Inside the ‘ghettoised’ Paris neighbourhood that inspired Bardella’s campaign

Saint-Denis is a town of 'colliding worlds and potent symbolism' and one that says Jordan Bardella 'didn't come and try to save his own' - BRUNO FERT

When Jordan Bardella is pressed on why he entered politics so young, he cites the trauma of growing up in a housing estate in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis.

“I experienced to the very core the feeling of becoming a foreigner in my own country,” said the 28-year-old who hopes to become France’s youngest prime minister on July 7 if Marine Le Pen’s National Rally clinches a parliamentary majority.

“People no longer recognise France,” he told The Telegraph.

“Where I grew up, a quarter of the population, according to a report by the National Assembly, are there illegally. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s simply the consequence of immigration policy.

“I’ve lived through the Islamisation of my neighbourhood, I’ve lived through insecurity, I’ve lived through the searches you go through when you enter your building and you’re confronted with drug trafficking.

“I’ve experienced all that.”

Jordan Bardella says that in Saint-Denis he became a 'foreigner in my own country' - DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP

For RN’s rising star, a TikTok sensation with Italian and Algerian immigrant roots – his paternal grandfather converted to Islam, it emerged this week – Saint-Denis is all that is wrong with modern France.

Saint-Denis is a town of colliding worlds and potent symbolism. Birthplace of French rap and the burial place of the kings of France, who lie in its famed Basilica, the town was long among the poorest in mainland France having taken in waves of immigrants since the industrial revolution.

When France won the World Cup in the town’s Stade de France stadium in 1998, it was hailed as a victory for multicultural “Black, Blanc, Beur” (Black, White and Arab) France.

Months later, the same stadium was notoriously invaded by Algerian-flag-waving supporters during a France-Algeria match. Many were local residents.

A poll taken in the aftermath suggested a majority of French citizens felt that the episode symbolised “the difficulties of integrating part of the French population of Muslim origin”.

A few months later, on April 21 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the second round of the presidential election. Twenty-two years on, Mr Le Pen’s heirs at RN this week suggested banning dual nationals from sensitive government jobs, to general uproar.

On Jan 18 2015, elite French police gunned down two of the perpetrators of the Paris terror attacks who were entrenched in a dilapidated flat near Mr Bardella’s home.

Mr Bardella says he heard the battle from his bedroom.

The area has also seen an influx of young office workers in search of cheaper rents and who enjoy the trendy coffee shops and next month will welcome athletes from around the world to its Olympic village.

The Stade de France will showcase track and field events and the closing ceremony for the Games on Aug 11.

The Gabriel-Peri housing estate is where Jordan Bardella spent most of his childhood growing up. It is also where his mother still resides - BRUNO FERT

In the Gabriel-Peri housing estate where he spent his childhood, residents largely rejected Mr Bardella’s dire depiction of their daily life while admitting the district had its problems.

Julien, 21, a student in property development, confessed that “a newcomer might be a bit taken about by young drug dealing scouts who shout (when police turn up) but you get used to it and they don’t cause any problems.”

Yves-Georges Sabbat, 68, a retired applied art teacher, said: “I love my town but it’s true that Saint-Denis has become a bit ghettoised. I came here 40 years ago. It was much more mixed with Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, African Arabs, but now we have a lot of immigration, a lot of it illegal.

“I’m very bothered by illegal cigarette sellers who are uncouth and speak badly to women. It bothers me a lot.”

Yves-Georges Sabbat says Saint-Denis has a lot of illegal immigration - BRUNO FERT

He said decades of Communist rule had brought positive changes but led to cronyism and setbacks for secularism.

“At one time, we didn’t really know how to deal with juvenile delinquency so we entrusted it to local ‘big brothers’ on housing estates. It didn’t work.

“Then it was the Muslim Brotherhood. That calmed things down because it brings a morality, a religion, but it’s not a solution. The state is responsible for educating young people.”

He added: “Saint-Denis has 60 per cent social housing, way above the minimum of 25 per cent. Communist mayors kept asking for more but after a certain point, it doesn’t favour a good mix.”

“And I’ve heard of officials who deliberately asked locals to foment riots to cast a spotlight on the town so they could ask for extra state funds. There have been cases of mayors being offered votes to turn a blind eye to drug dealing.”

