (PVV).
ID is now the sixth-largest in the EU assembly, also behind liberal, green and conservative groups, but current polling data place it in fourth position.
“We can create a minority blockage in the European Parliament,” said the RN leader.
The election, he said, would be a “referendum on immigration”, as well as Europe’s liberal agenda and its net zero drive at the expense of competitiveness.
On Wednesday, the EU reached what some leaders called a “historic” agreement on an overhaul of the bloc’s laws on handling asylum-seekers and migrants. Georgia Meloni, Italy’s Right-wing prime minister, hailed measures in which EU countries are given a choice of either accepting a certain number of migrants each year or paying into a joint EU fund.
But Bardella blasted the “pact” as “depriving states of part of their ability to decide on immigration policy”.
“Understandably, Italy is for as it’s on the front line but it’s bad for France and I’ll be campaigning against it.”
However, he made it clear his European campaign would ultimately be little about Europe and all about Macron.
“I see this election as a mid-term referendum on Macron halfway through his five-year mandate. It’s the only national election in that time. I say to the French: the party that comes first is the party that will be entrusted with preparing the post-Macron era.”
Asked about Rishi Sunak’s controversial policy of deporting to Rwanda those arriving illegally in small boats on England’s southern coast, the RN leader said it would not be his preferred choice.
“We want asylum to be processed in the embassies and consulates of departure countries, not by subcontracting the management of asylum seekers to Rwanda or third countries”.
He also ruled out the idea of allowing the UK to “return” illegal migrants who make it to the UK from France.
However, he was not averse to creating a joint Frontex-style task force in the Channel that would “deport migrants directly to their home countries via charters”.
On Wednesday night, Mr Macron blasted RN as playing on fears and offering no realistic solutions - but for now, the Bardella-Le Pen formula is working a treat.
