Has favourite to be French President blown his chance?
Jordan Bardella was on course to become the youngest president in French history at next year’s election – until Wednesday, when a magazine showed him walking with a beautiful blonde near a beach in Corsica.
She is Princess Maria Carolina de Bourbon des Deux-Siciles, a member of two European royal families. She is a direct descendant of Louis XIV, the French king guillotined by revolutionaries in Paris in January, 1793.
“She is a princess from the highest reaches of the nobility,” said Paris Match, the magazine which broke the story. “She was brought up in the opulence of Paris, Rome and Monaco. Since the two met last May, the two have never left each other. Paris Match surprised them in Corsica.” She is heiress to a fortune worth several hundred million euros.
Having such a rich and beautiful girlfriend would be the best news for most young men. But Jardella’s route to the Presidential Palace depends on the votes of millions of poor and working class people.
He has described himself as “the voice of a forgotten people” and “the authentic spokesperson for a France despised by the elite.”
Born in September 1995, Bardella has been president of the right-wing Rassemblement National (RN, National Rally) since 2022.
An opinion poll of 1,500 people last month found that 35 per cent would vote for Bardella in the first round of the presidential election next April, ahead of 20.5 per cent for Edouard Philippe, a former Prime Minister. If no candidate receives more than 50 per cent, a second round is held two weeks later with the top two candidates.
In local elections in March, the RN won a record 61 communes, compared to 14 in 2014.
Bardella has one more hurdle to jump to become his party’s candidate next year. Marine Le Pen, the party’s candidate who finished second in the last two presidential elections, has been ruled ineligible because of embezzlement charges. She is appealing, with a court in July due to give its decision. If overturned, she should be the candidate, with Bardella the Prime Minister in the new government.
Bardella has always presented himself as the representative of the common man. He was born in Saint Denis, one of the poorest suburbs of Paris and mainly brought up by his Italian-born single mother,
He grew up on the eighth floor of a drab high-rise tower. He recalled: “like many families who live in the neighbourhood, I was confronted by violence at an early age, I saw my mother having difficulty to make ends meet.”
He excelled at secondary school and entered the elite Paris-Sorbonne University. But he dropped out to focus on politics.
Maria Carolina’s childhood could not have been more different. Born into a very wealthy family, she grew up between Paris, Monte Carlo and Rome. She was homeschooled, following the International Cambridge Educational System and supervised by the Department of Education of Monaco. She went on to study at the International University of Monaco and Harvard.
She speaks Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English and Russian. She is a social media influencer, with large followings on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.
Bardella’s choice of girlfriend has already attracted criticism. “What game is Bardella playing at?” asked L’Humanite, newspaper of the French Communist Party.
“Why did he appear along the Italian heiress of a ‘royal’ family, among the wealthiest of the international jet set?
He appears in public with an heiress at a time when angry framers were descending in Paris. His choice has not gone unnoticed,” it said.
If he won the election, the First Lady of France would not be French, but Italian.
Strongly anti-immigrant, the RN draws most of its support from poor and lower-middle class whites angry at the high cost of living, high crime in many cities, de-industrialisation of the country and what they consider the excessive influence of the European Union and its bureaucrats in France. They are strongly nationalistic.
They want stronger controls on immigration and deportation of illegals, as well as restrictions on the spread of Islam and building of mosques.
They consider Emmanuel Macro, the president since May 2017, representative of an arrogant internationalist, urban elite that looks down on people like themselves.
Bardella’s new girlfriend, rich and privately educated, belongs to this very elite.
Will the photograph in Paris Match on Wednesday be the image that sinks his presidential hopes?
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