Le Pen’s party comes out swinging
Round two of the bitter fight for the French presidency got under way yesterday within hours of first-round results with far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s top aide launching a stinging attack on her centrist opponent, Emmanuel Macron.
“Emmanuel is not a patriot. He sold off national companies. He criticised French culture,” Florian Philippot, deputy leader of Le Pen’s National Front, told BFM TV, saying she and Macron held completely different visions of France.
Philippot called the independent centrist and former investment banker “arrogant” and said that Macron, in his speech yesterday acclaiming his move into the May 7 second round, “was speaking as if he had won already”.
“That was disdainful towards the French people,” Philippot said.
Macron’s victory dinner celebrations at Paris’ upscale Rotonde restaurant amounted to “bling-bling biz”, he said.
Though Macron, 39, is a comparative political novice who has never held elected office, new opinion polls yesterday saw him easily winning the final clash against the 48-year-old Le Pen.
A Harris survey for M6 television saw Macron going on to win the runoff against her by 64 per cent to 36. An Ipsos/Sopra Steria poll for France Televisions gave the result to Macron, 62 per cent to 38 per cent.
Analysts say Le Pen’s best chance of hauling back Macron’s big lead in the polls is to paint him as a part of an elite aloof from ordinary French people and their problems.
Part of that strategy would be to remind voters of Macron’s former roles as a deal-maker in investment banking and Economy Minister in the discredited Government of outgoing Socialist President Francois Hollande.