On paper, of course, Jordan Bardella is not irreplaceable. He is president of the National Rally, but this role is not a monarchy. The party’s next congress, scheduled for 24 and 25 October 2026 in Orléans, is precisely intended to renew the party’s governing bodies and elect the movement’s president. The RN is therefore institutionally capable of changing its leader.
Politically, however, the matter is far more complicated. In the space of a few years, Bardella has become much more than just the party’s administrative president. He is one of its leading public figures, Marine Le Pen’s political partner and the man she has presented as destined for Matignon in the event of a presidential victory. Marine Le Pen officially announced her candidacy for the 2027 presidential election in July, whilst Bardella remains president of the RN and occupies a central role in the party’s electoral machinery.
This is precisely what makes the current crisis so delicate. Mediapart has published messages dating from 2013–2015 which it attributes to Jordan Bardella and which contain anti-Semitic and conspiracy-theory remarks. The media outlet claims to have verified Messenger conversations using data from Facebook/Meta and had the extraction certified by a bailiff. Bardella categorically denies being the author of these remarks, calls them forgeries and has initiated legal proceedings against Mediapart. It is therefore important to distinguish between two things: the evidence presented by the investigative media outlet and the formal challenge to its authenticity by the individual concerned.
However, the National Rally’s problem now extends beyond Bardella alone. From the very first revelations, Marine Le Pen and numerous party officials chose to defend him publicly and to cast doubt on Mediapart’s work. Following the publication of new evidence by the newspaper on 1 October, the party did not immediately change its stance: Bardella continues to dispute the documents and the RN maintains its support.
This strategy automatically creates a form of political solidarity. The more the RN insists today that Bardella is the victim of a smear campaign, the harder it will be for them tomorrow to simply say: ‘In the end, we were wrong’. Any potential break would no longer concern Bardella alone. It would also force Marine Le Pen and those leaders who have publicly staked their credibility on the matter to explain why they defended him so staunchly.
This is where Bardella becomes difficult to ‘let go’. Not because he is legally indispensable, but because the party has invested heavily in his persona. He represents a younger generation, an extremely polished communication strategy and part of the RN’s normalisation strategy. To remove him abruptly would inevitably mean reorganising part of the political and media machinery built around the Le Pen–Bardella duo.
However, the very history of the National Front and subsequently the National Rally shows that no figure is truly untouchable. In 2015, Marine Le Pen went so far as to expel her own father, Jean-Marie Le Pen – co-founder of the party and a historic figure in the movement – following a series of statements she deemed incompatible with the line she wished to impose. If the party was able to break with its founder, it can, in theory, break with any of its leaders when its leadership considers that retaining them threatens its strategy.
The real question is therefore probably not: ‘Can the RN get rid of Bardella?’ It can. The question is rather: **at what point would the cost of keeping Bardella outweigh the cost of dropping him?**
For the time being, the RN’s response is clear in practice: the party is standing united behind him. There is a political explanation for this. Breaking ties with Bardella immediately would amount to lending credence to the allegations, at a time when he is contesting them and a legal battle is beginning. It would also undermine the strategy put in place just a few months ahead of the presidential election on 18 April and 2 May 2027.
However, several scenarios could theoretically alter this calculation: new evidence that is difficult to refute, additional witness statements, developments in the legal proceedings, a sustained decline in his support amongst the RN electorate, or the emergence of sufficiently strong internal opposition. None of these factors currently allows us to conclude that Bardella will be sidelined; they are simply the kinds of factors which, in any party, can transform a leader regarded as an asset into a strategic problem.
And this is perhaps the paradox of this case. By opting for an extremely firm collective defence, the RN is protecting Jordan Bardella in the short term, but it is also further aligning its own narrative with that of its president. If Bardella manages to have the charges dismissed or to convince his electorate that they are part of a political campaign against him, this solidarity may appear consistent to his supporters. If, on the other hand, future developments were to make this defence much more difficult to sustain, backtracking would become politically more costly.
The RN is therefore not ‘married for life’ to Jordan Bardella. No party is truly ‘married for life’ to any of its leaders. But by persistently making his defence a collective endeavour, Marine Le Pen and the RN are in the process of transforming a matter that initially concerned Bardella alone into a test that also concerns the credibility of their entire leadership.
And the longer this defence continues, the more complicated any potential split will become.
