JORDAN Bardella, the media-savvy 28-year-old leader of France's far-right National Rally, has helped rejuvenate the image of a party long tainted by racism and anti-Semitism, putting it on course to take power for the first time ever.
On his watch, the National Rally (RN) of three-time former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, has gone from strength to strength, achieving record scores in this month's European elections.
A social media star with impeccable tailoring and a penchant for selfies, Bardella hopes to repeat that feat in two-round snap parliamentary elections called by President Emmanuel Macron in response to his drubbing in the European vote.
Polls show the RN, which has promised to boost purchasing power, drastically curtail immigration and restore law and order, winning the election but not certain of claiming an outright majority.
Bardella, who was named France's most popular political personality in a Toluna-Harris Interactive poll on Friday, has said he would refuse to become premier if his party does not claim an absolute majority of at least 289 out of the National Assembly's 577 seats in the elections.
"Be free, be French and remember, when the people vote, the people win," the uber-confident RN leader declared in a TikTok campaign video, sitting behind a desk in a suit, in the pose of a man ready to govern.
The man credited with sweeping away the last psychological barriers to voting far-right for many French people joined the RN's forerunner, the National Front, at the age of 16.
His meteoric rise began in 2019 when the RN's longtime leader Le Pen put him in charge of the party's European election campaign at the age of 23.
The RN won the vote in France, a coup for Bardella, who became the first person from outside the Le Pen dynasty -- Marine's father Jean-Marie founded the National Front -- to hold the party leadership three years later.
"I owe an enormous amount to Marine Le Pen," Bardella acknowledged recently.
Having a leader unburdened by the most notorious surname in French politics has helped the party grow its vote among pensioners, young people and university graduates, who were reluctant previously to support the anti-immigration party.
In a country where most politicians come from money and privilege, his story of being raised by a single mother in a drab tower block in the crime-blighted northern Paris suburbs also struck a chord with many voters.
"He knows the real world. He's close to us," Tom Maiani, a 24-year-old RN party campaigner in the northeastern Lorraine region told AFP.
From an early age, however, Bardella's parents put him on a separate track, enrolling him in a private school.
He went on to study briefly at the prestigious Sorbonne University before dropping out to focus on a political career.
The son of an Italian-born mother and a father with both Italian and Algerian roots, he has presented himself as a symbol of successful integration, which he contrasts with successive waves of immigration from north Africa.
Growing up surrounded by immigrants in Seine-Saint-Denis, "I saw what France will become in a few years if we do not take back control now," he said at a rally in 2022, denouncing the "pain of becoming a stranger in your own country".
A polished public speaker, Bardella remains cool under pressure, shrugging off challenges from rivals in two debates this week with a disdain that has led to accusations of arrogance.
His critics accuse him of spending too much time honing his image and too little time studying policy.
In a debate with Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and a leftist politician this week he tripped up on a question about the party's plans to repeal Macron's unpopular pension reforms.
A France 2 documentary alleged in January that he used an anonymous Twitter account to share racist messages when he was a local elected official, claims he has denied.
One 2017 post from the "RepNat du Gaito" account included an obscene image mocking Theo Luhaka, a young black man who suffered severe anal injuries from a police baton that year.
Bardella's former media trainer Pascal Humeau described him in a France 2 television documentary last year as an "empty shell" in the beginning, devoid of ideology, but who proved to be a quick learner.
Leftist European lawmaker Manon Aubry described him as a "ghost parliamentarian" over his five years as an MEP between 2019 and 2024.
Becoming France's youngest ever prime minister, in a tense "cohabitation" with President Emmanuel Macron, might prove to be a poisoned chalice for the ambitious rightwinger.
Apart from the late centre-right leader Jacques Chirac, no French premier has gone on to become president in the past half a century.
It is Le Pen, who was runner-up in the last two presidential elections and who has remained party leader in parliament, who is largely expected to bid for the top job when Macron's second term ends in 2027.
There have been rumblings, however, within the RN that her protege could make a better candidate.
* The writers are from AFP