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The court's decision to bar Marine Le Pen from running for president of France has brought her right-hand man, Jordan Bardella, back into the spotlight, as debate has already begun over who could represent the far-right in the 2027 race.
While Le Pen's lawyer said she would appeal Monday's court ruling, the process could take months or years, leaving the ban in place as the country heads towards presidential elections, the Guardian reports.
Polls have long shown that Le Pen, who leads the National Rally (RN), was among the leading contenders to succeed President Emmanuel Macron after his second and final term ends in 2027.
If Le Pen cannot ultimately be a candidate for the presidency, all eyes are now on Bardella, her 29-year-old protégé who succeeded her at the head of the party in 2021.
Although he has sometimes been described as very young and inexperienced, he apparently had Le Pen's support.
"Of course he has the capacity to become president of the republic," Le Pen said in a documentary broadcast by BFMTV.
However, such a move would mark a dramatic new era for France and may seem unthinkable to many voters.
When Macron was elected to the presidency in 2017, he was 39 years old, making him the youngest president in the history of the Fifth Republic. Before his election, the average age at which a French president was elected was 58.5 years old.
Bardella was first elected to the European Parliament at the age of 23 and became the new face of the French far-right last year.
He was the one who led the RN during France's snap parliamentary elections in the summer of 2024, where it emerged as the third party, despite polls showing it would come first.
"We always make mistakes, I made mistakes and I take my share of responsibility for the results," Bardella said on French television immediately after the results were announced.
Immediately after the court's decision for Le Pen, Bardella limited his comments to attacks on the court.
"Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly convicted: it was French democracy that was murdered," he wrote on social media.
French media, however, were quick to highlight comments he had made late last year.
In what was seen by many as a jab at Le Pen - and which prompted one left-wing politician to call him "Brutus" after the Roman politician who assassinated his former ally Julius Caesar - Bardella told BFMTV that "not having a criminal record is, for me, rule number one when you want to be an MP."
Italian origin and difficult childhood
The son of Italians who arrived in France in the 1960s, Bardella joined the party at the age of 16. He was raised in a boarding house in Saint-Denis, by a mother who said she often had only 20 euros left in her wallet at the end of the month.
Often dressed in a navy suit, he quickly proved capable of faithfully adhering to the party's hard-line stance, taking advantage of the fact that he had many followers on French TikTok.
Earlier this month, he became the first National Rally leader to visit Israel, speaking at a conference on the fight against anti-Semitism.
An academic who studied Bardella's speeches for two years described them as "copy-pastes" from Le Pen and her father, Jean-Marie, the founder of the party in the 1970s as the National Front and who was known for anti-Semitic and racist statements.
"It's still the same triad of immigration, identity and Islam. The big difference is the tone and style," said Cecile Oldie, a professor at Stanford University.
"The message is the same, but it's delivered in a really calm, quiet, soothing tone of voice," he adds.
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