France’s next leader?
Marine Le Pen has transformed the electoral prospects of the once-reviled National Front (FN). Could she now win the presidency?
Could Le Pen really win?
Absolutely – she’s no rank outsider, she’s the leader of the party that attracted the most votes in the most recent European and regional elections. She’s second favourite with the bookies, ahead of both unpopular president François Hollande and ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, and behind only Alain Juppé, the ex-pm who may pip Sarkozy as the centre-right’s choice of candidate. Some polls say she’ll top the first round of voting next spring. The question is whether, in the second round, voters will unite against Le Pen (as they did in 2002 against her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was thrashed by Jacques Chirac) or whether Marine has so successfully “de-demonised” her party that she makes it into the Élysée Palace.
In what way has she “de-demonised” the party?
The demon is Jean-marie Le Pen – routinely dubbed le diable by the French press – who led the FN from its creation in 1972 until 2011. A paratrooper in the Algerian war and a follower of Pierre Poujade – the politician who in the 1950s led a populist movement to protect small traders’ interests – Le Pen père is a racist, anti-semitic, far-right extremist with many convictions for inciting racial hatred. Notoriously, he described the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail” in the history of WWII. His charmless personality and neo-fascist views kept the FN consigned to the fringes of power, despite its gradual growth in popular support over the decades. Since taking over in 2011, however, Marine Le Pen has made it her project to detoxify the party and bring it into the mainstream.
What has that involved?
Falling out with her father, for a start. After repeating his antiSemitic slurs, he was finally expelled from the party last year amid much acrimony, a break that followed years of tensions over the FN’S direction. As the new leader, Marine condemned the Nazi Holocaust, purged the party of neo-fascist diehards, and barred skinheads in Nazi garb from party rallies. She has had her own brushes with the law, though: campaigning for the FN leadership, she likened Muslims praying in the street to the Nazi occupation. The FN’S raison d’etre remains to promote an authoritarian nationalism – the strong state ( l’état fort) – and slash the number of immigrants. But she has sought to move the party away from its racist legacy, and reposition it as the defender of secular, French republican values against the threats of Islamism, the EU and free-market global capitalism.
Is her strategy working?
Yes. At regional elections in 2015, the FN won 28% of first-round votes (up from 11% in 2010). In the 2014 European elections, it also topped the poll (25%, up from 6% in 2009). She has even won over French youth: between 27% and 31% of 18 to 30year-olds say they are ready to vote for her. The backdrop of the past few years could scarcely have provided more fertile ground for her party. The political and economic crisis in the EU, the lacklustre economy, the refugee crisis, the wave of Islamist
terrorist atrocities in France, Brexit – all play straight into the FN agenda. Le Pen hailed the Brexit vote as a “day of joy” – a big step closer to the collapse of the EU.
Is the FN still a far-right party?
It remains an anti-immigration party, and its critics say it has merely replaced open anti-semitism with a barely disguised hatred of Muslims (though Le Pen is careful to attack “Islamism” rather than Islam). In terms of policy, the FN draws heavily on both Right and Left. Le Pen, who once claimed she was “to the left of Obama” and hates the “far-right” label, presents herself as the champion of public services and the protector of workers and farmers in the face of “wild and anarchic globalisation”.
In what, if any sense, could she be seen as left-wing?
An ex-cabinet minister memorably dubbed the FN’S pitch as “far-left with La Marseillaise thrown in”. Le Pen’s anti-capitalist, anti-free trade, pro-protectionist rhetoric wouldn’t be out of place in a speech by Bernie Sanders, whereas her anti-nato, pro-putin stance (the FN has taken a big loan from a Kremlin-linked bank) puts her in the same foreign policy bracket as Donald Trump. In sum, the FN’S surge exemplifies the thesis that politics in the West is no longer about big-state Left versus small-state Right; it’s about the backlash against globalisation – and the division between those who benefit from it and those left behind. Or, in Le Pen’s version of the divide, elitist “globalisers” versus “patriots”.
How similar is the FN under Marine Le Pen to UKIP?
She enthusiastically claims UKIP as a kindred spirit. Like Nigel Farage, borders. she UKIP wants have to kept “take their back distance, control” scaredof her off country’sby the FN’S racist history and ties to anti-muslim, xenophobic parties in the Netherlands and Eastern Europe. One striking parallel, though, is that, like UKIP, the FN is winning votes from both the mainstream Right (especially in the rural south) and mainstream Left (especially in the post-industrial north). In Calais, home to the “Jungle” refugee camp, the FN won 49% of the vote in last December’s regional elections. But in Île-de-france, the area around Paris which is the country’s wealthiest, it came third. The further you live from a railway station, the more likely you are to vote FN.
How likely is an FN victory?
It’s more likely to come a strong second, thereby cementing the process of its move into the mainstream. Last month the government said it was considering a ban on foreign funding of mosques, a policy long promoted by the FN that now has support across the spectrum. Some influential figures on the Right (such as Henri Guaino, a former Sarkozy aide) say they can envisage working with the FN. Others predict the FN’S future – in a country where party politics is far more fluid than in the UK– will be as part of a broader realignment on the Right. Either way, Marine Le Pen is likely to be an increasingly influential figure for years to come.