France’s Far-Right Leader Says the National Rally Is Ready to Govern

Jordan Bardella, the president of France’s far-right National Rally, insisted at a news conference on Monday that he would be a prime minister for all French people if his party won the country’s upcoming snap elections, even as he defended his party’s proposal to bar French citizens with dual nationalities from certain “sensitive” jobs.

Mr. Bardella spent much of the event focusing on his priorities should he become prime minister — drastically reducing immigration, toughening sentences for those convicted of certain crimes and lowering energy prices — if his nationalist party won a snap election for France’s lower house of Parliament. The election was called this month by President Emmanuel Macron and is being held in two rounds, on June 30 and July 7.

“We are ready,” Mr. Bardella told journalists at a marble-adorned venue in a plush neighborhood of Paris, as he sought to dispel criticism from Mr. Macron and from a new alliance of left-wing parties that the National Rally is unfit and unworthy to govern.

While the National Rally is leading in the latest polls, ahead of the left-wing alliance and of Mr. Macron’s centrist alliance, it is unclear if the party will win enough of the lower house’s 577 seats to secure an absolute majority and form a government.

Mr. Macron, who has three years left in office, has the power to appoint the prime minister. But the lower house could override his choice — making it all but certain he would have to appoint Mr. Bardella if the National Rally won the elections. That, in turn, would enable Mr. Bardella to form a cabinet and to govern France, blocking Mr. Macron’s domestic agenda and potentially disrupting his defense and foreign policies, which are traditionally but not exclusively presidential prerogatives.

But a hung Parliament with no clear majority could lead to months of instability or gridlock, as Mr. Macron cannot call new legislative elections for another year and has ruled out resigning.