Rail unions block adverts for Le Pen protégé’s debut book

Writing a personal memoir is almost the rule for would-be French leaders, but few manage to stir a pre-publication furore of the kind achieved by Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old president of France’s hard-right National Rally.

Less than a fortnight from its release on November 9, Bardella’s first book has prompted threats of industrial action, a ban on advertising in rail and Metro stations and led to calls for booksellers to boycott one of the country’s grandest publishing houses.

Not a word has leaked from Ce Que Je Cherche (What I’m Looking For), a mix of manifesto and memoir by the Rally chairman, a protégé whom Marine Le Pen, the party’s leader, anointed to become prime minister if it won this year’s snap general election.

Yet news of a lavish advertising campaign by Fayard, the 167-year-old publishers, in 100 railway stations around France, prompted outrage and vows of obstruction from the CGT and SUD, powerful left-wing rail unions. “Far-right propaganda”, has no place on the transport network, they said.

Fayard took on Bardella’s book after its parent company, Hachette Livre came under the control of Vincent Bolloré, a billionaire mogul with right-wing views who has lately taken over a swathe of broadcasting and print media.

On Monday, the MediaTransports authority, which manages advertising on the rail system, cancelled bookings for all 581 billboards, saying a campaigning book breached its political and religious neutrality rules.

“We considered that this advertising campaign had a political character because Jordan Bardella is an MEP and chairman of the National Rally,” it said. Staff told French media that they believed the posters were a stunt for free publicity because the publishers knew they would be rejected.

Bardella, a member of the European parliament, has cried censorship, saying: “This is a totalitarian act”. He pointed out that stations have displayed advertising for books by active and former politicians, including Presidents Hollande and Sarkozy, albeit after those two had left office.

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An unnamed senior official in the party, told Le Parisien, however, that the party was thrilled with the “free publicity”.

The party also denied that the book launch had been timed to distract attention from the trial in Paris of Le Pen and 24 party associates on charges of illegally siphoning off millions of euros of European Parliament funds to pay for Rally operations in France.

Bardella’s book, which has been redrafted after the party’s surprise third place in the July elections, is feeding unease in the publishing and media world over what is seen as Fayard’s rightwards shift under Bolloré’s ownership of Hachette.

Books by Marine Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie, the party’s founder, had previously been issued by small, non-traditional houses.

Bolloré has appointed Lise Boëll as the new head of Fayard. She is an editor from outside who had worked with hard-right authors, including Éric Zemmour, an anti-Islam polemicist who ran for the presidency in 2022.

The changes have prompted calls for bookshops to shun the publishing house. The centre-left L’Obs magazine this week said: “The ‘Bollorisation’ of French publishing … is a threat to the freedom of expression.”

Bardella’s relations with the new Fayard boss have been difficult. She wanted more of a celebrity style and urged him to write a chapter to scotch rumours that he is gay, which he refused, he told Le Parisien.

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He said his 324-page oeuvre is a mix of his political vision and a memoir of his youth growing up as an immigrant’s son on a housing estate in the suburb of Saint-Denis, north of Paris. Asked what could be expected in the memoirs of a 29-year-old, he replied: “Usually at this age, you are not chairman of the National Rally and candidate for the prime minister’s job”, he said.

The publishers have been discreet on any writing help Bardella may have received. Earlier this year France-Inter, equivalent to BBC Radio 4, sacked Jean-Francois Achilli, a veteran political broadcaster, after it found that he had been working with Bardella for nine months on a draft of the book without its authorisation.

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