France's far-right National Rally (RN) has confirmed 27-year-old Jordan Bardella as the replacement as party leader for Marine Le Pen.

Ms Le Pen will focus instead on leading the party's group in parliament, after it took 89 seats in the National Assembly earlier this year.

It marks the first time in its 50-year history that the main far-right party has not been led by a Le Pen.

But the move does not mark a major change in direction for the party.

Marine Le Pen remains the source of real power and she is still the likely candidate in the next presidential election in 2027.

She told the party on Saturday that she was not disappearing from politics.

"I am not leaving RN to take a holiday. I will be there where the country needs me," she said at the party convention.

Addressing the party, Mr Bardella said he sought to unite all those who want to put France back on the right track.

"With us, the people of France will always have priority at home and we do not intend to give up on serving our people first," he said.

"We will finally be the friends and the road to recovery that the country needs to ward off 40 years of mistakes, of letting go, of resignation and cowardice."

Brought up in a poor family of Italian origin in the Paris suburbs, Mr Bardella joined the far-right as a teenager and rose quickly to the top of the party, becoming its acting president last year.

He ran the RN's successful 2019 European election campaign, and has since impressed even his enemies with his assertiveness in debates.

He is seen as loyal to Ms Le Pen, telling AFP news agency recently that he is a "continuity candidate with the aim of building on the incredible legacy that Marine is handing over".

His elevation to the party's senior leadership is part of the RN's efforts to soften its image and attract younger voters.

Like Ms Le Pen he likes to portray himself as a new type of nationalist who has little in common with the racism and anti-Semitism of the party's predecessor, the National Front.

However, critics say that these sentiments still exist within the party.

In the most recent controversy, a RN lawmaker was suspended for two weeks from the National Assembly for making an allegedly racist remark while a black member of parliament was speaking.

Ms Le Pen stepped down last year as leader of the party, which she had headed since she succeeded her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2011. She did so in order to focus on her presidential bid, which she eventually lost in April in a run-off to President Emmanuel Macron.

Despite the defeat, she fronted the party's parliamentary election campaign two months later in which the RN won 89 seats - a 10-fold rise and the party's best-ever showing.

The success of the far-right and the left in those elections led to President Macron's party losing its majority.

Source:
courtesy of BBC NEWS

by Hugh Schofield in Paris and Ben Tobias in London

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