Le Pen steals Macron’s thunder at closing factory

Front-runner in French presidential elections is booed after rival’s surprise visit to angry workers

FRANCE’S presidential campaign verged on farce yesterday as the two remaining candidates battled it out at a Whirlpool factory, with the far-Right’s Marine Le Pen posing for selfies with workers while the centrist Emmanuel Macron drew a volley of boos.

Ms Le Pen upstaged Mr Macron in his hometown of Amiens by making a surprise visit to the factory, which is due to close and move to Poland with the loss of 290 jobs, as he was meeting its union representatives in the town.

Ms Le Pen, who polls indicate will be trounced in the second and final round of the election on May 7, chatted with workers at the gates of the factory, which has come to symbolise the loss of French jobs to plants overseas. The 48-year-old told reporters that her rival’s decision to meet union officials in the town – rather than come to the factory gates – was a sign of someone who was out of touch with the workers.

“Everyone knows what side Emmanuel Macron is on – he is on the side of the corporations,” Ms Le Pen said. “I am on the workers’ side, here in the car park, not in restaurants in Amiens.”

She added: “I am the candidate of workers, the candidate of the French who don’t want their jobs taken away.”

The factory in Amiens has been seized upon by Ms Le Pen as proof that globalisation is out of control and that “economic patriotism” and the return of national borders is the answer.

Mr Macron, who has been accused of complacency since the first-round result on Sunday, hastily arranged a face-saving visit to the Whirlpool plant in the northern rustbelt, which is Ms Le Pen’s political stronghold.

When the 39-year-old former banker got there it looked like he had fallen into a well-planned trap.

Some in the crowd shouted “Presi- dent Marine!” and booed as he arrived. “It’s important not to feed anger but to be up to meeting expectations,” he told the hostile crowd. “Of course there’s anger in the country, there’s anguish, there’s a responsibility to take, that’s why I’m here.”

At a campaign rally later in the day in nearby Arras he lashed out at Ms Le Pen for pulling a political stunt, saying she had stayed at the car park taking pictures for 15 minutes, while he had talked seriously about the plant’s future for an hour and a quarter with union representatives. His Arras speech was aimed at the rustbelt workers who felt left behind by globalisation and had turned from voting on the Left to the anti-globalisation policies of Ms Le Pen’s Front National.

“The Front National feeds off this ‘democratic fracture’ but the party is of the ancien regime,” he told a crowd of several thousand people in what was a noticeably subdued rally.

“Madame Le Pen is the heiress of this system, she lived in a chateau, [but] pretends to be of the people,” he said.