Le Pen, Macron clash over fish in the wake of Whirlpool battle

PARIS — After “the battle of Whirlpool,” when Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron both went hunting for France’s blue-collar vote at a threatened home appliance factory, the presidential candidates clashed over fish in a return to more traditional campaigning on Thursday.

The anti-European Union farright populist Le Pen was up before dawn to cruise aboard a fishing trawler on the Mediterranean. The sea trip was her latest effort to portray herself as the candidate of France’s workers against the centrist former banker and economy minister Macron, whom she paints as the candidate of the pro-EU elite.

“My grandfather was a fisherman, so I am in my element,” Le Pen said after her pre-dawn voyage aboard the “Grace of God 2.”

She said France will take back control of its maritime policies if she is elected in the second-round vote on May 7. She again tore into Macron’s more pro-market, freetrade economic program. Macron fired back on Twitter, saying her proposals to take France out of the EU would sink France’s fishing industry.

“Have a nice trip. Europe’s exit she proposes, it’s the end of French fishing. Think about it,” he tweeted, before visiting the ethnically mixed Paris suburb of Sarcelles.

Macron continued the counter-attack, calling Le Pen’s National Front party “xenophobic.”

“There’s Marine Le Pen’s project of a fractured, closed France. ... On the other hand, you have my project which is a republican, patriotic project aiming at ... reconciling France,” he said.

Macron met with members of an association that works to socially integrate local youth through sports and by helping them to set up businesses and find jobs.