Marine Le Pen and her 28-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardelas, “stumbled” into the second round of French parliamentary elections on Sunday, with forecasts giving their far-right National Rally party 120-150 MPs, coming third in the race.

As the party tries to digest the disappointing election result, the next period – if the past is any guide for the party – then expect recriminations and even the ousting of top officials likely to be blamed for the result.

With members of the National Rally to look with concern at the next great challenge of the party, which is the seizure of the presidential palace of the Elysees in 2027, a budding rivalry between student and teacher could result in one of the most successful political partnerships in French post-war history.

The question is who will lead France’s right-wing nationalist forces in the battle for the country’s presidency in three years – or even sooner if Macron takes the unlikely step of leaving power before the end of his term.

While Bardela and Le Pen have taken care to appear united in public, Bardela’s greater popularity and growing independence in policy matters are all implicit threats to Le Pen’s moral authority. Speaking to reporters last January, Le Pen acknowledged Bardela’s qualities but said she had “given him a chance”.

As for Bardela, he has repeatedly said that Le Pen is the “natural candidate” for the presidency and that he will not become “Marine Le Pen’s Emmanuel Macron” — referring to how President Macron turned on his benefactor, then- French President Francois Hollande, before winning the presidency in 2017.

Asked about a potential split, Jean-Lin Lacapelle, an ally of Le Pen, said: “It is out of the question. The fact is, they won the ticket together.”

However, Politico in its reporting and after private conversations it had with current and former members of the party, as well as with allies of both far-right leaders, comments that none of them was sure that everything will develop smoothly, pointing out that his political brand Bardela has a wider appeal than Le Pen’s.

“Some French people think that Jordan Bardela has a better chance of winning [τις προεδρικές εκλογές] from Marine Le Pen,” said a party lawmaker who asked not to be named. “Maybe we are not careful enough (about the prospect of a competition). There is danger. We have to be careful”.

The real question however, it is not if or when Bardella will take over. The real question, they said, is whether Bardella will wait until Le Pen makes a fourth bid for the presidency — or whether he will try to speed up the time by staging an internal coup or leave the National Rally to form his own party, as Macron did after splitting from Socialist Hollande in 2016.

“I don’t believe there will be a coup before 2027, but after that, who knows?” said a conservative ally, who added that Bardela was a “more effective name, that does not have the Le Pen name and does not carry the legacy of their outrage.”

Le Pen and Bardela, a “winning ticket”

There is no doubt that Le Pen gave to Bardella impetus to start his political career, but the student quickly outgrew his teacher, Politico comments.

After joining the party, then called the National Front, aged 17 in 2012, Bardella quickly rose through the ranks of the party to lead the electoral list in the 2019 European elections, aged 23.

Bardela then became the party’s deputy president during the 2022 French presidential election and became its official leader a few months later. At the time, Bardela, attuned to the need to show loyalty to a party previously led only by Le Pen, attributed his success to what he called a “unique relationship of priceless trust” with his mentor.

Since then, Le Pen and Bardela have been presented as the “ticket” to challenge France’s entrenched political establishment. Thanks to her status as a scion of the Le Pen dynasty – she inherited the leadership of the party from her father, Jean-Marie, in 2011. Yet this is her strength and weakness: Le Pen’s name is indelibly associated with anti-Semitism and racism outbursts of her father, whom she expelled from the party in 2015.

That’s where he comes in Bardella. An outsider with no blood ties to Le Pen, the rising prince of the far right enjoys greater appeal in sections of the electorate traditionally repelled from casting a vote in the National Rally.

Together, they also triangulate two crucial demographics. Le Pen is attracting traditional supporters and party voters from the country’s deindustrialized north attracted by its “protect the weak” nationalism, while Bardela is winning over, for the first time, young men and higher socio-economic categories of voters.

“They are necessary for each other and complement each other,” Lacapelle added, underscoring how well the two had prepared for the 2024 European elections, when the party won a third of the vote, more than double its nearest rival.

But others point out that the idea of ​​running for a “ticket”—that is, presenting two or more names as candidates – is very unusual in presidential campaigns in which a single candidate traditionally faces the nation, alone. At best, one assumes the presidency, where most of the power lies, and the other becomes that person’s prime minister, a junior, almost subservient, role.

This means that when push comes to shove, even the strongest allies eventually become adversaries.

Putin and the French far-right

The question facing the far right is: How long will he agree? Bardella to remain second behind Le Pen? A series of disagreements over key policy issues – such as the party’s relationship with Russia – suggest that his oaths of allegiance may not be as iron-clad as he would like them to be.

Speaking to the newspaper l’Opinion in February 2023, Bardella stated that the National Rally had shown a “collective naivety about Vladimir Putin’s ambitions”.

The comment shocked many in a party that owes its financial survival in part to a 9 million euro loan approved by the Kremlin and whose officials have done Putin a favor by working as observers to validate the results of Russian elections and controlled from Russia territories of Ukraine.

But that didn’t stop Bardella a year later from declaring at a press conference that “President Putin’s belligerent statements represent a danger to our personal security as a nation.”

Le Pen, by contrast, was careful not to directly criticize Putin. Asked about the Russian president’s re-election earlier this year, Le Pen said: “We have to live with it… We face reality as it is and not the world as we would like it to be.”

Four days before parliamentary elections, Moscow returned the favor: “The people of France seek a foreign policy that serves their national interests and a break from the dictates of Washington and Brussels,” its foreign ministry wrote on the social platform X networking.

Concerning the internal policy, Le Pen et al Bardella occasionally deviate — as when Bardella earlier this year criticized the idea of ​​imposing minimum prices on French agricultural products. The minimum price proposal is a long-standing position in the party, and Le Pen was quick to correct her protégé during a question-and-answer interview in the National Assembly.

Jordan Bardela’s path to the presidency

As attention turns to the presidential election and the National Rally digests its disappointing showing on Sunday, some on the right have been tight-lipped about what they say is Bardela’s higher appeal.

“I know many people who say they are voting for Jordan and not for Le Pen,” said a councilor for the conservative Les Républicains party. “There is a wave of excitement, a Brdela trend. It succeeds in making people feel relaxed about voting [για την Εθνική Συσπείρωση]».

However, there is one scenario in which Bardela should not face Le Pen: if France’s legal system does the work for him.

Le Pen, along with 27 other party members, face a trial on September 30 on charges that they misused funds from the European Parliament to pay for campaigns – allegations that Le Pen herself denies. If found guilty, Le Pen could lose her right to stand in the election, which would open a window for Bardela to run unchallenged in 2027.