Marine Le Pen was back in Hénin-Beaumont on Sunday, using her political stronghold in northern France to stage her first major campaign speech as the far-right candidate for 2027. The visit came after MPs from her party met in Le Touquet, Pas-de-Calais, on Saturday. The choreography was familiar: a party built on order, discipline and punishment trying to look steady while its own machinery creaks in public.
Le Pen is currently leading in the polls. An OpinionWay survey for Les Échos, carried out on 8 and 9 September, found 34% of voters saying they intend to vote for her in the first round across different tested scenarios. That number sits beside a campaign already marked by friction between Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally party. The polling gives the spectacle its oxygen. The internal quarrels give it the smell.
The Party of Order, the Mess Behind It
Recent weeks have brought a string of mishaps for the National Rally. The base article cites alleged tensions between Le Pen and Bardella, controversial remarks over aid to Ukraine, and the release of a video in which a police officer and former volunteer of the RN’s security team made racist, sexist and conspiracy-theory-based remarks. Le Pen has still not reacted to the signing of an immigration pact between Bardella and Nigel Farage, the leader of the UK's hard-right, anti-immigration Reform UK party. That pact provides for migrants intercepted in British waters to be sent back to France if the two parties are elected. Fortress Europe doesn’t need much imagination. It just needs signatures.
Rumours about tensions between Le Pen and Bardella have been swirling. According to French newspaper Libération, Bardella is said to have declared "it’s her or me" on 31 August after Le Pen reportedly announced she intended to give her niece, Marion Maréchal, a greater role in the campaign. During the 2022 presidential campaign, Maréchal backed Éric Zemmour, the leader of the rival far-right party Reconquête, over her aunt. The family drama is political, not personal. It’s about who gets to command the machine.
Bardella denied any tensions, telling BFM-TV: "Everything is going very, very well, I assure you. I support her 2,000%." He added that he had an "unbreakable political and personal affinity" with Le Pen and denied that he wanted to "impose" his line on the party. The two leading figures of the National Rally have presented different economic visions, especially on pensions. According to Bardella, the current French pension system "is not economically sustainable." He also appeared hesitant to have his "boss" turn her proposed ban on the wearing of the veil in public spaces into a central campaign issue.
Borders, Markets and the Same Old Discipline
On 31 August, Bardella said the aim was not "to impose a dress code," stressing that a referendum on the issue would be held. The president of the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament also appears more pro-market than Le Pen, who has traditionally been more supportive of protectionist measures. Different slogans, same hierarchy. One side sells market discipline, the other sells national discipline, and ordinary people are expected to absorb both.
The National Rally is also facing disagreements over international issues. Speaking to BFM-TV on 4 September, Louis Aliot, the party’s vice-president and mayor of Perpignan, was asked about aid to Ukraine and said: "We turn off the tap. The health system, the education system, the whole economy, everything has been cut to the bone, and yet we still find money to fund more weapons (...) I’m willing to accept that, but who pays for all this? You also have to know how to stop a war." His comments sparked a debate. The language is blunt, and the budget logic is familiar: public services cut to the bone, weapons still funded, and the bill pushed downward.
Taking to X, Édouard Philippe, the centre-right Horizons party’s candidate for 2027, accused the RN of "its support for Putin’s regime," arguing that "turning off the tap for Ukraine means serving Russia." He added: "Weakening Ukraine, as Marine Le Pen wants, means threatening the security of Europe and France. I will do everything to stop her." The electoral circus keeps its own rhythm. One camp invokes security, another invokes sovereignty, and neither says much about the people who pay for the weapons, the borders, and the political theatre around them.
Le Pen hit back within the hour, reminding the former prime minister that he was in office when the Russian president was "received with great pomp at the Palace of Versailles and then at the Fort of Brégançon," and that he himself had welcomed Dmitry Medvedev, then Russian prime minister, to his home city of Le Havre in June 2019. The exchange was less a clash of principles than a reminder that the state’s friendships change costumes faster than its institutions change habits.
Police, Racism and the RN’s Security World
On 8 September, French regional daily Midi Libre released a video from November 2025 showing several municipal police officers in Carcassonne making racist, sexist and conspiracy-related comments during a nighttime patrol. The patrol leader, responsible for nearly 90% of the remarks made that evening, is a former paratrooper who had also volunteered for the RN's internal security service. He escorted Bardella on several trips, including during the promotional tour for his book and at the launch of the RN's municipal election campaign. The officer was expelled from the National Rally on Wednesday, and Bardella described his comments as "despicable." The Carcassonne public prosecutor’s office also announced on Wednesday the suspension of the four municipal police officers who appear in the video.
The video, the expulsions and the suspensions sit together neatly. A party that sells itself as order keeps finding disorder in its own ranks, and the state’s local enforcers appear in the frame with the same ugly language that so often underpins the border regime, the patrol state and the politics of exclusion. The campaign rolls on anyway. The stronghold gets its speech. The polls get their numbers. The rest is damage control.