But he said he didn’t think “for one second that Bardella will become prime minister”.

“The guy is hardly the brightest spark, he’s only got a baccalaureate.”

At the local youth centre, Aboubakar Bomba, a 23-year-old educator, said he had watched the latest debate among candidates and that Mr Bardella’s arguments didn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Aboubakar Bomba says Jordan Bardella's arguments during the recent debate did not stand up - BRUNO FERT

“The guy’s just a pretty face but he throws figures around that make no sense. Abolishing tax for the under-30s? It can’t be done. I was far more impressed by the Left-wing candidate, he made sense.”

One long-standing resident who declined to be named said he looked after the RN chief during school breaks “when he was a kid” but that he was a virtual unknown, never attending youth or after-school clubs.

“Bardella’s business proposition is to say that Saint-Denis is a very tough town, full of Islamists and drug dealers. In that case, isn’t it rather strange that he’s left his mother here,” he said, pointing to the building above the youth centre and her surname, Bertelli-Mota, Luisa, on the letter box.

“She works as a dinner lady in the council canteen. No one bothers her about her son and yet he’s the RN number one today. We’re open to everyone around here, not like some.

“The rare times I’ve seen him is when he turns up early in the morning to vote when everyone’s asleep. If he really wanted to help, he would have come locally to help us out. But he didn’t run for mayor, he didn’t come and try to save his own.

“He doesn’t care about the suburbs; they’re for blacks and Arabs and Greater Paris is for monarchs. That’s just the way things are. He’s in it for number one.”

‘I doubt he’ll get a good reception’

While RN is polling to come first in snap legislative elections called by Emmanuel Macron, the president, this and next Sunday, its chances of a Saint-Denis, long a Left-wing bastion, are nil.

Stéphane Peu, the Communist Party member, is expected to romp home after his coalition won nearly 80 per cent of the vote two years ago in a run-off against the Macron-backed candidate. He is being backed by a broad Left-wing alliance that includes his own party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical-Left France Unbowed movement, the Socialists and the Greens.

Many Saint-Denis inhabitants are uncomfortable at Mr Macron’s bill to combat “Islamist separatism”, which critics said stigmatised minorities, and the decision to ban abayas, long dresses worn by some Muslim women, in schools.

But the RN goes further, calling for massive curbs on immigration, French-first policies for public services, and a ban on Muslim headscarves in public – a move that would be well-nigh impossible to enforce in Saint-Denis given the number of hijabs.

While others canvas, nobody had seen the RN candidate at the bustling main Saint-Denis market, where many people said they couldn’t vote as they didn’t have French nationality, and his was the only campaign poster missing from hustings outside the huge town hall.

Louise Kervella, 23, said: “I doubt he’d get a good reception,” as she handed out tracts for Anasse Kazib, a 37-year-old railway worker and spokesman for the Trotskyist permanent revolution movement. She said the only suspense around here was how much her party would wrest from the Left-wing coalition.

Louise Kervella, right, says Jordan Bardella will not get a good reception in Saint-Denis - BRUNO FERT

In her tattoo parlour beneath Mr Bardella’s mother’s flat, Ms Thullier said: “I don’t know who I’ll vote for and it won’t be Macron. But RN doesn’t scare me. They’re all the same. I’m more concerned about the Olympics as it’ll be bad for my business.”

But others were far more concerned about the prospect of the hard Right taking power.

Geneviève Bellanger, 75, a retired school teacher, who runs a collective garden and gives French lessons to migrants, said her Spanish grandparents came to Saint-Denis in the 1920s and didn’t speak a word of French.

Geneviève Bellanger runs a collective garden in Saint-Denis - BRUNO FERT

“They helped build this town,” she says. “Saint-Denis is a world city and a land of immigration. In the words of the poet Paul Eluard, it’s a town of ‘rois morts et du peuple vivant’ [dead kings and living people].”

Mr Bardella may say he no longer recognises his country, but she said: “I don’t recognise the France of which he speaks. This is a town that suffers from poverty but it is a town where solidarity and fraternity actually mean something.”

“I’m scared about this election. I wonder whether in the future a town like Saint-Denis can still exist.”

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