Once a pariah, the National Rally is now France’s most popular party

Two giggling teens are poring over a selfie they took with Jordan Bardella, after a five-hour wait in the southern French town of Perpignan. What is it they like about the 30-year-old leader of the populist-right National Rally (RN)? “His ideas,” one grins. The other jabs her friend: “Rubbish, you think he’s hot!” A middle-aged man waiting in line points to the way Mr Bardella “says what everybody thinks”. A retired woman adds, “He looks like a president: he’s tall, he’s well dressed and polite. He makes me think of [ex-president Jacques] Chirac.” Her husband, a retired civil servant, concurs: “I see in Bardella the Gaullism we’ve lost. He’s the only one who can give us hope.”

That 1,500 fans have turned up on a weeknight for a book-signing hints at how far the RN has evolved: from an untouchable extremist movement into a party that could win the presidency in 2027, or enter government before then. There are no shaven heads or jackboots in sight; instead, families with children, a young couple with a baby, pensioners, a hairdresser, a town-hall employee, a winemaker, students. Over the past decade the party co-founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen and a former member of the Waffen-SS has morphed from an antisemitic pariah into the most popular party in France.

The question today is not whether the RN can replace the mainstream conservative party, the Republicans, as the chief opposition on the right to President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists. That has already happened. With 123 seats, up from eight in 2017, the RN is the single-biggest party in the 577-seat lower house; the Republicans hold just 49. The real question is whether it can win a presidential run-off (it has lost the past two), and what it would do if it did.

Much can happen in 18 months. Marine Le Pen, who took over the movement from her father in 2011 and now leads its parliamentary bloc, has been barred from running for elected office for misuse of European funds. The courts will rule on her appeal next year. If the ban is upheld, she and Mr Bardella have agreed that he will stand instead. A poll suggests that Mr Bardella would beat every one of four likely rivals in the run-off.

So mainstream has the RN become that the profile of its voters is today “much closer to that of the general population than are the other big political parties”, notes Mathieu Gallard, in a paper for the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, a left-leaning think-tank. The RN’s support has expanded from its former heartlands in the south and the north-eastern rustbelt into small towns and rural and semi-rural areas across the country. At European elections last year the RN topped the ballot in 93% of France’s 35,000 communes. This was not a mere protest vote. In first-round voting in last year’s snap legislative election, the party came first in 259 out of 577 constituencies, including in places such as Brittany that had previously had little appetite for it.

This expansion, says Luc Rouban of Sciences Po university, represents both the “normalisation” and the “embourgeoisement” of the RN’s vote. The party has coupled its established working-class vote to a new white-collar following. In 2017 only 7% of those with a degree voted for the RN in the first round of legislative elections. By 2024 that had leapt to 22%—the same share that voted for Mr Macron’s centrists. “It’s no longer a shameful vote,” says Mr Rouban. The RN has become the most popular party among 60- to 69-year-olds, who used to shun it. Even the gender gap has closed. In 2010 three times more men (9%) than women (3%) voted for the party. By 2024 the difference had narrowed to two points: 32% for men, 30% for women.

The RN has pulled this off in part through its “necktie strategy”: a bid to dress smartly in parliament, clean up the party, evict its toxic elements (Ms Le Pen kicked out her own father), and look ready to govern. Small hostile groups clutching banners still gather outside Mr Bardella’s events. One protester recently threw an egg at him; another a bag of flour. But the duo are treated courteously on talk shows—and enthusiastically by the ascendant right-wing media, including CNews, a sort of French Fox News. A former leader of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti, has defected to Ms Le Pen with a dozen-odd fellow legislators. Others no longer rule out working with it. The cordon sanitaire that used to keep the party ostracised has sagged.

The RN’s expanded appeal is also due to the tempering of some policies. It has ditched its plans to withdraw France from the euro and NATO’s integrated military command. Smoothly coached, Mr Bardella has been leading a boardroom charm offensive, promising “pro-business” policies that support growth (although he is still in favour of a wealth tax, and would lower the pension age for those who start work young). The party’s pledges to curb immigration, defend borders, fight drug-trafficking, and reinforce a strong centralised state all fit the national mood. Public opinion has shifted to the right.

In its quest for respectability the RN has not abandoned red-meat identity politics, however. Its underlying reflex—France first—carries a distinct MAGA-like resonance. The party does not invoke Donald Trump, who is even less popular in France (18%) than in Britain (22%) or Italy (28%). Nor does it preach family values (a poll says nearly a third of gay men would back Mr Bardella). But the RN falls squarely into the group of “patriotic” parties the American president wants to see prevail in Europe. A noxious anti-foreigner undertone continues to inform policy. Mr Bardella says the “European people” fear “disappearing” under pressure from “migratory waves”. At rallies supporters chant, “This is our home!”

The RN does not want France to leave the European Union (EU), but is radically hostile towards its underlying principles. It would pull the country out of the union’s electricity-pricing mechanism, so that France can benefit more directly from its cheap nuclear power. It is suspicious of France’s closest friend, Germany: the EU, says Mr Bardella, is an “association in defence of Germany’s interests”. It rails against pesky rules from Brussels, and wants a rebate on France’s contribution to the EU’s budget.

Several senior figures in the RN remain instinctively sympathetic to Russia, even though the party has condemned the invasion of Ukraine and repaid a loan from a Russian bank. It rejects the idea of sending Ukraine long-range missiles and of putting French boots on the ground as part of a peace deal. It does not want Ukraine to join NATO or the EU.

Moreover, there are hints that some extreme elements still lurk within the party. This month, and only after an awkward delay, Ms Le Pen disowned David Rachline, the mayor of the city of Fréjus and a vice-president of the party. He was under investigation for corruption, and had posted a photo on Instagram of himself with two extreme-right figures. In 2024, as the party scrambled to field candidates, some toxic contenders slipped through. A photo emerged of one wearing a Nazi cap; the party quickly ditched her.

Such incidents, says Patrice Hubert, the party’s new director-general and a former businessman, are mere “growing pains”. Since 2022 membership has surged from 40,000 to 150,000. The RN has expanded from a family-run enterprise, which used to meet in the Le Pen mansion, into a national organisation with a headquarters in Paris. Mr Hubert says there is now a drive to “professionalise” management, as well as to ensure thorough vetting and training of candidates.

That may not be enough to prepare the party for power. The closer it gets, the more its competence will come under scrutiny. Behind closed doors, party officials are reaching out to civil servants, diplomats and conservative figures they hope to recruit. But the RN has no experience of national government. A corporate boss finds it woefully ill-informed on economic policy. After Mr Bardella told The Economist of his plan to talk to the European Central Bank about buying French sovereign debt, Jean-Claude Trichet, a (French) former ECB president, retorted that the bank “is not Father Christmas”.

There is also speculation that relations between Ms Le Pen and her protégé may come under strain. If she remains disbarred, the RN will be betting its future on a young man who has never run anything except the party. Back in Perpignan, between mouthfuls of chocolate crêpe during a pause, Mr Bardella says the thought does not keep him awake at night: “Every day that goes by, I am preparing myself to exercise responsibility.” ■