Jordan Bardella is too young to be President of France

Anyone who writes a book called What the French Want (Ce que veulent les Français), you would suppose, has lived a good few years in France; and yet its author has only just turned 30.

Jordan Bardella, president of the hard-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, aspires to be elected the next French president in 2027. He will still be only 31.

It is hard not to sympathise with a remark made by one of his political rivals.

“He knows nothing about life,” commented centre-right Xavier Bertrand (aged 60), whose biography and CV are several times longer than Mr Bardella’s.

Can someone so young know anything about life?

Don’t ask the young to answer this question because they won’t even understand it. By definition, they know everything about life: it’s their parents/teachers/all grown-ups who are out of the loop. 

Youth does not necessarily mean ignorance and age does not automatically bring wisdom, but it is true that to be properly informed about life you need a good deal of experience of it, and not just the good parts.

Ambition, curiosity and an ear for old folk telling stories are not enough. Life has to happen to you, personally.

The trouble is, you cannot tell this to the young because they won’t believe you. 

Only when you are licking the wounds incurred from more shattered dreams than you expected can you begin to understand what it is all about, what is important and what you would have done differently. 

You certainly cannot speak for the old when you are still only 30. Jordan Bardella may articulate the aspirations of his own generation but he should not try to speak for anyone else.

At that age, you have no idea what it means to be 50, 60 or 70. You can imagine all you want but there is no substitute for being in ageing skin.

So, when Mr Bardella claims that his book is a “diary of a hard-working, humble and silent France”, we must assume that he is only talking about the people whose way of life he can understand. 

Young people set off with bright hopes and the certainty that they can know everything they need to know with the briefest of research.

“For nearly a year,” Mr Bardella tells us, he “travelled the roads, crossed towns and villages, and listened to French people from all walks of life”. 

He “gathered their grievances, their deep anger, but also their dreams, expectations and that very French hope that continues tirelessly despite the trials and tribulations”.

It sounds almost as if he has asked AI for a summary of what to write about.

His claim to be the “mirror of a forgotten people, the authentic voice of a France that the elites despise and refuse to listen to” rings somewhat hollow when you read his biography.

Jordan Bardella became politically active at the age of 17 and more or less his whole working career has been spent in front-line politics.

In most respects he is indistinguishable from the elites he claims to want to replace.

I doubt whether any of this will be enough to prevent him from becoming the next immature president. People love a fresh face and a blank canvas.

After all, there is a precedent. Emmanuel Macron was 39 when he won the presidency. He was certain he knew it all and that the elites of older generations would crumble before his superior insight into what the French wanted in 2017.

As we now know, he has been a rip-roaring success.