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As France’s right-wing nationalist figurehead Marine Le Pen awaits a key verdict from a Paris appeals court this Tuesday, the future of her decades-long political career hangs in the balance. Should the court rule to bar her from running in the 2027 French presidential election, it would bring an abrupt close to a political journey that has reshaped the country’s far-right landscape for a generation.

In a gathering with supporters over the weekend in Liévin, located in the heart of her Pas-de-Calais constituency, the 57-year-old leader made clear her plan if the ruling goes against her: if barred from seeking the presidency, she will step back and throw her full support behind her hand-picked protégé, current National Rally head Jordan Bardella. Observers who attended the event noted that the moment carried the quiet air of a planned leadership transition, even as Le Pen and Bardella publicly presented a united front ahead of the verdict.

Le Pen’s path to this crossroads stretches back more than half a century, rooted in the legacy of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the original National Front (FN), the predecessor to today’s National Rally, in the 1970s. Her first brush with the dangers of her family’s political life came at just 8 years old, when a bomb destroyed the Le Pens’ central Paris apartment in 1976. Though Marine and her two elder sisters escaped with only minor injuries, the attack was a formative “night of horror,” as she later described it, that cemented her awareness of her father’s place in French politics.

Eight years later, her family fractured when her mother left the household to live with her father’s biographer, later posing for *Playboy* magazine. All three sisters stood by their father, but it was the youngest, Marine, who would go on to inherit his political mantle. She once reflected in a 2004 television interview: “You’re born Le Pen’s daughter, you die Le Pen’s daughter. He’s the man of my life. He’s made me the woman I am.”

By the early 1990s, Le Pen had graduated from law school in Paris and launched her formal political career. Her family name led to boycotts from fellow legal professionals, pushing her to focus full-time on party work within the National Front. She rose steadily through the ranks: becoming vice-president of the party in 2003, winning a seat in the European Parliament in 2004, and finally taking the party’s top leadership from her father in 2011, nine years after he reached his own political peak by advancing to the 2002 presidential runoff against Jacques Chirac.

Once in charge, Le Pen set out on a deliberate mission to de-demonize the party her father built, working to distance it from the overt racism and antisemitism that had long defined the FN’s public image. She expelled Jean-Marie Le Pen from the party in 2015 to solidify this shift, a move that sparked a bitter family feud; after her father’s death last year, she acknowledged she would “never forgive myself for this decision, because I know it caused him immense pain.” She completed the rebrand in 2018, renaming the FN the National Rally, repositioning the once-fringe movement as a mainstream political contender while retaining its core anti-immigration platform focused on prioritizing French nationals for housing, jobs, and social benefits.

Le Pen’s own electoral record reflects the party’s growing popularity: she placed third in the 2012 presidential race, then advanced to the runoff twice, losing to incumbent Emmanuel Macron in both 2017 and 2022. With Macron constitutionally barred from seeking a third term in 2027, Le Pen currently leads early polling for the race, positioning 2027 as her strongest ever shot at the Élysée Palace.

But the legal conviction that led to this week’s appeal stems from a 2024 ruling that found Le Pen played a “central role” in a scheme that diverted €1.4 million (£1.2 million) in European Parliament public funds to pay unqualified National Rally party assistants. She has rejected the charges, but a disqualification from running would end her presidential bid before it formally begins.

Le Pen’s political career has also been marked by controversial ties to the Kremlin. Decades ago, when major French banks refused to lend to the far-right party due to its history of bigotry, the National Rally turned for financing to a Russian-Czech bank linked to the Kremlin — a deal struck the same year Vladimir Putin illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Le Pen openly praised Putin for years, met him at the Kremlin ahead of the 2017 election, and infamously told the BBC on the eve of the 2022 full-scale invasion that she did not believe Russia would attack Ukraine, though she later voiced support for Ukrainian sovereignty. That handshake photo with Putin has repeatedly come back to undermine her credibility with centrist voters.

Outside of politics, Le Pen holds a professional certification in cat breeding, a hobby she has long said could be a post-political life. After suffering a regional election defeat in 2015, she told *Le Parisien* she could easily “stop everything, do something else — breed cats for example.” She earned her official breeding diploma five years later, once even earned a small side income from the venture, and was most recently spotted carrying a kitten in a pet carrier during a visit to the prime minister’s official residence in 2025. Yet for many observers, it is hard to imagine Le Pen stepping fully away from the political sphere she has inhabited since childhood.

As the country waits for the court’s ruling, one thing is clear: whatever the outcome, the next chapter of French right-wing politics will likely be led by a new generation, with Jordan Bardella waiting in the wings to carry forward the movement Le Pen built.

