Jordan Bardella often says: “Politics is the art of repetition.” This is good, already in 1984, Jean-Marie Le Pen assured: “To rebuild France, we must reduce the domain of the State, the number of civil servants, public spending.” It was forty years ago. Today, the Lepéniste sentence resonates pleasantly in the ears of the young president of the RN, signatory, on October 20, of a platform in Le Figaroin which he calls for “unlocking the constraints weighing on our economy”. After years of wandering in the lands of social populism, the National Rally seems ripe to reconnect with its liberal roots.
In the Assembly, the Marinist troops are now rushing to propose a “counter budget”, which would allow a saving of 13.7 billion euros by “degrading the State” while defending entrepreneurs, and equalizing working days. gap between public and private. In the hemicycle, during the examination of the budget, here they are in support of the “flat tax”, even though Marine Le Pen’s project in 2022 envisaged a virtual abolition of the system; voting against the reestablishment of the ISF (Wealth Tax), against the surtax on large businesses, or abstaining on the perpetuation of the contribution on high incomes. In short, here is the RN in full courtship to seduce the wealthiest.
Jordan Bardella’s Natural Tilt
The opportunity, for the left, to point out the duplicity of the Lepénistes, this Thursday, October 31, during their parliamentary niche at the Palais Bourbon. “Jordan Bardella and the RN are trying to deceive us, as proof I want a long list of your votes against the popular will, including against those who vote for you, because you are a social fraud!” insurgent elected rebellious Anaïs Belouassa Cherifi.
The party leader has assumed a more right-wing economic position for some time now. During his campaign for the European elections, he multiplied his declarations of love to employers, declaiming his desire “to establish a growth tax system by lowering production taxes”, “to support the forces without increasing costs”, supporting be in favor of “economic freedom at home and protection abroad.”
Stagnation among the working classes
The maneuver is above all electoral. Because since 2017, the far-right party seems to have reached a ceiling within the popular electorate, where we observe a homogenization of behavior. Among executives and the upper classes, on the other hand, the frontist vote is experiencing a sharp increase. An Ipsos survey dated June 30 and covering the legislative elections establishes that the latter has increased, since the 2022 presidential election, from 15% to 32% in the upper income bracket, from 12% to 31% among retirees , and from 11% to 22% among executives and above. And according to Cevipof, since 2012, the progression of the Lepéniste party has been among the middle classes, going from 33% in 2012 to 40% in 2022. Furthermore, if the RN remains very high among the working electorate (57% in the last legislative elections), the most disadvantaged working classes continue to vote mainly on the left.
The calculation has been made: the margin for electoral progress is now on the side of the middle and upper middle classes. “The RN electorate itself is today quite liberal,” analyzes political scientist Luc Rouban, author of Hidden sources of the RN vote (Presses de Sciences Po – 2024). Liberal in the sense of entrepreneurial liberalism, which includes a demand for economic autonomy. The legislative elections last June helped accelerate this diagnosis, as did the arrival within the party of several personalities from the liberal right. This is the case of François Durvye, right-hand man of conservative Catholic billionaire Pierre-Edouard Stérin, and economic advisor to Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. With others, he participated in changing the economic program of the far-right party, and intends to continue this enterprise.
The bourgeoisie, land of conquest
“There was a gradual migration both from economic circles and from the party, he believes. At the time of the legislative elections, many of Emmanuel Macron’s voters in 2017 began to find Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella friendly , and they started talking to people in this environment and understanding the demands of the business community.” The seduction operation last June, although it paved the way for the conquest of a new bourgeois electorate, was not enough to convince. The party is still struggling to prove its credibility on economic issues and must still give pledges, especially since it is counting on an upcoming dissolution of the National Assembly.
The exercise is a balancing act. On the one hand, the RN will have to convince and reassure the middle and upper classes as to its ability to defend their economic interests. On the other: continue to be the voice, at least in appearance, of popular categories, demanding social progress. For Stefano Palombarini, economist and lecturer at Paris VIII, the frontist ideology is now part of a neoliberal paradigm which should allow it to bring together a new segment of the bourgeois electorate. “The elections of June 2024 were marked by a third wave of rallying to the extreme right: after the Thatcherite petty bourgeoisie of the 1980s, then a fraction of the lower middle classes frightened by the prospect of social degradation, “There is now a significant fraction of the wealthy classes and the big bourgeoisie who are joining the National Rally”, writes the latter in the collective work Far right, the resistible rise (Ed. Amsterdam). The unique means made available to Jordan Bardella for the promotion of his forthcoming work (What I’m looking forFayard, November 9) by billionaire Vincent Bolloré illustrate this shift in particular. “The RN knows that the next step, for it, is the presidential election of 2027, concludes Luc Rouban. It also knows that to get there this time, it will need the support of economic elites and employers, and its strategy, to here, is to do everything to succeed in bringing together these major players.”
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