During the election campaign, the radical agitator Éric Zemmour temporarily eclipsed Marine Le Pen with his provocations. But her moderation has paid off. It could also help her in the runoff.
With 23.6 percent of the votes, Marine Le Pen made it to second place on Sunday and thus qualified for the run-off election.
“I’m ready.” Marine Le Pen has said this repeatedly in recent weeks, at campaign events and in television and newspaper interviews. Ready to succeed where it failed with two attempts. Ready to become France’s next President.
By all appearances, Le Pen has now come a little closer to this project. She is expected to have qualified for the April 24 run-off election – just like she did five years ago. Her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, is also the same as last time. But apart from that, some things are different. Macron is no longer the young newcomer who promised major change in France in 2017. And Le Pen has never been more moderate than in this election campaign.
The 53-year-old has stuck to the strategy of “de-diabolization” that she has been pursuing since she took over her party from her openly racist and anti-Semitic father eleven years ago. In the last few months, external circumstances have unexpectedly played into her hands. Just six months ago, Le Pen was the only one dominating the political debates on the far right in France with warnings of allegedly unbridled mass immigration, “Islamization” and threats to French identity. In this election campaign, however, the radical publicist Éric Zemmour outstripped her rank as provocateur.
Zemmour judged at a gun show a sniper rifle (jokingly) at journalists. He campaigned to ban non-French first names, described underage migrants as thieves and rapists and openly propagated the conspiracy theory of “grand remplacement”, according to which France’s white population was being displaced by Muslim immigrants. He conducted his campaign with constantly new provocations and shrill tones, at times dominating the headlines.
In comparison, Le Pen’s election campaign was nothing short of spectacular. There were moments when she seemed downright weakened. Several of her followers defected to Zemmour. But while the far-right publicist, who finished fourth in the first round of voting, has contested Le Pen’s votes, his candidacy has helped Le Pen lose her terror and now also presents a tougher opponent for Macron in the runoff should.
Strengthening purchasing power is high on the agenda
Le Pen has refrained from competing with Zemmour’s incitement. She has scaled back her provocations and has been relatively quiet for a long time. At campaign meetings and television interviews, she appears more composed than five years ago. She strives for an image as a stateswoman – and at the same time brings out her human side. In her campaign video she presents herself as a caring country mother who hugs the children. She smiles a lot, talks about the challenges of being a single mother and from her six cats.
Le Pen has dropped particularly controversial projects that she promoted five years ago, such as leaving the EU and a return to the franc. For them, immigration remains the cause of most of the problems in the country and is to be radically curbed. She also wants to oppose radical Islam proceed with all “brutality”. For her, this also includes a headscarf ban in public spaces. But Le Pen pays attention to how she presents her hard course. When a follower of Zemmour criticized her for that she had taken a selfie with a young woman in a headscarf, the right-wing nationalist cleverly countered: Of course she is against the headscarf, but her commitment is directed against an ideology, never against people.
More than immigration and security issues, Le Pen has put purchasing power at the center of her election campaign – focusing on the issue polls show the French are most concerned about. The 53-year-old promotes a protectionist state that should support the socially disadvantaged. She promises to reduce VAT on petrol, gas and electricity from 20 to 5.5 percent and to completely exempt food and hygiene products for basic needs. Income tax is to be reduced for all employees under the age of 30.
During the election campaign, Le Pen sought contact with voters and presented himself as a caring mother of the country.
With this programmatic focus, Le Pen managed not to suffer much from the outbreak of the Ukraine war – despite her close ties to the Kremlin for years and her admiration for Vladimir Putin. After the sanctions against Russia were decided, she immediately warned of the effects on the purchasing power of the French.
She remained true to her ultra-nationalist ideology
As always, the 53-year-old castigates her competitor Macron as the “president of wild globalization” who is ruining the welfare state. She sees further evidence of this in Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age. On the other hand, she presents herself as a champion of the little people, the French people, to whom she wants to “give back their money and their country”. The way she conducted her election campaign should also convey this image. While Macron only made a few trips and put everything on a big appearance in a huge event hall near Paris, Le Pen traveled through the country for months and sought contact with the citizens at markets.
With her staging as a candidate for purchasing power, Le Pen almost made people forget that she hadn’t changed anything at the core of her ultra-nationalist program. She wants to enshrine the “protection of French identity” and “national priority” in the constitution: French people should be given preference over foreigners when it comes to access to jobs, social housing or social assistance. That would go against the principle of equality on which the French Republic has been built since the 1789 revolution.
Even if Le Pen is no longer promoting an exit from the EU, her program remains anti-European. For example, she wants to put French law above European law by amending the constitution, what for some lawyers would amount to a step towards a Frexit.
Le Pen’s biggest challenge over the next two weeks will be maintaining the image of a serious politician, which she is struggling to achieve. Five years ago, her weaknesses came to light in a television debate with Macron: in front of more than 16 million French people, she confused a mobile phone provider with a turbine manufacturer, rummaged helplessly in the dossiers she had brought with her and completely failed to explain her program. Instead, she bit into hair-raising attacks on her opponent, which he was able to smash with ease.
She claims to have learned from this fiasco. Their defeats made them stronger, Le Pen told supporters at a meeting in Reims earlier this year. She will have to prove by April 24 that this is actually the case.