It was hardly an epochal dispute, but when France’s two leading far-right politicians, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, split recently over whether to impose a windfall profits tax on a giant French oil company — she was all for it; he was reluctant — political analysts in Paris sat up and took notice.
Ms. Le Pen, 57, and her protégé, Mr. Bardella, 30 — the leaders of France’s main far-right party, and the two front-runners to win the presidency next year — have long presented themselves as a united front. They share common goals when it comes to curbing immigration and asserting French sovereignty within the European Union.
For all their talk of alignment, however, a President Le Pen would be different from a President Bardella, not just in style but also in substance, according to analysts. Given the potential upheaval if either is elected — France has not had a far-right leader in the post-World War II era — spotting daylight between them has become a preoccupation for French journalists and analysts.
Those differences were once irrelevant because in the last three elections, Ms. Le Pen was the far right’s unchallenged candidate for president. But last year, she was convicted of embezzlement, a verdict that banned her from running for office for five years. If she wins an appeal on July 7, Mr. Bardella is expected to stand aside. If she loses, he will almost certainly take her place as the nominee of their party, the National Rally.
For that reason, experts plumbed the disagreement over imposing the tax on the oil giant, TotalEnergies, for evidence of a deeper philosophical divide. Mr. Bardella’s reservations about the bill, which was introduced in Parliament by the Socialists, were those of a standard-issue right-of-center politician.
“I don’t believe that the priority, in a country that has 46 percent mandatory levies, is once again to invent taxes and duties,” Mr. Bardella said in a broadcast interview in April.
But in separate comments, Ms. Le Pen said that she and the rest of the party favored the tax because the profits of oil companies had skyrocketed during the Iran war, which prompted a surge in fuel prices. That, she said on social media, was an “extraordinary profit, not stemming from its skills and innovations but from external factors.” She called the tax a “measure of social justice.”
This last phrase, analysts say, captures a genuine difference between Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Bardella, which they say is both ideological and generational. Ms. Le Pen describes herself as a populist — “neither right nor left,” she frequently insists — who champions the French people against the elite and wants to uproot the political establishment, much as President Trump did in the United States.
Mr. Bardella, who grew up in the Paris suburbs and is a member of the European Parliament, embraces the right-wing label and is eager to reach out to other right-leaning parties. He promotes a free-market approach, with a style that some liken to Nicolas Sarkozy, the center-right leader who served as president from 2007 to 2012.
“Bardella is one of those young people who thinks being successful is very important, especially being successful as a businessman,” said Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far right who works at the Jean Jaurès Foundation, a left-leaning think tank in Paris.
“That is totally alien to Marine Le Pen,” Mr. Camus added.
Ms. Le Pen, whose father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the party she leads in 1972, is a career politician and lawmaker in the French Parliament who represents a predominantly white, working-class district in northern France. She appeals to voters with what Mr. Camus described as “an old-fashioned definition of the national interest.” That includes a robust role for the state and an abiding suspicion of multinational corporations.
Philippe Marlière, a professor of French and European politics at University College London, said, “Those voters could support the anti-immigration, Islamophobic agenda of the National Rally, but they need to hear an economic program that could be proposed by the Socialists.”
Ms. Le Pen has tried to bridge such tensions by meeting with chief executives of major companies, as has Mr. Bardella. Analysts say that, whatever Ms. Le Pen’s personal views, her party’s official economic policies are not that different from those of mainstream right-wing parties, if less fleshed out.
That National Rally approach is part of a broader effort to shake off a stigma of racism and antisemitism that dates to when the party was known as the National Front; Ms. Le Pen’s father was convicted four times for inciting racial hatred.
Mr. Bardella has also shown a greater openness to centrist European leaders than Ms. Le Pen has. He recently praised the center-right German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, for instituting random border checks, saying that move reversed what he called the destabilizing immigration policies of a former chancellor, Angela Merkel.
Mr. Bardella said that, if elected, he could envision working with Mr. Merz as part of a trio that would include Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy, whose party has roots in neo-fascism but who has governed with a more moderate tone.
“In Europe,” Mr. Bardella said recently to the French magazine Le Point, “I’m in favor of changing everything without breaking anything.”
By contrast, Ms. Le Pen’s closest continental ally was Viktor Orban, the populist leader of Hungary, who tried to paralyze the European Union and who was ousted last month after 16 years in power. She is also viewed as closer to Russia than Mr. Bardella — ties that date to her father. Her party received a loan from a Russian bank, while she has made regular visits to Moscow and praised President Vladimir V. Putin, only shifting her tone after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Where Mr. Bardella and Ms. Le Pen are united is in distancing themselves from Mr. Trump, reflecting how unpopular the American president is in France. On that issue, as National Rally officials like to say, there is not a cigarette paper’s difference between them.
What is less clear is how their other differences would play with voters. In recent polls, both politicians were projected to easily win the first round of a putative presidential race, with centrist politicians struggling to win support. Mr. Bardella, however, polled marginally higher than Ms. Le Pen in hypothetical runoffs.
Ms. Le Pen, a retail politician for whom this would be a fourth bid for president, would most likely use a well-worn playbook of campaigning in towns and villages across France. Mr. Bardella, who has 2.3 million followers on TikTok, would be more apt to harness social media to appeal to younger voters.
“Le Pen’s populist approach works well in assembling a large voting coalition,” Professor Marlière said. “The advantage of Bardella is that you open yourself up to the mainstream right wing. When you come from the far right, with all that legacy and baggage, you need mainstream support.”
Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting.
