A hard-right 28-year-old could soon become France's prime minister

A decades ago Jordan Bardella was a mere teenager, spending hours at school shooting down enemy combatants in the “Call of Duty” video games. Today the 28-year-old leader of the far-right National Assembly is weeks away from becoming France's prime minister and its youngest by a long way. After two rounds of legislative elections on June 30 and July 7, his party could win enough seats to form a government. Marine Le Pen's rise from the obscurity of a young protégé to the pinnacle of high office is one of the most improbable in modern French politics.

The son of an Italian-born mother and a father whose family immigrated from Italy to France, Mr. Bardella grew up in the social housing of a multicultural northern suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis. banlieue Suburbs of Paris. What could have held him back in life became his political selling point. “My roots are there, a part of my and my family's history,” Mr Bardella said Lee Monde, recalls drug dealers hanging on a battered sofa on the landing outside his flat. “I've been in politics for everything I've been there.”