At 30 years old, Jordan Bardella, the current president of France’s far-right National Rally (RN), stands on the cusp of a historic political breakthrough: he could become the youngest head of state in modern French history, and the first hard-right leader to occupy the Elysee Palace, if a pending court ruling bars party figurehead Marine Le Pen from running in the 2027 presidential election. The upcoming Tuesday verdict on Le Pen’s appeal trial will decide whether she retains her ban from running for public office, opening the door for Bardella to step in as the RN’s nominee. With the party holding a commanding lead in national polls and Bardella posting strong 40% approval ratings, political observers now consider a presidential victory in 2027 a plausible outcome.

Bardella’s path to this moment began in the working-class Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, where he was raised by his Italian immigrant single mother, who often struggled to cover household expenses. While his father – also of Italian descent – owned a successful drinks distribution business in the more affluent town of Montmorency, a detail that softens the narrative of extreme working-class hardship Bardella often cites on the campaign trail, his background reflects a side of France far removed from the traditional elite that has long dominated the country’s politics. As a teen, Bardella even felt self-conscious about his non-traditional name, which stood out among the aristocratic, classic names common among the French political class.

Bardella joined the then-National Front (FN), the RN’s predecessor, at age 17 in 2012, after convincing his initially reluctant mother to approve the move. He dropped out of university to pursue politics full-time, climbing the party ranks at a meteoric pace: he became a local departmental secretary at 19, a regional councillor for the Paris region at 20, the RN’s national spokesperson in 2017, and one of the youngest Members of the European Parliament in 2019. By 27, he had been elected president of the RN, taking the reins of the party Le Pen had remade from a fringe extremist movement into a mainstream political force.

Bardella has long cited Le Pen as his core inspiration for joining the party, praising her unique courage, energy and political vision. That admiration quickly became mutual: Le Pen took the young rising star under her wing, elevating him to the party’s inner circle just years after he joined. In 2024, Bardella led the RN to a 33% first-place finish in snap parliamentary elections, falling just short of capturing the prime minister’s office when a center-left alliance secured a second-round victory. Despite that narrow loss, his popularity has remained robust ever since, matching Le Pen’s own steady 39% approval rating.

Political analysts and sociologists who study the RN attribute Bardella’s broad electoral appeal to his unique ability to connect with disparate voter groups. Described by sociologist Raphael Llorca as an “incredible blank canvas,” Bardella lets different voter segments project their own ideal candidate onto him. He retains old-school RN supporters by leaning into the party’s core anti-immigration and populist platform, while courting young voters through active social media outreach, where he boasts two million followers. He balances a glamorous public profile from his relationship with Italian socialite Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-TTwo Sicilies with constant references to his modest upbringing to connect with working-class voters. For business leaders, he promises to cut burdensome fiscal and regulatory rules; for Eurosceptics, he pledges to renegotiate France’s EU membership terms, while reassuring moderate voters he has no intention of leaving the bloc entirely.

Though he has carefully cultivated this adaptable public image, Bardella has rarely deviated from core RN policy, especially on the party’s signature issue of immigration. He has called for cutting social benefits for immigrants, ending birthright citizenship, and has promised that his first act as president would be to hold a national referendum on immigration to “take back control” of France’s borders. Critics have noted that the French constitution does not permit referendums on immigration, meaning the policy would require a lengthy constitutional amendment that would need broad parliamentary support to pass.

On European policy, Bardella has abandoned the RN’s old demand for a full French exit from the EU and the euro, but has described the bloc as “profoundly old-fashioned” and “obsolete.” He has pledged to cut France’s EU budget contribution by half – a total of €10 billion – and renegotiate the EU electricity market’s price-setting rules to lower consumer energy bills. On foreign policy, he has promised to withdraw France from NATO’s integrated military command after the end of the war in Ukraine, rejected Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to extend France’s nuclear deterrence to European allies as a potential “national betrayal”, and has built close ties with other European nationalist leaders including Italy’s Giorgia Meloni – who he calls a personal role model – and Poland’s PiS opposition, with the goal of building a large nationalist bloc in the European Parliament.

As the nation waits for Tuesday’s court ruling on Le Pen’s eligibility, Bardella has navigated a careful political balancing act, positioning himself as ready to assume the presidential nomination while vowing to stand aside if Le Pen is cleared to run. Speaking ahead of the verdict, he said he was “calm and ready to accept the consequences.” Whatever the ruling brings, the 30-year-old politician has already reshaped modern French politics, and a 2027 presidential victory would cement the most dramatic political shift in the country’s modern history.

TORONTO – In a landmark move that reshapes Canada’s defense capabilities and aligns with its new pledges to ramp up NATO-aligned military spending, the Canadian government announced Monday that Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) has been chosen as the preferred supplier for a planned fleet of up to 12 new conventionally powered submarines. Marking the largest military procurement initiative in Canadian history, the decision comes just days before Prime Minister Mark Carney’s attendance at this week’s NATO summit, where alliance leaders are set to face growing pressure to back pledges for higher defense investment with concrete, actionable policy plans.