This year, no Indian summer for the National Rally. To the great despair of the executives, the movement’s back-to-school weekend will not be held in the south, as usual, but under the Parisian greyness, on September 14 and 15. Austerity requires it. After the disappointing result of the legislative elections, it is time to take stock for the Frontists, ordered to put away their beach towels. “These weekends are traditionally expensive, festive, sometimes far away for some elected officials. It is not so bad that the executives meet together to think about what happens next,” assures Louis Aliot, RN mayor of Perpignan and first vice-president of the party.
After two rather quiet years, this close friend of Marine Le Pen has decided to dive back into internal affairs. More precisely to take care of the “training of elected officials”, an area in which the mayor believes that the party can still improve. The last legislative elections did not prove him wrong. Several dozen candidates invested by the National Rally have been pinned for racist, conspiratorial or anti-Semitic excesses. Louis Aliot therefore pleads in favor of the establishment of “real training” for elected officials and Frontist executives.
Training and renewal
Nostalgic, he claims an old-fashioned model, from the time when he was learning at Jean-Marie Le Pen’s FNJ. “We need real training in physics, with the implementation of a test of acquired knowledge, that’s what we did 30 years ago when I joined the FN!” For the time being, two organizations are responsible for training at the RN. Iforel, dedicated to local elected officials, and Campus Héméra, a relatively slow-moving online course platform launched in the fall of 2022 by Jordan Bardella and overseen by former pollster Jérôme Sainte-Marie. “No one ever sets foot there, I even forgot my login codes,” summarizes a manager less soberly.
A National Bureau of the party will be held on Tuesday, September 17, and should be an opportunity to take stock of the various dysfunctions identified by the Le Penists. The day after the legislative elections, Jordan Bardella, recognizing a “defeat” that he was ready to “assume”, also tasked the European deputy Aleksandar Nikolic with carrying out an audit of the federations. “We need to have profiles that hold up,” assures the latter. Because the closer we get to power, the more media attention is multiplied.” In short: identify problematic profiles, or those recognized as responsible for the choice of problematic candidates, so that the latter can be excluded from the system. A third of the departmental delegates should be renewed. As reported by the New Obsa roadmap has already been presented to Jordan Bardella, and recommends in particular the establishment of a new regional level intended to facilitate exchanges between Paris and the territories, or the creation of a large file bringing together essential information on the federations.
Jordan Bardella targeted
Banking on a new dissolution of the National Assembly next summer, the far-right party hopes to succeed in purging all problematic profiles from its ranks and in training enough potential candidates to avoid suffering the same setback as last July. But for some executives, the person responsible for the Frontist failure lies rather on the side of the party leadership, and is called Jordan Bardella. In private, some elected officials denounce a “fuse strategy” that began in the summer, with the ouster of Gilles Pennelle, discreetly ordered to resign from his position as general director of the party. “He was the first fuse in a long list,” laments a senior executive under cover of anonymity. “It is very unfair to abandon a long-time collaborator in the middle of nowhere instead of assuming his responsibility.”
Others go further, targeting errors that the MEP allegedly made during the campaign. “He is responsible for this defeat,” assures a Le Pen supporter. “He was clumsy in certain arguments, such as on the issue of dual nationals, but above all, he was very arrogant, as if victory was a foregone conclusion and that he was already Prime Minister, that hurt us a lot.”
In the federations, several local executives fearing for their heads complain about not having been contacted by the party leadership, condemned to wait until September 14 and 15 to learn more about their fate. A Frontist agrees: “It’s the great tradition of the party: they will arrive and discover publicly and directly that they have been dropped. It’s a shame, because it’s an unnecessary humiliation, and it’s not going to improve the internal atmosphere.” And adds: “With Marine, at least, a dialogue was always started, here we don’t even have the right to a discussion. And above all, we shut our mouths because in this party it is never advisable to be too frank.” So no Indian summer, but for their return, it is likely that the Frontists will not escape a little heat wave.
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