Le Pen tacks Right as poll shows her closing on rival
MARINE LE PEN took her fight for the French presidency to the Right-wing Riviera bastion of Nice last night as one poll suggested her rival Emmanuel Macron’s lead had slipped in the runup to their final ballot on May 7.
The far-Right contender spent the first three days after Sunday’s firstround vote wooing French workers – many of whom had voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Communist-backed firebrand who is now out of the race.
Yesterday, she tacked Right in Nice, just eight months after a bloody terror attack in which an Islamist truck driver mowed down 86 people there on Bastille Day. To chants of “Marine president” and “we’re in our own home”, she said: “This election is a referendum for or against France. I call on you to choose France, not Macron.”
Long the preserve of the mainstream Right, Nice remained loyal to François Fillon, the embattled conservative candidate, in round one, giving him 26 per cent of their vote despite allegations of fake jobs for his family. However, Ms Le Pen was only just behind on 25.3 per cent – well ahead of the centrist Mr Macron, on 20.5 per cent.
“We can win,” Ms Le Pen told 4,000 tricolor flag-waving supporters at the Nice rally. “Throw them out! We are David against Goliath.”
Calling Nice a “martyred city,” Ms Le Pen said “I will be the president who wages war on Islamist terrorists”, promising to create 50,000 new posts in the French army. “I will show no weakness,” she said in a speech under very tight security, including 25 bodyguards guarding the stage.
“The country that Macron wants is no longer France,” she added, accusing him of “making speeches in English”.
“It’s a wasteland. It’s no longer a nation, it’s a shattered multicultural society where the only law is the law of the strongest.”
“This election is a referendum on massive immigration,” she added.
In Nice’s old town, Claude Picaud, 69, a semi-retired paediatrician, voted Fillon in the first round. “I’m going to abstain. Marine Le Pen’s economic programme doesn’t suit me at all, particularly leaving the euro. Macron is the continuation of Hollande, and I’m a Right-winger,” he said.
But many others said they would opt for Ms Le Pen. Such as David Zinet, 56, an estate agent, who had voted Fillon in round one and said: “The first priority is security, and Marine will do more. The other is immigration.” He added: “There are too many foreigners. I’m for controlling borders.”
Nice is at the centre of a bitter row within the mainstream Right over how to handle the presidential run-off.
Christian Estrosi, Nice’s former mayor and strongman who is now head of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, has called on Right-wingers to back Mr Macron. He wants to “exclude” anyone who does not follow suit. But one of his key local allies, Eric Ciotti, has ruled this out, simply calling on conservatives not to vote for Ms Le Pen.
The meeting came as an Opinionway poll of voter intentions for the run-off on Sunday week suggested Mr Macron has lost ground, his score slipping below the 60 per cent mark for the first time, to 59 per cent.
Yesterday, Ms Le Pen had hopped on to a fishing boat at dawn as she pursued a guerrilla-style campaign that has upstaged Mr Macron, who she claimed represents “unbridled globalisation”.
Mr Macron, who champions diversity, meanwhile paid a visit to the multi-ethnic Paris suburb of Sarcelles.
To chants of “Macron, president”, he said: “France is not what Mrs Le Pen says it is. It is not this narrow, hateful face put forth by Marine Le Pen.”