Once a pariah, France’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) is now the country’s most popular party and looks on track to win the presidency in 2027 — or perhaps sooner.
To examine this and the wider implications for other countries in Europe, the AEJ UK hosted author and journalist Victor Mallet at a meeting on 11 February at Westminster Quaker Meeting House.
Mallet has just published Far-right France: Le Pen, Bardella and the Future of Europe (Hurst, 2026) and is senior world editor of the Financial Times and a former FT Paris bureau chief.
He spoke about the drivers of the sea-change in French political attitudes, the appeal of the National Rally’s 30-year old President Jordan Bardella and parliamentary leader Marine Le Pen, and the links among the rise of right-wing, nationalist and populist parties in every corner of Europe.
So-called far right parties now head governments in Belgium, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Italy. In several more countries they are parties in coalitions. Insurgent rightist parties of various hues threaten the hold of weakened centrist or moderate parties in Germany and the UK.
Are these anti-establishment forces able to forge common policy platforms? And how do they seek to thwart current European strategies for supporting Ukraine, shoring up Europe’s homeland defence against Russia, achieving energy security, and presenting a united European face in a world of raw great-power rivalry? What would a Far Right Europe look like?
Victor Mallet at the AEJ UK 11 February 2025
Photos by Doros Partasides
