Before France votes on Sunday, Marine Le Pen suggest she won’t run for re-election if she fails on her third attempt to bring the far right to the presidency. However, her concession speech showed that she was not ready to give up her mantle of opposition leader to the newly re-elected Emmanuel Macron.
Fresh from securing the party’s top score of 41.5%, the 53-year-old on Sunday said she would “never abandon the people” and vowed to fight in the legislative elections on Sunday. June. “More than ever, I will stay true to my commitment to France and the French people,” she assured cheering supporters.
However, her failure to run for president led to re-evaluations of her limitations as a politician and inconsistencies in her program, as well as a reset of her own. lingering questions about whether her surname is still too toxic for many French people due to the xenophobic and anti-Semitic stances of her father and party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen.
At stake is who will be able to lead an expanding far-right political force, expanded by the emergence of the anti-immigration politician Eric Zemmour and the fall of Republican Les, for which the presidential candidate won less than 5% of the vote in the first round on April 10.
Robert Menard, the far-right mayor of Beziers who supports Le Pen but is not a member of her Rassemblement National Party, said her political potential was limited by the “glass ceiling”.
She has “paid the price” for her confused stances in Europe, luring leftist voters with “nonsense” economic policies, and too pro-Russian, Menard said. “She ran her best campaign ever but still lost a large percentage – that’s not a good sign for the future.”
Le Pen’s loss shows the so-called front républicain, According to political scientist Pascal Perrineau, the idea that most voters vote tactically to prevent the far right from gaining power, is still holding. It has eroded over the past 20 years, but Macron has revived it by warning He said during a televised debate Le Pen’s victory would send France down a “dictatorship path” and even “trigger a civil war” if she carried out her plan to ban headscarves. Islam in public spaces.
Meeting here with her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2011, Marine split the party from her xenophobic and anti-Semitic stance © Miguel Medina/AFP
To tear down such a wall, the far right may need a new leader whose last name is not Le Pen, Perrineau said.
“This could be the end of a decades-long cycle in which the far right of France is dominated by one family,” he said. “If the far right wants to take power, they will need someone new to embody the movement. But at the moment it is still difficult to know who that person will be.”
Le Pen’s next task to win as many parliamentary seats as possible in June will require a decision on whether to cooperate with Zemmourwhose Reconquête party poached high-profile figures of RN and its allies – including her charismatic niece Marion Maréchal – to join his campaign.
With 7% in the first round of voting, the former columnist emphasized the need to join forces. However, on Sunday before a sign that competition might be in the way, Zemmour couldn’t help but say: “Wow. . . This is the eighth time defeat has befallen Le Pen’s name,” he said, adding Le Pen’s loss to her father.
RN officials said there would not be a comprehensive agreement between the two but hinted that some agreement could be made across individual constituencies.
Philippe Olivier, an RN MEP, said: “Our goal is to rally all the patriots to prevent Macron from reaching full power and torturing the millions of people who did not vote for him.
France’s two-round selection system for the lower house is not going to help. Only candidates scoring higher than 12.5% of the registered votes can advance to the preliminary round, which often leads to intense negotiations and agreements between the parties. French voters also tend to give newly elected presidents the ability to execute their agenda.
In 2017, the RN won just eight seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, missing the 15 needed to form a parliamentary group, while Macron’s party won 267.
Marine Le Pen has won more voters since taking over from her father’s National Front in 2011, thanks in part to her efforts to “detoxify” it by purging racist elements. most openly racist and anti-Semitic. She fired her father in 2015 and changed the party name in 2018.
While French voters in general are now more in line with the party’s original anti-immigration stance – 70% of voters say they are worried about immigration – Le Pen has developed a focused economic base into public spending to attract the working class. During this year’s campaign, she focused on the rising cost of living and supported EU skepticism.
Le Pen’s charismatic niece Marion Maréchal has joined rival right-wing politician Eric Zemmour on the campaign trail © Laurent Coust / SOPA Images / Shutterstock
Jordan Bardella, the 26-year-old number two of Le Pen, pointed out how she has won 28 of 101 French divisions this time, compared with just two in 2017. “Next time, we’ll go all the way. the road,” he said.
Marion Maréchal, 32, now vice president of Reconquête and who is expected to run for parliament, could try to position himself as the new standard-bearer of the far right. But Perrineau says she made a “big mistake” in supporting Zemmour and betraying her aunt.
“She could have saved her time and become the legal heir without the name Le Pen, but she gave up all of that,” Perrineau said.
Sipping champagne at Le Pen’s election night party in Paris’ 16th arrondissement on Sunday night, Nadine Guillemet, a longtime RN voter from Versailles, said she hoped the warring factions would make peace amid the backdrop. problems facing France. “They all need to work together.”
