Game Over for Marine Le Pen? Mais Non, at Least Not If Jordan Bardella and a French Billionaire Can Help It

As Paris gears up for the Summer Olympics a caretaker government is hanging on weeks after President Macron dissolved parliament — but prenez-garde. That does not mean that the political jockeying is on hiatus. Au contraire, mes méchants.It is true that a coalition of left-wing parties outperformed the rightist National Rally in the second round of a snap vote on July 7. That clipped the chances of 28-year-old Jordan Bardella’s becoming premier and the youngest French person since Joan of Arc to steer France in a time of tumult. Paradoxically, though, time is more on Mr. Bardella’s side than Monsieur Macron’s. As the American election cycle kicks into high gear, the summer round of the political fighting season in France is winding down. Mr. Macron on Monday called for a “political truce” during the Olympics. However, assuming the Olympic games proceed without incident and that the looming vote in America continues to preoccupy Europe, the French election cycle will likely warm up in the fall. No matter whom Mr. Macron ends up making his prime minister by then, the president himself is already a lame canard. His political theatrics have netted a hung parliament and stirred distaste across a broad spectrum of the French public. So even if he wanted to pursue an activist presidency before the next presidential elections in 2027 — in which he can’t run, being in his second quinquennat, — he has already shot himself in the foot. Maybe both feet. In the meantime, National Rally founder Marine Le Pen and the party president, Mr. Bardella, never left the ring. As the Sun reported previously, Mme. Le Pen has been instrumental in forging in the European Parliament a new center-right coalition, Patriots for Europe. It is in European Union’s legislative body the recent bedlam in French politics began.Mr. Bardella chairs the new group. One of the first committees he joined is the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs committee, where he will be rolling up his sleeves alongside a number of influential French European parliamentarians. They include the head of the Socialist party list, Raphaël Glucksmann, and members of a liberal, pro-European group called Renew. What this shows is Mr. Bardella’s willingness to work with those with whom he is politically and perhaps philosophically opposed. As he gets down to business at Strasbourg, he also remains at the helm of the National Rally’s internal party machinery in the run-up to the 2027 presidential election — in which it can be expected that his mentor, Mme. Le Pen, will be a likely frontrunner. While money matters intrude less in French politics than in our own, they are still important. Recently there has been a flurry of reports in the French press about loosening the purse strings of the 50-year-old billionaire co-founder and main shareholder of the Smartbox group, Pierre-Édouard Sterin. According to Le Figaro, Mr. Sterin wants to “enable victory” for the right by investing about $160 million in the training of conservative candidates at the municipal level across France. Dubbed “Project Pericles,” the aim is to speed to power the National Rally and the conservative Les Républicains. The plan, first reported in, of all places, a French Communist newspaper, L’Humanité. The victory sought should be, according to the plan, “idéologique, électorale, et politique.” Keywords are French national identity and “Christian anthropology.” Adversaries, immigration and “wokism.” Mr. Stérin is frequently described as a “tax exile” based in Belgium, but the gauntlet he is throwing down is aimed squarely at Paris. Beyond training he envisages strategic political consulting on a nationwide scale, guerilla judicial tactics, media blasts, hundreds of relevant projects, and dozens of full-time staffers to help win more than 1,000 municipal votes in 2026 and also win the presidential election, with an absolute parliamentary majority too, in 2027.

Game Over for Marine Le Pen? Mais Non, at Least Not If Jordan Bardella and a French Billionaire Can Help It

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